Heidi Campbell

Campbell unseats incumbent Dickerson to win Senate race

By Nate Rau -November 3, 2020 – Tennessee Lookout

Former Oak Hill Mayor and music industry executive Heidi Campbell unseated two-term incumbent state Sen. Steve Dickerson on Tuesday by about 6,000 votes.

Campbell is the first Democrat to defeat an incumbent Republican in a state Senate race since 2006. Campbell won a hotly contested primary over Kimi Abernathy in August and then overcame a substantial fundraising disadvantage to defeat Dickerson.

“I think it has nothing to do with me,” Campbell told the Tennessee Lookout after News Channel 5 declared her the winner. “I think it’s about love versus fear. I think the politics of fear are the angle the Republican Party has leveraged to try to fight against me. And, in the final analysis, I think people are worried about their economic future, their healthcare future. I care about those things.”

Campbell was the subject of a series of negative ads, one that tried to demonize the advocacy nonprofit Gideon’s Army, and another that brought up misdemeanor arrests from many years ago.

Campbell said she believes those ads ended up working in her favor, and that the Senate Republican political action committee’s strategy backfired.

“I think the Republicans ran some ads that were really kind of ill advised,” Campbell said. “I think that, unfortunately for them, their ad campaign was targeted toward a demographic that does not exist in this district. I think this district is far more moderate.”

Campbell had the advantage of running as the Democratic nominee in a presidential election year. The district has been drifting to the left in recent elections, supporting Karl Dean for governor and Phil Bredesen for U.S. Senate in 2018, and electing Bob Freeman to the state House that year.

Campbell said the victory is gratifying, but she was less than exuberant as she watched initial returns in the presidential race show positive results for Trump.

“I feel great,” she said. “I feel really good about this race and this decision for Tennessee. I’m a little concerned about the Trump race right now.”