Associated Press: After defeating his Republican primary opponent by a mere 38 votes, scandal-ridden U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais appears to be only one of Tennessee's nine incumbent House members to face a serious challenge in the general election.
DesJarlais won the right to defend his 4th District seat after narrowly winning the August primary against state Sen. Jim Tracy. DesJarlais, a Jasper physician who now opposes abortion rights, won despite a series of personal scandals that included affairs with patients, urging a mistress to seek an abortion and once holding a gun in his mouth for hours outside his ex-wife's room.
DesJarlais is being challenged by Democrat Lenda Sherrell of Monteagle, who has kept up with the incumbent in fundraising. She has criticized DesJarlais for skipping a candidate forum in McMinnville, and has characterized the voters' choice in the election as being "about judgment, character, and honesty."
Robert Jameson, a DesJarlais campaign spokesman, said the congressman's treatments for cancer stalled his fundraising efforts, but he is recovering and is getting back on the campaign trail. Jameson said the organizers of the candidate forum were notified in advance that he could not attend the forum because he had another event to attend.
During the primary, Tracy won the counties in the western part of the district near Nashville, but that wasn't enough to overcome DesJarlais' heavy margins in the rural counties toward Chattanooga. DesJarlais also faced a fundraising disadvantage against Tracy.
Jameson said the close margin of victory in the primary has not really changed how he approaches the general election.
"The congressman listens and he leads, and he votes in a manner that is consistent with the independent, conservative principles that are held in Tennessee's 4th congressional district," Jameson said.
In both of DesJarlais' previous elections, he tried to cast doubt on reports of violent behavior toward his ex-wife and about multiple extramarital affairs before his divorce was finalized. But court transcripts from divorce proceedings released the week after the November 2012 election confirmed many of those revelations.
Last year, DesJarlais was fined and reprimanded by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners for having sex with patients before he was elected.
Jameson said DesJarlais has acknowledged he went through a difficult divorce but he has kept his focus on providing the best possible representation.
Sherrell, a retired accountant who stressed she is not a "career politician," said she grew up in the district and was able to go to college because her parents were able to save enough money on their middle class salaries while also paying for a house and funding their retirement.
"Today, families just like the family that I grew up in can't afford to do what my parents did because policies made by out-of-touch politicians in Washington have caused these problems and we don't have an even playing field anymore because the rules have been made to benefit only a few," Sherrell said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
Sherrell said she wants to increase the federal minimum wage and opposes raising the Social Security retirement age. She said her campaign was reaching out to those who voted against DesJarlais in the primary.
Across the state, in the majority-black 9th Congressional District in Memphis, Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, a white and Jewish Memphis native, takes on Republican Charlotte Bergmann, who is African-American. Cohen has represented the district since 2006 in a seat once held by Harold Ford Sr.