Elizabeth Warren hires Tennessee director – Nashville Post
Elizabeth Warren hires Tennessee director Nashville Post
authors Stephen Elliott
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has hired local campaign operative Elizabeth Henderson as her Tennessee state director.
According to several local Democratic hands, that makes Warren, newly atop some national and early-state polls, the first presidential candidate with staff working in Tennessee, more than four months before the state’s Democrats vote in the Super Tuesday primary.
Henderson previously worked on Karl Dean’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign, David Briley’s 2015 vice mayoral campaign and for The Wilderness Society and Organizing for Action. She has also worked with Run for Something, a group that supports progressive candidates running in down-ballot races.
The appointment comes months after California Sen. Kamala Harris sent staff to Nashville to begin organizing ahead of the primary. Candidates including South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke and former Vice President Joe Biden have visited Nashville in recent months, but none has hired anyone to work in the state.
The large presidential field has, however, drawn some local campaign operatives from Tennessee. Former Dean campaign spokesperson Paige Hill is now Biden’s communications director in South Carolina, and Charles Uffelman, who has worked with the Tennessee Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, recently moved to Iowa to work on the Harris campaign. Local consultant Kara Turrentine is doing mail work for the Sanders campaign, but is not organizing on the ground in Tennessee.
While Biden is reportedly turning to Super Tuesday states as a firewall against Warren’s surging popularity among the Democratic electorate, there is no sign that he is investing in Tennessee yet. Still, he recently secured the endorsement of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris. Warren visited Memphis earlier this year but has so far not made it to Nashville during the campaign.
President Trump, widely expected to win the Republican nomination despite facing primary challengers, doesn’t have staff in Tennessee either, though a regional director oversees operations in the state.
