Tennessee's 1st congressional district

Tennessee's 1st congressional district is the congressional district for northeast Tennessee, including all of Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi, Washington, and Sevier counties, as well as nearly all of Jefferson County with the exception of Strawberry Plains. It is largely coextensive with the Tennessee portion of the Tri-Cities region of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of R+29, it is the most Republican district in Tennessee and the third most Republican in the country. The district, as shaped for the 119th Congress, has the second lowest median income of the state's districts, at $55,431. It also ranks second in the state with the poverty rate at 15.9 percent, per a 2026 congressional study.Dalaker, Joseph; Leubsdorf, Ben; 'Income and Poverty by State and Congressional District' May 12, 2026, Table 4. Poverty Rate by Congressional District in 2024 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48943

Cities and towns represented within the district include Blountville, Bristol, Church Hill, Elizabethton, Erwin, Gatlinburg, Greeneville, Johnson City, Jonesborough, Kingsport, Morristown, Mountain City, Newport, Pigeon Forge, Roan Mountain, Rogersville, Sneedville, Sevierville, and Tusculum. The 1st district's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881.

The district was created in 1805 when the was divided into multiple districts.

The district's current representative is Republican Diana Harshbarger, who was first elected in 2020 following the retirement of Republican Phil Roe.

Recent election results from statewide races Year Office Results2008 PresidentMcCain 70% - 29%2012 PresidentRomney 74% - 26%2016 PresidentTrump 76% - 20%2018 SenateBlackburn 71% - 28% GovernorLee 76% - 23%2020 PresidentTrump 76% - 22% SenateHagerty 77% - 21%2022 GovernorLee 78% - 20%2024 PresidentTrump 78% - 21% SenateBlackburn 78% - 20%

History The 1st district has generally been a very secure voting district for the Republican Party since the American Civil War, and is one of only two ancestrally Republican districts in the state (the other being the neighboring 2nd district).

Republicans (or their antecedents) have held the seat continuously since 1881 and for all but four years since 1859, while Democrats (or their antecedents) held the congressional seat for all but eight years from when Andrew Jackson was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1796 (as the state's single at-large representative) up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins, which ended in 1859.

Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States, represented the district from 1843 to 1853.

Like the rest of East Tennessee, slavery was not as common in this area as in the rest of the state due to its mountain terrain, which was dominated by small farms instead of plantations. The district was also the home of the first exclusively abolitionist periodicals in the nation, The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, founded in Jonesborough by Elihu Embree in 1819.

The 1st district was one of four districts in Tennessee whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861. Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson was reelected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken to Richmond. Nelson was paroled and returned home to Jonesborough, where he kept a low profile for the length of his term.

Due to these factors, this area — except for "Little Confederacy" Sullivan County, with its deep ties to neighboring Virginia — supported the Union over the Confederacy in the Civil War, and identified with the Republican Party after Tennessee was readmitted to the Union in 1866, electing candidates representing the Union Party — a merger of Republicans and pro-Union Democrats — both before and after the war. This allegiance has continued through good times and bad ever since, with Republicans dominating every level of government. While a few Democratic pockets exist in the district's urban areas, they are not enough to sway the district. Since 1898, Democrats have only crossed the 40 percent barrier twice, in 1962 and 1976.

The district's Republican bent is no less pronounced at the presidential level. It was one of the few areas of Tennessee where Barry Goldwater did well in 1964. Johnson, Carter, Unicoi, Washington, Cocke, Sevier, and Hancock Counties are among the few counties in the country to have never supported a Democrat for president since the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt turned in respectable showings in the district during his four runs for president, as did Jimmy Carter in 1976. However, Carter is the last Democrat to carry any county in the district, and apart from Sullivan County, which, except in the Catholicism-dominated 1928 election, was consistently Democratic up to 1948, and Hamblen County in the 1976 election, no county in the present district has backed a Democrat for president since 1940.

The district typically gives its congressmen very long tenures in Washington; indeed, it elected some of the few truly senior Southern Republican congressmen before the 1950s. Only nine people have represented it since 1921. Two of them, B. Carroll Reece and Jimmy Quillen, are the longest-serving members of the House in Tennessee history. Reece held the seat for all but six years from 1921 to 1961, while Quillen held it from 1963 to 1997.

Composition For the 118th and successive Congresses (based on redistricting following the 2020 census), the district contains all or portions of the following counties and communities:

Carter County (8)

All 8 communities

Cocke County (3)

All 3 communities

Greene County (5)

All 5 communities

Hamblen County (3)

All 3 communities

Hancock County (1)

Sneedville

Hawkins County (8)

All 8 communities

Jefferson County (6)

Baneberry, Dandridge, Jefferson City, Morristown (shared with Hamblen County), New Market, White Pine

Johnson County (2)

Butler, Mountain City

Sevier County (6)

All 6 communities

Sullivan County (11)

All 11 communities

Unicoi County (3)

All 3 communities

Washington County (9)

All 9 communities

List of members representing the district

Representative Party Years Congress Electoral history District location District established March 4, 1805 John Rhea Democratic-Republican March 4, 1805 –March 3, 1813 Redistricted from the and re-elected in 1805.Re-elected in 1807.Re-elected in 1809.Re-elected in 1811.Re-elected in 1813.Lost re-election. 1805–1813"Washington district": Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, and Washington counties March 4, 1813 –March 3, 1815 1813–1823Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, and Washington counties Samuel Powell Democratic-Republican March 4, 1815 –March 3, 1817 Elected in 1815.Retired. John Rhea Democratic-Republican March 4, 1817 –March 3, 1823 Elected in 1817.Re-elected in 1819.Re-elected in 1821.Retired. John Blair Democratic-Republican March 4, 1823 –March 3, 1825 Elected in 1823.Re-elected in 1825.Re-elected in 1827.Re-elected in 1829.Re-elected in 1831.Re-elected in 1833.Lost re-election. 1823–1833Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, and Washington counties Jacksonian March 4, 1825 –March 3, 1835 1833–1843 William B. Carter Anti-Jacksonian March 4, 1835 –March 3, 1837 Elected in 1835.Re-elected in 1837.Re-elected in 1839.Retired. Whig March 4, 1837 –March 3, 1841 Thomas D. Arnold Whig March 4, 1841 –March 3, 1843 Elected in 1841.Retired. Andrew Johnson Democratic March 4, 1843 –March 3, 1853 Elected in 1842.Re-elected in 1845.Re-elected in 1847.Re-elected in 1849.Re-elected in 1851.Retired to run for Governor of Tennessee. 1843–1853 Brookins Campbell Democratic March 4, 1853 –December 25, 1853 Elected in 1853.Died. 1853–1861 Vacant December 25, 1853 –March 30, 1854 Nathaniel G. Taylor Whig March 30, 1854 –March 3, 1855 Elected to finish Campbell's term.Lost re-election. Albert G. Watkins Democratic March 4, 1855 –March 3, 1859 Elected in 1855.Re-elected in 1857.Retired. Thomas A. R. Nelson Opposition March 4, 1859 –March 3, 1861 Elected in 1859.Re-elected in 1861, but captured en route to Congress and failed to take his seat. District inactive March 4, 1861 – July 24, 1866 Civil War and Reconstruction Nathaniel G. Taylor Union July 24, 1866 –March 3, 1867 Elected in 1865.Retired. 1866–1873 Roderick R. Butler Republican March 4, 1867 –March 3, 1875 Elected in 1867.Re-elected in 1868.Re-elected in 1870.Re-elected in 1872.Lost re-election. 1873–1883 William McFarland Democratic March 4, 1875 –March 3, 1877 Elected in 1874.Lost re-election. James H. Randolph Republican March 4, 1877 –March 3, 1879 Elected in 1876.Retired. Robert L. Taylor Democratic March 4, 1879 –March 3, 1881 Elected in 1878.Lost re-election. Augustus H. Pettibone Republican March 4, 1881 –March 3, 1887 Elected in 1880.Re-elected in 1882.Re-elected in 1884.Retired. 1883–1893 Roderick R. Butler Republican March 4, 1887 –March 3, 1889 Elected in 1886.Retired. Alfred A. Taylor Republican March 4, 1889 –March 3, 1895 Elected in 1888.Re-elected in 1890.Re-elected in 1892.Retired. 1893–1903 William C. Anderson Republican March 4, 1895 –March 3, 1897 Elected in 1894.Lost renomination. Walter P. Brownlow Republican March 4, 1897 –July 8, 1910 Elected in 1896.Re-elected in 1898.Re-elected in 1900.Re-elected in 1902.Re-elected in 1904.Re-elected in 1906.Re-elected in 1908.Died. 1903–1913 Vacant July 8, 1910 –November 8, 1910 Zachary D. Massey Republican November 8, 1910 –March 3, 1911 Elected to finish Brownlow's term.Retired. Sam R. Sells Republican March 4, 1911 –March 3, 1921 Elected in 1910.Re-elected in 1912.Re-elected in 1914.Re-elected in 1916.Re-elected in 1918.Lost renomination. 1913–1933Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties B. Carroll Reece Republican March 4, 1921 –March 3, 1931 Elected in 1920.Re-elected in 1922.Re-elected in 1924.Re-elected in 1926.Re-elected in 1928.Lost renomination. Oscar B. Lovette Republican March 4, 1931 –March 3, 1933 Elected in 1930.Lost renomination. B. Carroll Reece Republican March 4, 1933 –January 3, 1947 Elected in 1932.Re-elected in 1934.Re-elected in 1936.Re-elected in 1938.Re-elected in 1940.Re-elected in 1942.Re-elected in 1944.Retired to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee. 1933–1943 1943–1953 Dayton E. Phillips Republican January 3, 1947 –January 3, 1951 Elected in 1946.Re-elected in 1948.Lost renomination. B. Carroll Reece Republican January 3, 1951 –March 19, 1961 Elected in 1950.Re-elected in 1952.Re-elected in 1954.Re-elected in 1956.Re-elected in 1958.Re-elected in 1960.Died. 1953–1963 Vacant March 19, 1961 –May 16, 1961 Louise Reece Republican May 16, 1961 –January 3, 1963 Elected to finish her husband's term.Retired. Jimmy Quillen Republican January 3, 1963 –January 3, 1997 Elected in 1962.Re-elected in 1964.Re-elected in 1966.Re-elected in 1968.Re-elected in 1970.Re-elected in 1972.Re-elected in 1974.Re-elected in 1976.Re-elected in 1978.Re-elected in 1980.Re-elected in 1982.Re-elected in 1984.Re-elected in 1986.Re-elected in 1988.Re-elected in 1990.Re-elected in 1992.Re-elected in 1994.Retired. 1963–1973 1973–1983 1983–1993 1993–2003 Bill Jenkins Republican January 3, 1997 –January 3, 2007 Elected in 1996.Re-elected in 1998.Re-elected in 2000.Re-elected in 2002.Re-elected in 2004.Retired. 2003–2013 David Davis Republican January 3, 2007 –January 3, 2009 Elected in 2006.Lost renomination. Phil Roe Republican January 3, 2009 –January 3, 2021 Elected in 2008.Re-elected in 2010.Re-elected in 2012.Re-elected in 2014.Re-elected in 2016.Re-elected in 2018.Retired. 2013–2023 Diana Harshbarger Republican January 3, 2021 –present Elected in 2020.Re-elected in 2022.Re-elected in 2024. 2023–2027

Recent election results

2012

2014

2016

2018