Tennessee's 1st congressional district
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| Tennessee's 1st congressional district | ||
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| Current Representative | Phil Roe (R) | |
| Population (2000) | 632,143 | |
| Median income | $31,228 | |
| Ethnicity | 95.8% White, 2.2% Black, 0.4% Asian, 1.5% Hispanic, 0.2% Native American, 0.0% other | |
| Cook PVI | R+21 | |
The Tennessee 1st Congressional District is the congressional district of northeast Tennessee, including all of Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties and parts of Jefferson County and Sevier County. Cities and towns represented within the district include Blountville, Bristol, Elizabethton, Erwin, Greeneville, Johnson City, Jonesborough, Jefferson City, Kingsport, Morristown, Mountain City, Roan Mountain, Rogersville, and Sevierville. The 1st District's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881.
The district was created in 1823 when the At-large seat was divided among multiple districts. David Davis, Republican, elected in 2006, failed to win renomination in the August 2008 Republican primary election, losing to Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe, who currently represents the district.[1]
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[edit] Political characteristics
The 1st 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).
U.S. Representative Andrew Johnson (1843-1853) represented the 1st and later served as President of the United States
Republicans (or their antecedents) have held the seat continuously since 1881 and for all but four years since 1859, while Democrats (or their antecedents) have held the congressional seat for all but six years from when Andrew Jackson was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1796 up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins ending in 1859.
Andrew Johnson later ascended to the office of President of the United States.
The 1st was one of only two districts in Tennessee whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861. George Washington Bridges was elected as a Unionist (the name used by a coalition of Republicans, northern Democrats and anti-Confederate Southern Democrats) to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken back to Tennessee. Bridges was held prisoner for more than a year before he made his escape and went to Washington, D.C., and assumed his duties on February 23, 1863; serving until March 3, 1863.
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Like the rest of East Tennessee, slavery was not as common in this area as the rest of the state due to its mountain terrain, which could not support a plantation economy.[2] The district was also the home of the first abolitionist periodicals in the nation, The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, founded in Jonesborough in 1819.[3]
Due to these factors, this area supported the Union over the Confederacy in the Civil War, and identified with the Republican Party after Tennessee was readmitted to the Union in 1867, electing candidates representing the Republican-related Unionist Party both before and after the war. This allegiance continues to this day, 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.
The district tends to give its congressmen very long tenures in Washington. Four men have held the district's seat for all but six of the last 87 years.
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