A super PAC, which is a political committee that can raise unlimited outside money for elections without coordinating directly with campaigns, spent roughly $2 million to defeat Republican Rep. Andy Ogles in a Tennessee primary on Thursday. The money traces to Chris Larsen, the California-based billionaire chairman of Ripple, a financial technology company operating in the cryptocurrency space, who gave $5,444,975 to support Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. The winner was Charlie Hatcher, a fifth-generation dairy farmer and Tennessee's former agriculture commissioner.
The renewable energy money behind the race
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition super PAC raised $6.7 million this year. Of that, roughly $2 million went toward opposing Ogles and backing Hatcher, making the Tennessee district one of the group's largest spending targets this cycle. The policy dispute was over renewable energy subsidies. Ogles had pushed to roll back clean energy investments made under the Biden administration, and the super PAC's spending suggests organized money on the other side is willing to contest that position at the primary level.
Ogles drew his own conclusion from the figures. He told Fox News Digital that when an outside group pours $2 million into a single Republican primary, it signals how much profit those donors extract from government subsidies and how alarmed they are to see that funding threatened. He also argued his closeness to President Trump made him a target.
A fracture inside Tennessee's Republican Party
Trump backed Ogles. He called him "fantastic" on Truth Social and praised him as "a source of inspiration" in Congress. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee went the other way, endorsing Hatcher the evening before the vote. Lee cited a direct working relationship: Hatcher served under him as agriculture commissioner. "He served as my commissioner of agriculture; I know Charlie," Lee said. Lee added that Hatcher had supported Trump from the start, a framing that did not resolve the tension between the two endorsements.
Hatcher presented himself as a Washington outsider. In campaign material, he described his background as bringing "farmer common sense" to a capital he said lacked it and pledged to support the Trump administration's agenda.
What the result means going forward
Hatcher advances to a general election on Nov. 3. The district is heavily Republican. Ogles won his 2024 race with 56.9 percent of the vote against Democratic challenger Maryam Abolfazli, who received 39.5 percent. Hatcher enters the fall as the clear favorite. Federal Election Commission filings identified Larsen as the primary backer of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, which has now committed roughly $2 million of its $6.7 million in 2026 fundraising to a single Tennessee congressional seat.