NASHVILLE - Senator Lamar Alexander on Thursday thwarted the final attempt by Tea Party supporters to oust a Republican senator this year and won his state's G.O.P. primary.
Mr. Alexander beat a field of six other candidates, http://ift.tt/1m1lLds projected.
Tennessee voters were also voting on a closely watched effort by conservatives and business interests to oust three justices on the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Mr. Alexander's victory was as much a win for establishment Republicans as it was Mr. Alexander, who raised $6.6 million for his re-election bid. This year, unlike in 2010 and 2012, when Tea Party candidates toppled Republican Senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, no insurgent campaigns were successful at forcing a sitting senator from power.
Earlier this week, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas survived a intraparty challenge, just as Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi did in June. Their victories, along with that of Mr. Alexander, helped deprive Democrats of incendiary candidates they would prefer to face in November and raised the chances of a Republican takeover of the Senate.
Mr. Alexander, a former governor who was elected to the Senate in 2002, knew he would be a target because of his long record of compromise and deal making. And he faced an especially aggressive challenge from Joe Carr, a state representative from Rutherford County, which is southeast of Nashville.
Mr. Carr assailed Mr. Alexander as too moderate for this state, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996, when Al Gore, a Tennessean, was President Clinton's running mate.
But unlike some other Republican lawmakers who did little to prepare for primary challenges, Mr. Alexander moved quickly to secure the backing of Tennessee's political apparatus, which helped to deprive Mr. Carr and other rivals of political oxygen.
The hopes of Mr. Carr, who reported only $1.1 million in fund-raising, increased in June after a little-known college professor, David Brat, beat Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, in a primary. Mr. Brat had highlighted Mr. Cantor's support for granting some illegal immigrants legal status and enlisted the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham in his cause.
Mr. Carr, seeing Mr. Brat's surprising success in Virginia, picked up the same playbook and played it note - by-note in the weeks leading up to Thursday's primary.
'When Lamar Alexander says he 'voted to end amnesty,' he isn't telling the truth, again,' Mr. Carr charged this week in a statement. 'The truth is Lamar Alexander betrayed Tennessee's workers.'
Ms. Ingraham also came to Mr. Carr's aid. She campaigned alongside him in Nashville last month, and, in a post on her website on Thursday, she told readers: 'It's time to retire Lamar.'
But it was not enough to defeat Mr. Alexander, a figure of Tennessee politics for decades who once wore a plaid, flannel shirt and walked more than 1,000 miles across the state while running for governor.
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