The Bill Lee Charlie Hatcher endorsement fight has turned into a roughly $1 million outside-spending push in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District primary. The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC, bankrolled by Chris Larsen, is backing Charlie Hatcher while opposing Andy Ogles.
The group recently added another $700,000 in ads, bringing the effort to about $2 million in the race. It has raised $6.7 million this year, giving it room to keep shaping a Republican primary that now features spending from outside the district.
Chris Larsen and the PAC
Chris Larsen, a California-based billionaire chairman of Ripple, has donated $6 million to the PAC since Feb. 2026. His latest $5 million donation was his second-largest single contribution after the $5,444,975 he gave to Future Forward PAC in 2024 to support Kamala Harris's presidential campaign.
He has also given over $1 million to the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, over $1 million between the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and over $300,000 supporting Nancy Pelosi. That record sits alongside the current spending in a Republican primary, where his money is now being used against Ogles and for Hatcher.
Andy Ogles and the issue
Ogles, a Republican U.S. Representative from Tenn. and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, has argued against clean energy subsidies in Biden's Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. He said in an interview with Digital: "When you have a group spending roughly $2 million in a Republican primary, that tells you how much money they're making off of government subsidies, and they're upset that the government welfare has been taken away from them,"
Hatcher, Tennessee's former commissioner of agriculture and the Republican challenger, is the candidate the PAC is helping finance in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District. The spending makes the race a high-dollar test of whether outside money can shift a local primary before voters decide the nomination.
Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District
The spending now sits at roughly $2 million after the latest ad purchase, with roughly $1 million already spent and $700,000 more added recently. For voters in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, the immediate effect is a race defined by outside spending as much as by the candidates themselves.
