A California billionaire who poured millions into Kamala Harris’s campaign just helped knock a sitting Republican congressman out of his own primary. And the target wasn’t some moderate RINO. It was Andy Ogles, a Freedom Caucus member and open Trump ally who had the president’s endorsement.
On Thursday night, fifth-generation dairy farmer and former state agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher defeated Ogles in Tennessee’s 5th District Republican primary. With most of the vote counted, Hatcher took about 53 percent to Ogles’s 47 percent. The seat is deep red. Hatcher is now the heavy favorite in November.
But the real story is not the final tally. It is the money that helped make it possible.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, a super PAC bankrolled almost entirely by Democratic donors, dropped roughly $2 million into the race opposing Ogles and boosting Hatcher. The group has raised more than $6.7 million this cycle. Its biggest check writer is Chris Larsen, the San Francisco crypto billionaire and executive chairman of Ripple. Larsen has given the PAC millions, including a single $5 million contribution.
That same Larsen previously sent more than $5.4 million to a super PAC supporting Kamala Harris in 2024 and has continued writing large checks to Democratic committees and causes.
Ogles saw it coming. In the days before the vote he told Fox News Digital exactly what the spending meant. “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.”
He was not wrong. The PAC’s own leadership has been blunt. Tom Matzzie, CEO of a solar company and chairman of the group, has said the purpose is to punish lawmakers who oppose the renewable energy subsidies.
“If you’re an extremist on American energy, you’re on our target list.” Ogles had voted against the green welfare written into the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden-era bills. That made him a marked man.
The ads themselves were pure political theater. They painted Hatcher as the true “America First,” “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump” candidate while attacking Ogles with personal claims. Never mind that the cash behind those ads came from a man who bankrolled Harris and is already talking about boosting Gavin Newsom in 2028. The Blaze documented the same pattern: liberals in MAGA clothing, running a covert operation inside a Republican primary.
President Trump had endorsed Ogles and reaffirmed that support. “Andy will be really enshrined as one of the best congressmen that you’ll ever see,” Trump posted earlier. Governor Bill Lee went the other way late, endorsing Hatcher and citing their personal relationship from Hatcher’s time as agriculture commissioner. Redistricting also scrambled the map, flooding the district with new voters who did not know Ogles as well.
Still, the outside money was the decisive force. The Freedom Caucus Fund spent hundreds of thousands trying to defend Ogles. It was nowhere near enough to match the California cash.
This is not an isolated stunt. The same super PAC previously spent heavily to help defeat Chip Roy in his Texas attorney general primary after Roy fought the green energy giveaways. The message is clear. Oppose the subsidy machine and the industry will come for you, even if it means using Democratic billionaire money to reshape a Republican primary.
Ogles put it plainly: the attack happened because he is close to the president, because he is outspoken, and because he speaks plainly. “If trying to build an energy sector that is self-reliant, because it’s a national security issue, makes me an extremist, then so be it.”
Scripture has a word for the kind of divided loyalty on display here. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
The green energy complex has chosen its master. The question for Republican voters is whether they will keep letting that master buy influence inside their own primaries.
Hatcher now advances as the nominee. He talks about farmer common sense and supporting the Trump agenda. Fine. But the voters who just chose him should understand exactly who wrote the largest checks that helped clear the path.
A California Democrat who funded Kamala Harris just helped decide a Tennessee Republican primary. That should bother every conservative who claims to believe in limited government and energy independence.
The subsidies are the prize. The primary was the delivery system. And a Trump-backed congressman is the latest casualty.
