The crowd of well-wishers swarms around U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander as soon as he walks through the door.

“I haven’t seen you in a hundred years!” he says, pumping the hand of a gray-haired man in a navy suit.

For the next half-hour, the senator from Maryville works the room like the seasoned politician he is. There’s lots of handshaking, lots of small talk, and lots of patiently posing for cellphone photos.

When he finally takes the microphone at the Campbell County Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner, where the main speaker will be former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Alexander jokes that he’s like a warm-up act at the Grand Ole Opry. But when he segues to the matter on everyone’s mind — this fall’s elections and, specifically, his own bid for a third Senate term — the warm-up artist disappears and the skilled campaigner is suddenly center stage.

“We have an election coming up this November in which we have a chance to have a (Senate) Republican majority,” Alexander says, looking beyond Tennessee’s Aug. 7 primary and casting his race as a piece of a larger political puzzle.

“I’d like to be a part of that majority and get our country moving in a more conservative direction,” he continues, making his case for re-election. Then, the big pitch: “If we do our job,” he adds, “then we will have a chance to finish the job and elect a Republican president of the United States two years later.”

Alexander’s lengthy political resume — 12 years as a senator, eight years as governor, two years as U.S. education secretary, two-time presidential candidate — is paradoxically his strongest selling point and perhaps his biggest liability as he tries to persuade voters to send him back to Washington for another six years.

With congressional approval at abysmally low levels, this has been a difficult year for entrenched incumbents. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss in Virginia and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran’s recent scare in Mississippi have invigorated tea party groups, who are now gunning for Alexander.

State Rep. Joe Carr, the most formidable of Alexander’s six Republican primary challengers, has pummeled him relentlessly, arguing the deal-making senator is out of touch and isn’t conservative enough for Tennessee votes.

Alexander’s response to Carr’s attacks has been to basically ignore him. He never mentions Carr by name on the campaign trail or in conversations with reporters. He has refused Carr’s calls for a debate, saying at this point in the campaign — early voting started Friday — that putting all seven candidates on a stage and letting them go at each other would not be of much use to voters.

Alexander, 74, certainly doesn’t act like a man who’s worried that his days in office might soon be over, as tea party activists like to boast.

“By all measures, things seem to be in pretty good shape,” the senator said, sizing up his campaign over lunch at Nashville’s Midtown Café, just steps from the city’s famous Music Row.

Alexander has good reason to be confident. Polls show him comfortably leading Carr and his other Republican challengers. He enters the final stretch of the campaign with more than $3 million in the bank, while Carr has just under $500,000. What’s more, his decades in Tennessee politics have made him a household name across the state, while Carr remains an unknown figure to many voters, particularly in East Tennessee.

ON THE GRILL

In Sevierville, hamburgers sizzle on the grill and steam rises from a pot of piping hot coffee at Frank Allen’s Market and Grill as the lunchtime conversation turns to politics. Alexander is the clear favorite around these parts, where people admire him for standing up to President Barack Obama on healthcare reform and say he has done a good job of representing the state on most issues.

“His past record — he has shown that he is a conservative,” said Joe Woods of Pigeon Forge, who for years was an agriculture extension agent and now works part time at the Sevier Farmer’s Co-Op.

Don Clasby, an Army retiree, said any doubts he might have had about Alexander being a real conservative were erased when Huckabee filmed a campaign spot on his behalf. Carr, on the other hand, has spent most of his time trashing Alexander without really saying what he stands for, Clasby said.

“It’s hard to vote for someone when you don’t know what they’re thinking,” he said.

More than 200 miles west, in the tiny, rural village of Leiper’s Fork in Williamson County, just south of Nashville, Kenny Marks complains about the tenor of Carr’s campaign.

“I don’t like him — from what I’ve seen on TV, his ads are quite mean-spirited,” said Marks, a singer and songwriter relaxing on a wooden bench outside Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant, a country general store known for its award-winning burgers and barbecue and as a favorite hangout for musicians.

Though Marks is a Democrat, he calls Alexander “a mature statesman” and predicts, “He probably will win.”

‘RE-EARN’ CONFIDENCE

While he may be favored, Alexander says he’s taking nothing for granted. “I respect the voters in Tennessee, and they have a right to make their own minds up,” he said. “I’m out trying re-earn their confidence and doing it the way I’ve always done it.”

What that means, he said, is working the fish fries and small-town festivals where an appearance is practically mandatory for candidates for office. In Columbia, Tenn., Alexander pulled on his trademark red-and-black plaid shirt and marched in the annual Mule Day Parade. (Two important lessons he says he learned from past Mule Day experiences: Never wear a suit, and it’s better to march in the front of the parade instead of the back, for obvious reasons.)

Mostly, though, Alexander said he has tried to keep his focus on the job voters elected him to do. Most weeks, he’s in Washington on Monday through Thursday and then returns to Tennessee late in the week. Since he has been in the Senate, his staff says, he has spent more than half of his nights back in Tennessee — meeting constituents, discussing issues with state leaders and speaking to civic clubs or other groups.

One vote that continues to dog Alexander has been his vote for an immigration bill that passed the Senate last year and would give people already in the country illegally a chance to obtain citizenship. Carr has hammered Alexander for voting for the bill and accuses him of supporting “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

“Yes, it was the right vote to take,” Alexander said, when asked if he stands by his decision to support the bill. “I think Tennesseans sent me to Washington to solve problems, not to make speeches. One of the biggest problems we have is the immigration mess, and the only people who can solve it are the president and the Congress.”

Turning Carr’s argument on its head, Alexander said his vote for the immigration bill was a vote to end amnesty. The legislation, if enacted, would double security on the border and put in place a 13-year process allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship, but only after paying a fine and back taxes and meeting other requirements.

Doing nothing, on the other hand, would amount to “perpetual” amnesty, Alexander said, because the 11 million immigrants already here illegally would be allowed to stay “without consequence.”

Alexander also has fought back against Carr’s claims that he isn’t conservative by winning the endorsement of two high-profile conservatives: Huckabee and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In his speech at the Campbell County dinner, Huckabee said Alexander has never abandoned his conservative principles. In a brief interview afterward, he suggested that critics of Alexander’s vote on immigration should look at his overall record, which he said has been consistently conservative.

“He’s a person who understands not only how to govern, but he knows that’s what he was sent there to do,” Huckabee said.

Alexander, too, argues that his long record of public service has made him a better senator and will continue to be an asset if he’s returned to office.

“It’s helpful to have a governor’s perspective in the United States Senate,” he said, “particularly if we have a Republican majority.”