Democrats Have a Chance to Flip Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s Old District

On Tuesday, December 2, voters in Tennessee’s 7th district will go to the polls to fill one of the U.S. Congress’s four vacant seats, choosing either current Democratic state representative Aftyn Behn or the Republican nominee, combat veteran Matt Van Epps. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t even be a contest. The 7th is Senator Marsha Blackburn’s old district, where Trump won by 22 points in 2024. (Blackburn is currently vying for the Republican nomination for Tennessee governor.) Until recently, it was held by Mark Green, who won by a similar margin in the last two elections, despite rejecting the idea of evolution and claiming that psychiatrists will “tell you that transgender is a disease.”

But these are not normal times. With President Trump’s popularity tanking and Democrats proving they can win just about anywhere in special elections, the race has grown surprisingly tight. A new poll by Emerson/The Hill sees Behn up by just two points, 48 to 46 among likely voters, within the margin of error. Among those who report having already voted, Behn is up 14 points.

Due to gerrymandering, only one of Tennessee’s nine congressional seats is held by a Democrat, in the southwestern corner around Memphis. Despite an influx of hipsters from Brooklyn and Atlanta over the last 10 years, the map of the Nashville metro area has been divided up into five reliably Republican jigsaw puzzle pieces. The 7th District covers most parts of the city itself—everything except East Nashville, where your favorite band just moved—but also stretches to the Kentucky and Alabama borders. It does include Taylor Swift’s neighborhood of Forest Hills.

The question now is one of turnout. Today is the last day for early voting, and over 50,000 people have already cast a ballot. Behn has served as a community organizer for both the Tennessee Justice Center and for a campaign organizing for the ouster of state representative David Byrne, who was accused of sexual assault by three female members of the high school basketball team he coached. She’s been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of Middle Tennessee, has filmed herself confronting ICE agents, and, most importantly, has complained about the bachelorette parties and pedal taverns that have taken over downtown Nashville. Her opponent’s campaign site declares that he’s “ready to support President Trump’s MAGA agenda in Washington” and to “fight back against the far left’s radical abortion agenda.”

If Behn can pull off the upset, the Republican lead in the House will shrink to 218-213 after Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation takes effect in January. Democrats are favored in both March’s special election in Texas and April’s in New Jersey, which would cut Speaker Johnson’s advantage to three. In an already fractured caucus, that’s a nightmare scenario for the speaker. C’mon, Nashville, that’d be music to our ears.

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