{"id":324334,"date":"2025-12-01T16:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324334\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:15:07","slug":"democrats-hope-for-off-year-house-upset-in-tennessee-maga-stronghold-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324334\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats hope for off-year House upset in Tennessee Maga stronghold | Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh off a wave of successes<\/a> in November\u2019s off-year elections, Democrats are angling for an audacious victory in a Republican-heavy Tennessee congressional district where an upset win could amount to a major blow against Donald Trump\u2019s legislative agenda.<\/p>\n

Voters on Tuesday will cast ballots in a special election to replace Mark Green, a Republican representing a middle Tennessee<\/a> district who resigned from Congress in July. Drawn by the state\u2019s Republican leaders to ensure its voters favored their party, the district last year backed Trump and Green by 22-point margins.<\/p>\n

In normal times, the GOP nominee, Matt Van Epps, would be considered a shoo-in. But after Democrats stormed to victory in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere earlier this month \u2013 bringing with it evidence<\/a> that voters who had backed the president were changing their minds \u2013 the party and its allies have poured money into the campaign of state representative Aftyn Behn<\/a>, hoping to pull off what would amount to a coup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still expect that the Republican will prevail, but would not be surprised if it were a single-digit race,\u201d said Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, a survey from Emerson College Polling and the Hill found<\/a> Van Epps up by just two percentage points over Behn, leading with 48% support to her 46%.<\/p>\n

Stretching from Kentucky to Alabama and encompassing part of Nashville, the district is mostly made up of the sort of rural territory in which Democrats<\/a> have struggled to compete, but also includes part of blue-leaning Nashville, as well as the city of Clarksville, a swing area whose residents may well decide the race.<\/p>\n

Black voters, who make up about 15% of the district, would be key to a Behn victory, Wasserman said, but turnout among the group can be unpredictable. Though Democrats have recently made up deficits similar to the 22-point gap that they would need to overcome, there\u2019s no telling if such enthusiasm will exist among the electorate this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty solid Republican district,\u201d said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University and former chief of staff to Democratic congressman Bart Gordon.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Republicans<\/a> \u201cdon\u2019t want to get caught sleeping\u201d, Syler said. \u201cThere\u2019s also no doubt that the Democrats are very energized and want to see how well they can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should Behn win, the GOP majority in the House of Representatives would become so small that Democrats may have a shot at taking back the chamber next year before the midterm elections \u2013 all it would take is for one or two Republican lawmakers to leave their seats. The party was rattled last week when formerly staunch Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned<\/a>, after falling out with the president.<\/p>\n

Among the Democratic-linked groups injecting money into the race is the House Majority Pac, which spent $1m on digital and television advertising. \u201cNo Republican-held seat is safe, and HMP will do whatever it takes to win the House in 2026,\u201d said communications director CJ Warnke. Another Pac, Your Community, is running ads accusing Van Epps of being a \u201chedge fund puppet\u201d and wanting to prevent release of files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

The Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, campaigned for Behn recently, and Kamala Harris made an appearance at one of her events, though the two reportedly<\/a> did not acknowledge each other.<\/p>\n

Trump has publicly encouraged<\/a> voters to come out for former state government official Van Epps, and his main Pac, Maga Inc, is airing ads in the race, along with Club for Growth, a billionaire-backed anti-tax group. The Republican has dismissed<\/a> Behn, a former organizer with the progressive group Indivisible, as a \u201ccrazy leftwing radical\u201d, and his supporters have seized on a podcast interview in which she said \u201cI hate this city\u201d when discussing Nashville.<\/p>\n

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Even if Behn loses, there may be advantages for Democrats in it being a tight race. If Van Epps wins narrowly in a district that went so decisively for Trump, it may help Democrats recruit quality candidates and raise money for challenges in similarly red areas, forcing the GOP to spending scarce campaign dollars in areas it believed to be safe, said Syler.<\/p>\n

A national Democratic strategist who works on House races told the Guardian that is indeed among the party\u2019s aims, saying that Republicans are spending an unusually large amount of money in the district \u201cin a desperate last-minute attempt to avoid a Democratic overperformance\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans are going to lose the House majority next year not just because of traditional \u2018swing\u2019 districts, [but also] because their agenda is historically unpopular even in deep Trump country,\u201d the strategist said.<\/p>\n

But a Republican strategist disagreed, saying that voters that turn out for special elections are different than those that vote in midterms, and good candidates can appear less popular than they actually are.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like comparing apples and oranges, right? It\u2019s really hard to make some real takeaways of what it means for a general election,\u201d the strategist said.<\/p>\n

The district could also deliver for Republicans a dose of much needed good news. If Van Epps wins by a healthy margin, Syler said it \u201ccertainly helps the Republicans and the president to, in essence, stop the bleeding that started earlier this month\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off a wave of successes in November\u2019s off-year elections, Democrats are angling for an audacious victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-324334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}