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Posted on 12/03/2025 6:46:45 AM PST by MtnClimber
As a resident of Nashville, I have been hearing nothing but the suddenly close race in the Tennessee 7th Congressional District election for the last couple of weeks.
It was all over the national news as well, even though the competitors, Matt Van Epps (R) and Aftyn Behn (D) were hardly household names. (The man they were replacing, the suddenly resigned Rep. Mark Green, was better known, though not always for the best reasons.)
The possibility that Behn would win in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points in 2024 had Democrats and all the ships in their legacy media sea salivating. Would they be going for a third pickup after New Jersey and Virginia, but this time in a certifiably red state?
Better yet, Ms. Behn was a progressive’s progressive, already dubbed “Tennessee’s AOC.” This could be a national trend.
In fact, she made the Congresswoman from the Bronx and Queens seem almost conventional. Behn had been recorded making the craziest statements for a Nashvillian, such as that she hated Nashville, bachelorette parties and even country music. She should have been a sitting duck. Yes, the days of Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynne are behind us, but the music business and the attendant hospitality industry are still mainstays of this city’s economy. Why was Behn polling so well?
This was making a lot of people I know very nervous. At the end of my tennis game this evening, one of the other players—thinking I knew more than I do—asked me anxiously who would win, was his beloved state turning blue? Where would he move? He sounded like some New Yorkers I knew on the eve of the Mamdani victory.
(NOTE: I live in Davidson County, which is contiguous with Nashville, but did not vote in the election because my neighborhood is not in the district.}
Well, as it happens, Armageddon did not occur, and my tennis partner does not have to call his real estate broker. After all the sturm and drang, Van Epps won by a relatively comfortable nine percent. Behn won in Davidson by 51 points but lost in all five of the other counties that make up the 7th.
What does this mean? Not a lot. I would define it as “Much Ado About Nothing… Much.”
That, of course, will not stop the thumb suckers who already have their thumbs out and are ready to point blame. I predict two explanations:
One, typical Republican voter passivity, especially without Trump running.
Two, changed demographics. All those domestic p/p[ gtvyf migrants who have been moving from blue states to red states to escape state income tax have brought their blue state values with them.
While there might be some elements of truth here, I reject both of these overall.’
Regarding the passivity, it’s not the voters who are passive so much as the Republican leadership, starting at the top. This is true of several red states, but definitely of Tennessee. (Neighboring Georgia is worse.) The local GOP, with a few exceptions, never got in gear to seriously win this election against the target-rich Behn until the last couple of weeks. The Democrats had been going full tilt for a long while. Don’t blame the GOP voters.
Regarding demographics, I addressed this in my 2023 book American Refugees, which gives this Substack its title. In researching that book—and yes, it was largely anecdotal—I determined that most people who made the effort to cross the country with their families from blue states to live in red states were conservative. They had left their original states first and foremost because they couldn’t stand their progressive governments and the people who supported them. No state taxes were an added benefit, welcome certainly, but not the primary motivation.
If I am right, and I still think I am, although it may have tempered somewhat, those people are among the least likely to vote for an Aftyn Behn.
Beyond all this, however, the Democrats will find a way to declare victory in the Seventh. You can see that in the way Nate Cohn, The New York Times’ chief political analyst, summed it up: “Republican Matt Van Epps is the projected winner in Tennessee’s Seventh District. He’s on track to win by a modest margin, but one still well behind the usual Republican benchmarks in the district.”
GOP leadership in Tennessee and elsewhere better not be complacent.
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We’d better start realizing that these days, all politics is national. People aren’t as emotionally tied to where they live as they used to be.
Liberals want a strong centralized Federal government, and will vote for the D, no matter who they are.
I plan to contact my county Republican Party office to volunteer for the 2026 election.
It seems that the polarization is going to intensify to an extreme degree in the next year or two. Red states will retain their “R” numbers while blue states will gobble up red districts through unfettered election fraud.
We all know the game.
Good job TN!!!
And the author is damn right about GA- we have two bright blue rinos running things down here. Kemp and RaffsenJackass won’t do a damn thing about Fulton County, the dominion machines and Stacy Abrams, all three make this poor state stink to NY.
If the Rats take the House next year DJT will be impeached at least three more times.
The win is good but the trend is not.
“With 99% of votes counted, Van Epps’ lead was around 9 percentage points. The previous Republican who held the seat won by 21 points last year.”
For the record:
TN CD7 is R+10 ....not R+22...
...that was Trump and can’t easily be compared to anything. One of a kind.
People are wising up to the fact that the good ol’ Republicans are opposed to Trump and his populist agenda, and saying “screw it, I’m just gonna get on with life”.
Greene was a known incumbent, running with Trump at the top of the ballot. Van Epps had neither benefit.
Too early to panic...let's talk in 6 months
We just need to keep “losing” every race with “narrow” victories “below expectations”—all through 2026 and 2028.
Lol.
Special elections tend to be tests first of the candidates and campaign organizations involved. Assuming that nether side drops the ball, the demographics of the district and larger political environment are then usually determinative.
For the Democrats, the lesson of the Tennessee 5th election will be that they are gaining on the GOP and that it is hard to win by running candidates with flawed backgrounds. For the GOP in Congress, I hope that they realize that they are not doing a good enough job to inspire their base.
and...Turnout was double in ‘24 322K w/Trump vs about 160-70K yesterday.
The media were all over this claiming the election was “very close” and a “loss” for Trump.
Typical headline:
“GOP and Trump cling to victory in ‘too close’ Tennessee special election after Democrats fightback”
With 99% of the vote counted, Van Epps won 54 percent of the vote and Behn received 45 percent.
That is not “close” or “very close” - not the 22 point victory Trump achieved there, but this is an off-year.
Still, Republicans should never let their guard down.
>> That, of course, will not stop the thumb suckers who already have their thumbs out and are ready to point blame.
Plenty of those thumbsuckers in view on FR last night... in fact, there’s a few right here on this thread!
Interesting. And all you hear is he won by 9 in a /state/ that Trump won by 22. More accurately, he won by 9 in a district that Trump won by 10.
The 21% win last year was "Trump Effect" since Trump won by 22%. I did not expect that this year. I thought Van Epps could win by 10% if he did not pull in any swing voters and maybe 15% if he did pull in swing voters. But it seems the swing voters did not show up or were evenly split.
I am hoping the GOP has learned to reduce voter fraud like 2024 and will apply it to 2026. We lost four tight senate seats in 2022 we should have won.
Anywhere an R runs for any office they are not only running against an opponent they are running against the Liberal media and the Liberal media has license to distort, omit and even to lie. The Conservatives and Republicans are far behind the message curve, they have been for some time and still are.
That is an amazing stat that seems to shed a totally new light on this win.
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