Posted on 11/12/2025 7:20:50 AM PST by Twotone
Last week’s wide-margin election wins in deep blue states bolstered the Democrat Party’s battered confidence heading into the 2026 midterms.
In fact, the Dems sound downright cocky. They believe that they “can compete everywhere,” as Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin put it.
“I said when I ran for this job that when you organize everywhere, you can win anywhere, and we just fundamentally believe that,” Martin told NBC News last week as he prepared to campaign for leftist Aftyn Behn in one of red Tennessee’s most conservative congressional districts.
Perhaps still drunk on the champagne bubbles of last Tuesday’s sweeping statewide victories in New Jersey and Virginia and the less-than-surprising triumph of communist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election, Martin told NBC News he believes Behn has “an excellent shot to win” Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District seat. That’s a bold prediction for a district that saw incumbent Republican Rep. Mark Green wallop his Democrat challenger by more than 21 percentage points and gave President Donald Trump a 20-point win — in a state Trump won by 30.
But Green, who ran in 2024 to help keep the House in Republican control, announced in June that he was leaving Congress for an opportunity in the private sector. Green’s departure set up a special election, scheduled for Dec. 2. Republican and veteran Matt Van Epps will face off against Behn, a Democrat state representative from Nashville who was elected to the Tennessee Assembly via special election in 2023.
A Behn victory would erode the GOP’s slim 219-213 majority in the House of Representatives. More so, it would make Democrats even more insufferable than they were after last week’s elections and back Martin’s argument that his party can win everywhere.
Republicans have represented Tennessee’s 7th for more than 40 years, but redistricting earlier this decade shifted the map a bit to include northern Nashville and many more Democrats. Four independents will join Behn and Van Epps on the December ballot.
Early voting begins Wednesday.
‘The AOC of Tennessee’
Van Epps is endorsed by Trump, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Green and Congressman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio and chairman of the House’s powerful Judiciary Committee, among a long list of state and local officials. Behn, who has been described as “the AOC of Tennessee,” not surprisingly has been endorsed by radical leftist politicians and organizations such as big labor’s AFL-CIO, the Equity Alliance Fund, and the political arm of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Behn has surrounded herself with the more left of the political leftwing in her young political career. Over the weekend, “rising star within the Democratic Party” and racist Rep. Jasmine Crockett virtually headlined a campaign rally for Behn. In the glitchy feed, The Texas Democrat, who called wheelchair-bound Republican Gov. Greg Abbott “Hot Wheels,” told Tennessee Democrats that if “Nov 4 [election day] was a preview of what’s to come, I cannot wait to see what’s going to happen less than 30 days right here in Tennessee.”
While Behn may stick out like a sore thumb in much of the conservative 7th Congressional District, she’s right at home with the Marxists that have commandeered her party. ‘I am a Social Worker’
The Democrat cut her political teeth as a statewide organizer for Indivisible, the far-left nonprofit created to “resist” Trump and his policies following his first presidential election win in 2016. The anti-law enforcement organization has pushed to end cash bail, defund the police, and abolish the Electoral College, among a litany of radical priorities. As part of the Trump Derangement Syndrome fueled “resistance,” Indivisible has led the idiotic and hypocritical “No Kings” protests against Trump and Republicans.
“Indivisible was founded in response to Trump’s election — but we know that Trump is a symptom of a sick democracy, not its cause,” the group declares on its website. Its leaders believe there are two fundamental problems with the constitutional republic: that it was “rigged from the start in favor of the white and wealthy” and that “an alliance of white nationalists and the ultra-rich” have partnered to lock their hold on power.
Indivisible runs with like-minded leftists, such as “the Democratic Socialists of America, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, and the Tides Foundation,” according to nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch.
Behn appears to have served in Indivisible leadership as recently as July 2020. “Last week, we kicked off our weekly webisode series with an overview of government,” Nashville Musicians for Change announced on its Instagram page. “Join us this week for Webisode 2 as we interview local community organizer, Aftyn Behn. We’ll get to know what it’s like to become a community organizer, why grassroots organizations like Indivisible are just 4 years old, and how we can get involved with campaign season. Bring questions!”
Behn received her degree in social work from the University of Texas at Austin. She came back to eastern Tennessee to put her schooling to work as a community organizer for the leftist Tennessee Justice Center and Enough is Enough TN, tied to a prominent leader in the sexual witch hunt #MeToo movement. In a 2024 University of Texas profile feature, the state representative proclaimed, “I am a social worker.”
“The best and highest use of my time,” she said.
In running for Tennessee’s House District 51 seat in 2023, Behn said her top priorities were to “roll back restrictions and bans” on so-called “gender-affirming care,” more accurately described as child genital mutilation procedures. She hoped to push bills that “uplift reproductive freedom” to expand abortions, and give leftist local governments the power to all of the above and more.
Not surprisingly, Behn sounded bullish on Mamdani’s socialist vision for New York City. In July, the congressional candidate told CNN Mamdani’s message helps the Democratic Party.
“I think it’s a moment of reckoning for the Democratic Party, and I think they need to look at where young voters’ appetites are, where their policy and their hunger is towards the political processes,” the 35-year-old said. “And I think that they, you know, really need to lean into it. Young voters are the future.” The Mamdani of Music City
Van Epps is ahead in the polls, according to Newsweek. The Cook Political Report has said the Republican should be the heavy favorite, but Democrats’ “record of overperformance in special elections so far this cycle means that Republicans can’t take the race for granted.”
As the left-leaning Tennessee Lookout likes to point out, just 36,000 Republicans turned out for last month’s primary. Democrats managed to bring a meager 31,000 of their voters to the polls.
Martin told NBC News that special elections are more about voter turnout than partisan makeup of a district.
“It’s about whose supporters are more enthusiastic,” the DNC chief told the news outlet. “…[W]hat we’ve seen across the country is that Democrats are very enthusiastic right now to show up and vote, and Republicans aren’t.”
At least they are in very blue states and cities.
Republicans have the upper hand in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. That advantage disappears if conservatives sit out the holiday season special election. If they do, this stretch of red Tennessee will be represented by “the AOC of Tennessee,” the Mamdani of Music City.
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While MAGA voters stay asleep.
And that's all you need to know how this race will go
Many are waiting on Trump to do everything.
"AOC"? That's a stretch.
These commie RAT “mini-elections” is how the tyrannical fascist DemonRATS are going to steal America. One election at a time when nobody is looking and paying attention. They then pay their RATS drug money to go vote.
Many are waiting on Trump to do everything.
^^^^^^^^^
This!
I’m waiting to hear her speak. ;-)
She looks a lot older than 35. Probably been rode hard and put away wet too often.
This will come down to turnout.
Our side is asleep. Apathy is the biggest enemy of this country.
The President needs to visit Tennessee.
Demographics and election results for Tennessee Congressional District 7
R+8 is NOT super-safe, like this district used to be when Blackburn & Sundquist were running there. It was moved well to the left in the most recent redistricting because the Democrats from the old CD-5 had to go *somewhere*. They went here, and to CD-6.
Trump won CD-7 in 2024 by 22 points. This election shouldn't even be close, but it almost certainly will be. Far, far closer than 22 points.
Given the momentum from the overall results of last week which, despite some idiotic proclamations, were NOT totally "confined to blue states and therefore meaningless", this is an upset waiting to happen. It shouldn't happen, but it damn well could.
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