In the hours after Tennessee’s Republican supermajority redrew the state’s nine congressional districts — eliminating Memphis’ safe Democratic seat, previously protected by the Voting Rights Act — one spreadsheet laid out the likely path to complete GOP dominance.
“They really didn’t leave us anything,” state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) said at the time, poring over the district-specific voter data freshly emailed from national Democratic analysts.
This year’s special session of the Tennessee General Assembly split pieces of the state’s 9th Congressional District off into the 5th and 8th Congressional Districts. The 8th absorbed some of the old 7th Congressional District, now redrawn into the old 6th Congressional District, which then sent lots of voters to the new 4th. Besides three East Tennessee seats belonging to three Republicans — U.S. Reps. Tim Burchett, Diane Harshbarger and Chuck Fleischmann — Tennessee’s map has become a planning nightmare for candidates and voters, some of whom have changed districts twice in three cycles. Confusion itself, and its predicted depressing effect on voter turnout, was one argument Democrats used unsuccessfully in court to stop implementation of new maps that debuted just six months before Election Day.
Candidates scrambled to evaluate the new terrain. All nine seats now favor Republicans. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen — the state’s only Democrat serving in Congress — took the off-ramp to retirement after two decades working in D.C. Some, optimistic about the uphill gamble, set up campaigns. State Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) and longtime consultant Darden Copeland, both Democrats, revived shuttered campaigns. Others, like state Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) and Democratic Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder, bound over months of work and fundraising into a brand-new district.
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Today Scene news territory covers roughly five congressional seats. At least two will have new leadership. Republicans Van Hilleary and state Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) are vying for the 6th Congressional District, soon to be vacated by U.S. Rep. John Rose, who is instead running for governor. East Nashville, Belmont-Hillsboro, Vanderbilt, Hermitage and Donelson are its population centers, and boundaries extend east to Cookeville and Crossville. Hilleary is an old hand in Tennessee politics. A Gulf War veteran, he represented the 4th Congressional District from 1995 to 2003, coming into power as part of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” Republican surge during the Clinton presidency. He’s spent the past eight years as Rose’s chief of staff and has aligned his campaign with Trump, opting for traditional GOP doctrine praising law enforcement, criticizing federal overreach and praising big oil and coal, rather than dabbling in cultural ragebait. Hilleary enjoys name recognition, especially among the GOP’s aging base — a key slice of primary voters. His opponent Garrett was in grade school when Hilleary was flying military planes. Garrett represents a younger, more pugilistic party constituency fixated on antifa and trans people. Garrett’s immense personal wealth helped kick-start his campaign with a $900,000 personal loan, giving him a cash advantage in the primary — $1.7 million to Hilleary’s $1.2 million. Hilleary’s campaign experience and political network, however, are priceless in politics. Chaney Mosley, an agriculture professor at MTSU, leads a weak field for Democrats.
A crowded Democratic field for the new-look 9th Congressional District includes Pearson, a charismatic Memphis state representative who became a face of liberal resistance after being expelled from the Tennessee House in 2023, and state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis), a savvy lawmaker also from Memphis who has served eight years in the Tennessee legislature, first as a state representative. Pearson initially designed a changing-of-the-guard primary campaign against Cohen for the safe Democratic seat, previously a majority-Black district drawn around Memphis. With Cohen out, Pearson continued his upstart momentum and has raised over $1 million, outpacing Lamar and setting himself up for the nomination. In the Republican primary, state Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis), who represents the Shelby County suburbs, faces affable state Rep. Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill), who is running on his rural bona fides. The district now stretches from Taylor’s Germantown outside of Memphis to Brentwood, and includes the fast-growing Murfreesboro suburbs.
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Incumbent U.S. Reps. Matt Van Epps, Scott DesJarlais and Andy Ogles are favored in the other three districts that include or touch Davidson County. In the 5th Congressional District, Ogles has a credible primary challenge from Charlie Hatcher, who served as Gov. Bill Lee’s longtime commissioner of agriculture. Whoever secures the nomination likely faces Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder, a recruited candidate celebrated by the national Democratic apparatus, which sees his clean-cut local charm as a compelling antidote to Ogles’ many scandals. Political consultant Copeland and state Rep. Dixie both ran last fall in the 7th District’s surprise special election after Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Green announced he would leave Congress for the private sector. Copeland and Dixie both revived their campaigns, but recent financial disclosures show campaigns — briefly the center of attention last year — that have lost energy and fundraising momentum. Copeland won a lot of rural votes, but Dixie’s track record in Davidson County carries thousands of votes — possibly enough to carry him to the general election. Behn, who declined to repeat her 7th District special election campaign, lost the seat to Van Epps by less than 10 percentage points, widely considered an overperformance for a Democrat in the district.
Metro Councilmember Mike Cortese filed a longshot Democratic bid for the 4th District — held for eight straight terms by Tea Party Republican DesJarlais. Pro-life DesJarlais is possibly better known for pressuring his mistress and ex-wife to get abortions than anything he has done during his 16 years in Congress. Other DesJarlais scandals include serial sexual encounters with co-workers and multiple patients, divulged in his divorce proceedings.
