Both parties found reasons to celebrate Republican Matt Van Epps’ victory in Tuesday’s special election for Tennessee’s 7th District, with the GOP publicly hailing the win itself and Democrats cheering that the race for the deep-red seat was close at all.
Van Epps, an Army veteran and former state commissioner, defeated Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn by 9 points to succeed Republican Mark E. Green, who resigned over the summer to take a private sector job. He’s set to be sworn in to the House on Thursday, bringing the GOP conference back up to full strength at 220 members – at least for a few weeks.
But Van Epps’ win came with a narrower margin compared with what Republicans posted a little over a year ago, when Donald Trump carried the 7th District by 22 points and Green won a fourth term by a similar margin.
The outcome has encouraged Democrats, who argue it’s a sign that the 2026 battleground is expanding.
“Democrats are on offense and Republicans are on the ropes,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement Tuesday night. “Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in this Trump +22 district is historic and a flashing warning sign for Republicans heading into the midterms.”
Republicans, though, contend that special elections don’t necessarily preview what will happen in a midterm election some 11 months away.
“Republicans do have historical headwinds,” GOP strategist Scott Jennings acknowledged on CNN, referring to the tendency of a president’s party to lose seats during midterm elections. “I still think they are in position to make an argument that their economic theories are better than the Democrats’ theories.”
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday also pointed to a 2017 special election in a deep-red Kansas district, which Republican Ron Estes won by 6 points before winning reelection the following year by a more comfortable 19 points, Fox News reported.
Both parties invested heavily in the Tennessee election, with outside groups spending millions on the race and top surrogates, including Trump, Johnson and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigning, either virtually or in person, alongside their party’s nominees.
Following the election, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pointed to several Republican-held seats they had dubbed “in play” earlier this year and declared these were now “undoubtedly in play.”
Those include districts represented by Republicans such as Tennessee’s Andy Ogles; Texas’ Monica De La Cruz; Florida’s Maria Elvira Salazar, Cory Mills and Anna Paulina Luna; Arizona’s Eli Crane; and Pennsylvania’s Rob Bresnahan Jr., as well as open seats in Kentucky and Iowa.
“Democrats are on offense not just in the standard swing districts but in red terrain across the country,” DCCC spokeswoman Madison Andrus said in a statement. “Our expansive battlefield shows that Democrats are ready to fight in rural districts, in Latino communities, in Trump country, and everywhere in between.”
Trump carried the nine seats on the DCCC’s list last year by margins ranging from 8 points to 18 points. In the latter category is Tennessee’s 5th District, where Republican incumbent Andy Ogles is facing a well-funded challenge from Democrat Chaz Molder, the mayor of Columbia in the Nashville exurbs.
Molder said Behn’s overperformance in the neighboring 7th District proved that “Tennesseans know how to fight back.”
“In just 10 months, we can send Andy Ogles packing and bring the 5th Congressional District leadership we can be proud of,” he said on social media.
Molder has so far outraised Ogles, bringing in $798,000 through the end of September to Ogles’ $172,000, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Still, Ogles won the 5th District, which also includes parts of Nashville, by 17 points last year, and a Democratic overperformance similar to Tuesday’s outcome in the 7th District would not result in a flip.
Progressive vs. moderate
Some centrist Democrats pointed to Behn’s progressive background as something that dragged her campaign down and warned their party against nominating progressives outside of deep-blue areas.
“Each time we nominate a far-left candidate in a swing district who declares themselves to be radical and alienates the voters in the middle who deliver majorities, we set back that cause,” Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at the center-left think tank Third Way, said in a statement.
But progressive groups praised Behn’s focus throughout the campaign on working people and affordability, an issue that helped Democrats win big in the off-year elections last month.
“In a race that MAGA put its full weight behind, Behn engaged voters of every background and political persuasion around the idea of making life affordable for working families,” Britney Whaley, the southeast regional director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement.
Behn, 36, a former organizer with the Tennessee chapter of the progressive group Indivisible, didn’t back away from her activist background while campaigning. She previously described herself as a “very radical person” and signaled support on social media for defunding the police, which Republicans attacked her for. But she acknowledged in a CNN interview that she had since “matured” and wouldn’t make the same social media posts as a state legislator. Still, she didn’t shy away from notable progressive figures, campaigning with Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett and joining Ocasio-Cortez and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal for an election eve tele-rally.
Tuesday’s election did seem to affirm that the rising cost of living remains a top issue for voters, which Democrats have homed in on in the weeks since last month’s elections. Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett told CNN on Wednesday he was concerned about Van Epps’ relatively modest victory margin and that his party needed to do a better job connecting with voters dealing with higher prices.
“The best friend the Democrats have right now is the Republicans’ messaging because we do a terrible job of messaging,” he said.
Van Epps himself pointed to those concerns in his victory remarks Tuesday night.
“We’re on the side of hard-working Americans. I’ll fight to bring down prices, deliver bigger paychecks, and make life more affordable for Tennessee families,” he said.
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