Aftin Behn, the Democratic candidate for next week’s special election in a heavily Republican Tennessee congressional district, has made affordability concerns a centerpiece of his campaign message — mirroring the strategy of the party’s victorious candidates for governor in Virginia and New Jersey earlier this month.
Tuesday’s contest is set to test how far Democrats can take that argument in a district that President Donald Trump carried by 22 points last November.
Republicans are hoping that the partisan tilt of the district, combined with Behn’s progressive profile and recently resurfaced comments on policing and other issues, will tilt the race in their favor. Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping that voters’ disappointment over the GOP agenda in Washington can help them do better in a race that otherwise would not be competitive.
“I’ve always said, I don’t care who you voted for,” Behn told CNN in an interview. “I don’t care what political party you belong to, but if you’re fed up with the cost of living and the chaos of Washington, I’m your candidate, and I welcome you with open arms.”
The 7th Congressional District, vacated by the resignation of former GOP Rep. Mark Green earlier this year, includes parts of Nashville but is largely rural, stretching from the state border with Kentucky in the north to Alabama in the south. As part of the 2022 redistricting process, Tennessee GOP lawmakers flipped Nashville from a solidly Democratic district — long held by liberal Rep. Jim Cooper — into three seats that favored Republicans.
Despite Republicans’ advantage in the district, Democrats got an opportunity to go on the offensive after their party’s total vote count in the October primary fell nearly 6,000 fewer than the number of ballots cast in the GOP primary. Behn, a state representative and progressive organizer, won the four-way Democratic primary by a narrow margin. Matt Van Epps, a combat veteran and Tennessee Army National Guard member running with Trump’s endorsement, defeated 10 other candidates to win the Republican nomination.
The special election has drawn millions of dollars from outside groups and visits from national figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris, with both parties seeing it as the last major gauge of the country’s political climate before the calendar turns to 2026.
On Monday, Trump will hold his second tele-rally for Van Epps, this time with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the candidate’s campaign confirmed. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will also hold a tele-rally for Behn on the same day, a source familiar told CNN.
According to AdImpact, of the more than $4 million spent on advertising in the race since the October primary, about $2.5 million has come from Republicans — much of it focused on portraying Behn as out of step with the district, highlighting her past comments on topics such as defunding the police. An ad from the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. includes a clip of Behn describing herself as “a very radical person.”
Opponents have also mined episodes of her podcast, including a 2020 episode where she talked about her dislike of country music and Nashville’s status as a popular tourist destination, as well as Behn recording a video in May while monitoring immigration operations in her district in which she said she was “threatening ICE vehicles and state troopers.” (Behn said his use of the word bullying was sarcastic.)
In her interview with CNN, Behn suggested that Republicans “have been caught flat-footed, and they have resorted to personal attacks and character assassination.” Addressing the flurry of reports about her past comments in the final weeks of the campaign, Behan claimed they were “taken out of context and/or misrepresented.”
Behn said she was not a legislator at the time she made many of the comments, and that she has now “matured” and changed the way she approaches politics, now that she is a state representative and not just an activist.
“I’ve learned a lot, and I hope the voters of the 7th District will give me the benefit of the doubt, that despite everything … that’s unfolding again right now, I’m someone who has a track record of trying to unify the system in favor of working people,” she told CNN.
Tennessee Democrats told CNN they believe voters in the district will also consider other concerns when deciding on their vote in the election.
“This is really about the upset in Washington,” Cooper said, referring to the deciding factor in the race. “This is a very important opportunity for the voters of Tennessee, one of the most beautiful parts of Tennessee, to really speak out loud and clear and say, ‘Hey, we’re hurting, we need some help, and we’re looking for someone who will help us.'”
Behn’s campaign sees millions of people joining the Republican race as a sign of growing GOP concern. A campaign consultant pointed to a recent ad by Van Epps in which the Republican candidate does not mention the president, but delivers a message about reducing costs and making health care more affordable.
Ian Russell said, “The type of content you’re seeing from Matt Van Eps is what you’d expect to see from a Blue Dog Democrat from a district where Trump won by five points, not from a Republican from a district where Trump won by 22 points.”
Even though Democrats are outperforming their 2024 margin in special elections this year, both parties view Van Epps as the favorite on Tuesday. “With strong conservative turnout, we will win next Tuesday, and I will hit the ground running by working with President Trump to lower the cost of living for hard-working Tennessee families,” Van Eps said in a statement to CNN.
Still, Republicans are bracing for a result that will be closer than the 20-point margin Trump and Greene posted a year ago.
Chip Saltsman, a Nashville-based Republican strategist who is not working with the Van Epps campaign, said that unlike Greene, an incumbent and former state legislator who represented part of the district before the 2022 redistricting, Van Epps is a first-time candidate. He said that although he still expects Van Epps to win, Democrats have done a better job of moving quickly to the general election.
“We’re so focused on the Republican primary because that’s really the only game in play in most parts of the state,” Saltsman said. “Republicans were a little late in reminding (voters) that there is actually going to be a general election.”
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden said the party is working to get Van Epps’ message out there, but argued that it may have been lost in news reports about Behn’s past comments.
“We’re not worried that we’re going to lose, but we’ve got to make sure we play hard every single moment,” Golden said.
Behn has made health care and grocery affordability a central part of her message, which she argues has been a common theme of her activism and political work.
“I’m someone who doesn’t mince words when it comes to affordability,” she said. “Making things more affordable for Tennesseans has always been my ethos and my organizing agenda, legislative agenda.
Born and raised in Knoxville, Behn attended college in Austin and moved back to Tennessee during Trump’s first term in office. While the president and Republicans pursued their unsuccessful 2017 effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, she worked as a community health care organizer for the Tennessee Justice Center, a Nashville-based nonprofit law firm.
During her time as national organizer for Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group, Behn took a leave of absence to help organize a protest against the expulsion of two Black lawmakers who had protested on the state House floor in favor of gun control. He said the experience inspired him to run in a special election for a Nashville-area state legislature seat in September 2023.
He has highlighted his efforts to repeal the state’s four percent grocery tax, his work advocating against Medicaid cuts, and cost-of-living issues he says Republicans in Washington have failed to address.
“This race is competitive because the Washington Republican agenda is not complete,” Behn said. “Despite the Trump administration’s commitment to making groceries cheaper, making utilities cheaper, making rent cheaper, they have not looked at the costs… and I think people are looking for an opportunity to vote for someone who is going to usher in an era of change.”
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