“They’re coming to Tennessee to try to pick up a congressional seat.”
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden issued this warning to the party faithful at a Cumberland County Lincoln Day dinner in the small town of Crab Orchard last week.
Over a dinner of turkey, ham and mashed potatoes, and after a keynote speech by an actual Abraham Lincoln impersonator, Golden said the Dec. 2 special election to fill an open congressional seat has put his state at the center of the American political universe — increasing Democratic resources.
Earlier this month, the Democratic Party president had held a rally in the district. And last Tuesday, former Vice President Kamala Harris met with campaign workers at a campaign event.
“Why am I in Tennessee?” he asked the crowd. “Because I know the power is in the South.”
The issue district must be reliably conservative. In last year’s presidential election, Donald Trump had won there by 22%. But both Republicans and Democrats are behaving as if the race is very close — and political forecasters agree.
Matthew Klein of the Cook Political Report writes, “Sources agree that Nashville Democrats are anxious about the possibility of an upset, while many Republican voters are unaware that the election is even taking place.”
The election comes as cracks have begun to appear in Trump’s grip on his party on a number of issues — culminating in conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation from Congress on Friday night.
“No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing gets better for the common American man or woman,” he said in his resignation speech.
The Tennessee outcome alone will not flip control of the divided House of Representatives. But a Republican defeat could create panic within party ranks at a time when Trump is vulnerable and many conservatives are nervously eyeing next year’s midterm congressional elections.
The results could reveal the changing political landscape even in the heartland of Trump country — and indicate how the Republican Party is slowly coming to grips with a post-Trump world.
“Republicans need to start thinking about the future,” said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “It will be hard to do, but at a certain point they will see it in their electoral interest.”
Tennessee voters are voting less than a month after local elections earlier this month saw a trend toward Democratic candidates on the economy.
Since then, Republicans, including Trump, have struggled to reframe their message to focus on “affordability” — the label Democrats have applied to concerns about high consumer prices and the rising cost of living.
The President has cut tariffs on grocery items like coffee, bananas, beef and avocados. He has proposed 50-year mortgages and a $2,000 tariff rebate to low- and middle-income Americans. But it has not been a smooth process, and there are some signs that Trump’s Make America Great Again – MAGA – coalition is weakening.
During an interview on Fox News last week, Trump debated with presenter Laura Ingraham over the mortgage proposal, which some conservatives believe would only line the pockets of big banks.
He also echoed conservative concerns about his support of H1-B visas for foreign workers—which Trump defended as necessary because Americans sometimes lack “certain talents.”
At the grassroots level in Tennessee, as in recent elections in Virginia and Pennsylvania, bread-and-butter economic issues dominated the conversation.
However, even here there is evidence of conservative discontent.
A recent national poll conducted by Vanderbilt University found that more than 60% of Trump supporters “disagree” with the perception that the cost of living has decreased in the past year.
Professor Greer, co-director of the Vanderbilt poll, said the national mood is “very bad” when it comes to inflation, cost of living and the economy.
“There’s real unhappiness, partly because Trump has made prices an issue,” Geer said. “He said he would take them down, but he didn’t.”
Tennessee is still definitely Trump territory. He won the state last year with 64% of the vote and has topped the last two presidential elections with 60% of the vote. But here, too, Republicans are figuring out how to adjust to a changing political environment — one in which the economy is a political liability, as opposed to a means of attacking incumbent Democrats.
The Democratic candidate, state Assemblyman Aftin Behn, has focused almost exclusively on issues of affordability and local quality of life. Signs in his yard read: “Feed the kids, fix roads, fund hospitals.”
His television ad infuriated his Republican opponent Matt Van Epps for his ties to Washington Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
“This campaign is about building a coalition of frustrated people, a coalition of angry people,” he told the BBC during an event in Nashville last week. “If you’re fed up with the chaos in Washington, if you’re fed up with the cost of living, I’m your candidate.”
Van Eps is, in style and substance, a typical modern Republican candidate. As an Army pilot, he served nine tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their yard sign shows the outline of a Chinook helicopter, similar to the one they flew on special operations missions.
She ran in a crowded primary where loyalty to Trump was a litmus test — and a last-minute endorsement by the president sent her over the top.
But Van Epps’s general election campaign has been quite the opposite. While he held a 20-minute tele-rally with Trump two weeks ago, the candidate doesn’t talk much about the president during the campaign. Like Behn – and unlike recent Republicans – his advertising focuses not on cultural issues, but economic ones.
The Van Eps campaign did not respond to BBC requests for an interview, but his comments on local television struck a familiar theme.
“I think we’re moving in a great direction, but we still have work to do,” he said. “The cost of living is very high; inflation is still very high.”
This campaign outlines a new reality. While Trump’s power at the ballot box is unquestionable, his ability to help his fellow Republicans prevail when his name is not on the ballot with them is questionable.
Republicans lost in the 2018 midterms. He did not perform as per expectations in 2022. He was defeated badly earlier this month. And barring a difficult constitutional change to remove presidential term limits, Trump’s name will never again be at the top of a Republican ticket.
For Republicans, the post-Trump future begins now.
A Democratic victory in Tennessee next month would be seismic. This could force Republicans to fully grapple with the costs of sticking with Trump when he is not on the ballot. And this may further aggravate the mistakes already visible within the party.
However, even without such trouble, those fault lines are becoming apparent in Washington, D.C., where Republicans like Greene have become increasingly critical of some of the president’s policies — health care, the economy and foreign affairs.
He helped push for a vote on releasing the Epstein files despite strong opposition from Trump’s White House.
At the Republican dinner at Crab Orchard, the Epstein vote taking place the same day was absent from the evening’s public remarks.
However, when asked, many attendees acknowledged that the Epstein issue was important to their constituents – and expressed hope that the vote would allow the party to focus on other issues.
“The Epstein files should be in the rear view mirror,” said Chelsea Rose, who stood in for her husband, Congressman John Rose, who stayed in Washington for the Epstein vote. “Frankly, this has been a distraction for a long time, and I’m glad it’s behind us.
As far as the party divide in Washington was concerned, some were more cautious.
“We support Donald Trump here, and we appreciate what he’s doing,” said Van Hillary, who represented Tennessee in the House from 1995 to 2003 and is now running for his old seat.
He further said, the challenge for Trump is that the steps he has taken may cause some short-term disruption and inconvenience.
“We’ve let this thing go on for so long that beautiful improvements are in the rear view mirror,” he said. “I’m afraid that what we have in front of us is not a very pretty, not a very pretty reform, but they have to do.”
However, the reality is that Trump’s declining popularity, the result of some of his more disruptive policies — his “not very good reforms” and his focus on foreign policy — has put pressure on the Republican coalition even in conservative Tennessee.
The state’s soybean farmers and cattlemen have felt the pinch from tariff and trade disputes. The end of health-insurance subsidies is expected to hit low-income Tennesseans hard. And the state has seen the same extremely high consumer prices that have plagued the rest of the country.
However, this does not necessarily mean a lack of support for Trump among his loyal voters in Tennessee.
“We’ve got this idea here that everyone who supports Trump is part of this cult,” said Julia Timson, a schoolteacher present at the Crab Orchard dinner. “No. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong. But at the same time, I will say, I have the champion in your corner.”
Shane Wattenberger, a construction contractor and longtime friend of Timson’s, agreed.
He said of Trump, “I think he’s just an egomaniac.” “But this country needs it.”
Trump’s electoral magic is his ability to attract new, disaffected voters while retaining longtime Republicans — even those who think he is sometimes arrogant, rude or wrong-headed.
In Tennessee, that magic may still be enough to drag the Republican candidate across the finish line. Democrats have had high hopes for special-election surprises on the conservative sector in the past, but without success. But here too the political ground may shift.
“One of the things that has been common in elections over the last decade is that people want change every time,” Geer said. “And so if you want change now, you will vote for someone like Aftin Behan.”
Follow the highs and lows of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. People outside the UK can sign up here.
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