Can Democrats’ off-year winning streak extend to Tennessee?

Democrats’ off-year blue wave, having crested in New Jersey and Virginia on November 4th, is now breaking over the hills of Middle Tennessee, as Democrats hunt for an improbable win in the state’s sprawling, reliably Republican 7th Congressional District. The stakes are high, as a December 2nd special election to replace Republican Rep. Mark Green brings in national attention and swamps voters with messaging about everything from the Epstein Files to Trump’s chaotic trade war. 

The Nashville area showdown is between Democrat Aftyn Behn, a progressive organizer and State Representative, and Republican Matt Van Epps, a Nashville business executive with the full support of Trump-world. For Democrats, TN-7 looks like a chance, however slim, to extend a string of recent special election upsets and demonstrate another show of force against the Trump administration ahead of the midterms. 

Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District is not your typical swing seat: the Cook Political Report rates it R+8, putting it squarely in the GOP column in a typical election year, and recent statewide results have favored Republicans by double digits. But the district’s mix—suburban sprawl west and south of Nashville, fast-growing, diverse neighborhoods in the city, very red rural areas, and the Dem-leaning military town of Clarksville—gives Democrats just enough hope for an upset, especially in a low-turnout, off-year special election. 

More than anywhere else in the country, the Nashville area has become something of a MAGA media mothership. Right-wing YouTuber Brett Cooper lives on a farm in Franklin, while Candace Owens resides on the edge of the 7th District in Green Hills. FOX host Tomi Lahren also owns a home in Nashville’s 12 South neighborhood, within the district’s boundaries. Other prominent conservative figures, including Daily Wire personalities Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and Jeremy Boreing (no longer with the company), anti-gay activist Robby Starbuck, Outkick founder Clay Travis, and Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey, have all based their operations in or near the 7th District. 

Conventional political wisdom suggests that as urban areas in conservative states grow and suburbanize due to an influx of new residents from other states, Democrats tend to gain politically. In Tennessee, however, this has not exactly been the case, as many newcomers to the state’s suburbs are right-wing refugees from blue states like California. For example, Williamson County is the state’s wealthiest, filled with McMansions and a healthy dose of college-educated suburbanites. Despite an influx of new residents, it has remained a right-wing stronghold, and is home to the state’s GOP governor, Bill Lee, and Senator Marsha Blackburn.

All these conservative political figures won’t give up the 7th District to a very progressive candidate like Behn without a fight. 

As such, Republicans are taking the race seriously. Blackburn won’t stop posting about how Behn is “cut from the same cloth” as New York socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, and Trump hosted a “tele-rally” for Van Epps just last week. The President’s Super PAC, MAGA Inc., is getting involved in the race, making it the first race this year in which it has made independent expenditures, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, national Democrats have been a little M.I.A., underscoring the challenge their local parties face in Ruby Red states. To his credit, however, DNC Chair Ken Martin did go down to Nashville to campaign for Behn last week—it was more of a ceremonial show of support rather than real impactful stuff though. 

The race has centered on a handful of issues, but none has dominated the conversation—online and off—more than The Epstein Files. As Democrats in Congress push for a vote to release the documents this week, Behn and local media have sought to drive a wedge between Van Epps and Trump on the matter. In a viral clip captured by the Tennessee Holler, Van Epps awkwardly sidesteps a reporter’s repeated questions about how he would vote on the files.

Other topics, such as healthcare and Trump’s tariffs, have also surfaced on the campaign trail.

“Van Epps is running as just another rubber stamp for Trump,” says Justin Kanew, founder of progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler. “One of the things Aftyn is focusing on is how badly farmers are getting screwed by Trump's trade war. Van Epps has come out in favor of the tariffs, and meanwhile, Tennessee farmers are using the term “Farmageddon” here, because they’ve seen $430 million in losses from their four biggest crops in 2025 alone. Aftyn speaks well to rural issues and has centered that in her campaign.”

So, will this election turn into the latest off-year shocker, or will Trump’s intervention and the district’s deep-red lean prove too great a hurdle for Democrats? If Behn were to win, the result would resonate far beyond Nashville, energizing her party’s grassroots heading into 2026.

“If this were to flip, that would say more about the state of the country than any other race possibly could,” says Kanew. “People have a real chance to do something special here.”

One final note: whoever wins in two weeks will not be able to enjoy the victory for long. They’ll face re-election next year in a midterm environment expected to draw much higher turnout than next month’s contest.

Sort of. 

White supremacist Nick Fuentes has made headlines recently in both the press and MAGA media, sparking an all-out civil war within the conservative movement. However, Fuentes’ notoriety in the media far exceeds the actual size of his online audience. Across platforms, Fuentes has fewer than 1.8 million followers and subscribers, with the vast majority on X. On Rumble, his main platform for sharing video content, he only has about 500,000 subscribers, but his videos do average around 400,000 views.

Over the weekend, content about Donald Trump went viral online (in a bad way) in response to a few words found in one of the Epstein documents released last week. In an email released last Wednesday, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark, appeared to joke about Donald Trump performing fellatio on former President Bill Clinton. The internet quickly seized on that detail and ran with it, with thousands of posts about the joke receiving tens of millions of views.