Tennessee 7th Race 'Much Ado About Nothing'

Or maybe 'Much Ado About Nothing... Much'

As a resident of Nashville, I have been hearing nothing but the suddenly close race in the Tennessee 7th Congressional District election for the last couple of weeks.

It was all over the national news as well, even though the competitors, Matt Van Epps (R) and Aftyn Behn (D) were hardly household names. (The man they were replacing, the suddenly resigned Rep. Mark Green, was better known, though not always for the best reasons.)

The possibility that Behn would win in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points in 2024 had Democrats and all the ships in their legacy media sea salivating. Would they be going for a third pickup after New Jersey and Virginia, but this time in a certifiably red state?

Better yet, Ms. Behn was a progressive’s progressive, already dubbed “Tennessee’s AOC.” This could be a national trend.

In fact, she made the Congresswoman from the Bronx and Queens seem almost conventional. Behn had been recorded making the craziest statements for a Nashvillian, such as that she hated Nashville, bachelorette parties and even country music. She should have been a sitting duck. Yes, the days of Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynne are behind us, but the music business and the attendant hospitality industry are still mainstays of this city’s economy. Why was Behn polling so well?

This was making a lot of people I know very nervous. At the end of my tennis game this evening, one of the other players—thinking I knew more than I do—asked me anxiously who would win, was his beloved state turning blue? Where would he move? He sounded like some New Yorkers I knew on the eve of the Mamdani victory.

(NOTE: I live in Davidson County, which is contiguous with Nashville, but did not vote in the election because my neighborhood is not in the district.}

Well, as it happens, Armageddon did not occur, and my tennis partner does not have to call his real estate broker. After all the sturm and drang, Van Epps won by a relatively comfortable nine percent. Behn won in Davidson by 51 points but lost in all five of the other counties that make up the 7th.

What does this mean? Not a lot. I would define it as “Much Ado About Nothing… Much.”

That, of course, will not stop the thumb suckers who already have their thumbs out and are ready to point blame. I predict two explanations:

One, typical Republican voter passivity, especially without Trump running.

Two, changed demographics. All those domestic p/p[ gtvyf migrants who have been moving from blue states to red states to escape state income tax have brought their blue state values with them.

While there might be some elements of truth here, I reject both of these overall.’

Regarding the passivity, it’s not the voters who are passive so much as the Republican leadership, starting at the top. This is true of several red states, but definitely of Tennessee. (Neighboring Georgia is worse.) The local GOP, with a few exceptions, never got in gear to seriously win this election against the target-rich Behn until the last couple of weeks. The Democrats had been going full tilt for a long while. Don’t blame the GOP voters.

Regarding demographics, I addressed this in my 2023 book American Refugees, which gives this Substack its title. In researching that book—and yes, it was largely anecdotal—I determined that most people who made the effort to cross the country with their families from blue states to live in red states were conservative. They had left their original states first and foremost because they couldn’t stand their progressive governments and the people who supported them. No state taxes were an added benefit, welcome certainly, but not the primary motivation.

If I am right, and I still think I am, although it may have tempered somewhat, those people are among the least likely to vote for an Aftyn Behn.

Beyond all this, however, the Democrats will find a way to declare victory in the Seventh. You can see that in the way Nate Cohn, The New York Times’ chief political analyst, summed it up: “Republican Matt Van Epps is the projected winner in Tennessee’s Seventh District. He’s on track to win by a modest margin, but one still well behind the usual Republican benchmarks in the district.”

GOP leadership in Tennessee and elsewhere better not be complacent.