By all accounts, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson’s bid to succeed retiring Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) is a long shot.
Pearson, who first gained national attention for being expelled from the state House for a gun violence protest, is facing an entirely different political environment in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District than when he launched his campaign a year ago.
Pearson launched his campaign in October 2025 as a bid for generational change, seeking to unseat Cohen, who has represented the district since 2007. But Cohen moved to retire from the seat after the GOP-led legislature redistricted to make the seat a safe Republican stronghold, breaking up the once majority-black district that was considered a safe Democratic seat.
The new district, containing parts of Memphis, Williamson County, and Lewisburg, has a partisan voting index of R+15, and would have voted for Donald Trump by 21 points in 2024.
But with just one week until Election Day, Democrats are eyeing the seat as early voting in the gerrymandered district significantly outpaces 2022 levels and the race’s only campaign poll shows Pearson within striking distance.
In Shelby County, which contains the Memphis part of the district, there has been a 60% increase in ballots cast at this point in 2022, according to Tennessee’s secretary of state’s office. Early voting is lagging behind 2018 totals, however, by almost 8 points.
The turnout surge comes amid a broader nationwide battle over race and redistricting, following an April Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create a second majority-black district. In May, the Tennessee Republican legislature, led by Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), moved to pass a new congressional map of their own.
“We knew this was going to be a harder race after they rigged the maps,” Pearson told Time magazine in an interview this month. “It has not deterred us at all.”
While early voting is surging in the county, the figures do not show how many of those ballots were cast in Democrats’ favor. Still, Democrats are hoping that Republican efforts to redraw congressional boundaries could ultimately backfire by energizing black voters who believe their political influence is being diminished.
“Republicans massively underestimated the backlash their racist schemes and costly agenda would trigger from Black voters, who are now turning out in droves to hold Republicans accountable,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Faith Jalango said in a statement. “Rather than investing in Black communities, House Republicans wasted the cycle attempting to diminish their voting power, and it’s going to cost them the House majority.”
A polling memo released from Hart Research on Sept. 9 claimed the race between Pearson and his opponent, Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor, is “very close and highly competitive,” with only 4 points between the candidates. According to the research firm, Pearson held 44% of support, while Taylor held 48%. Public polling for the race has been scant, with the Hart memo being the only publicly available poll.
There has been a large amount of outside spending from Gov. JB Pritzker’s (D-IL) super PAC, Ready for the Fight, which has spent over $2 million and is the top spender in the race, according to AdImpact.
Pearson, meanwhile, has a significant fundraising advantage of his own as well, having raised over $3.6 million for his campaign, while Taylor has raised roughly $2.6 million.
Taylor has sought to brand Pearson as a socialist, and has accused him of “political theater.”
“This is the same pattern: when he can’t win on the merits, he reaches for the race card,” Taylor said in a post on X. “It’s not just political theater. It’s corrosive. It divides communities, poisons debate, and distracts from the real problems facing Tennessee families: crime, jobs, education, and the cost of living. Pearson treats race-baiting as a substitute for governing. That is not leadership. It is chaos dressed up as moral outrage.”
The DCCC, in a sign Democrats are taking a more cautious approach to the race, recently announced new spending in the neighboring 5th District, where Chaz Molder is seeking to flip a Republican-held seat, but has not announced similar investments in the 9th District.
The DCCC did add Pearson to its “Red to Blue” program, which gives candidates in red districts additional resources, earlier this month. The political arm is also airing an advertisement highlighting high gas costs in the 9th District, among other districts, as part of an ad campaign targeting minority voters.
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National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Reilly Richardson expressed confidence that Tennessee’s 9th District will flip in November, saying, “Unfortunately for Democrats, no amount of dark money from an out of state billionaire can fix their party’s deeply toxic brand in Tennessee.”
Republicans also point to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for governor, winning her statewide election by over 22% in 2024, while Lee won his 2022 election by 25% in 2022, as reasons they will be victorious in the state once again this cycle.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
