Tennessee 7 Special: Upset in the Making?
September 30, 2025 · 3:04 PM EDT
Kansas’ 4th District. Montana’s At-Large district. Georgia’s 6th District. South Carolina’s 5th District. Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat. Pennsylvania’s 18th District. Arizona’s 8th District.
Throughout 2017 and into early 2018, election watchers kept seeing the same movie over and over: Special elections in heavily Republican areas were way closer than they had any right to be, as Donald Trump’s presidency galvanized Democratic voters and put several normally safe Republican districts into play. Eight years later, Trump is back in the White House and once again generating intense backlash: Democrats are overperforming in special elections to an even greater extent than they did in 2017-18. But with only four federal special elections in the books so far this year, unlike during Trump’s first term, we have yet to see a truly competitive race develop.
That could change on December 2. That’s the date of the special election in Tennessee’s 7th District, a solidly Republican seat that could nevertheless have just enough Democratic voters to make things interesting. The campaign to replace former Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from Congress for an unspecified opportunity in the private sector, has been quiet so far, but that is about to change with both parties’ primaries coming up on October 7. And after the big elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and California in November, watch for this Nashville-area district to take center stage.
The Lay of the Land
Tennessee’s 7th District covers all or parts of 14 counties in central Tennessee, stretching from the state’s northern to southern border and from downtown Nashville in the east to roughly the Tennessee River in the west. That geographic sprawl takes in communities across the socioeconomic spectrum, from the affluent suburbs of Williamson County to the rural, working-class Tennessee Valley; on the whole, the district is slightly less educated (36 percent of the population age 25 or higher has a bachelor’s degree) and less wealthy (its median household income is $79,222) than the nation as a whole (37 percent and $81,604, respectively). Its citizen voting-age population is 75 percent non-Hispanic white, 16 percent non-Hispanic Black, and 5 percent Hispanic.
The 7th District was drawn to be a safely Republican seat (in fact, it was one of three districts that Republican legislators used to absorb a safely Democratic seat in Nashville in the latest round of redistricting), and sure enough, Republicans have carried it in every statewide election since at least 2016. In 2024, Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris here by 22 percentage points, the same margin by which Sen. Marsha Blackburn won it the same year and Gov. Bill Lee did in 2022. In 2020, Trump carried the current version of the district by 17 points.
In 2018, though, the combination of a good Democratic year and a good Democratic candidate meant a Democrat came quite close to winning the district; Blackburn defeated former Gov. Phil Bredesen by just 2 points within the boundaries of the current 7th.
Overall, the 7th District has an R+20 Baseline — Inside Elections’ measure of the baseline partisanship of states and congressional districts. That’s pretty Republican, but as the 2018 result suggests, it’s not so far right that Republicans can take a win here for granted — especially in the current political environment. As the table below shows, Democrats have done significantly better than Baseline in all four congressional special elections so far this year.
If Democrats do 16 points better than Baseline in the Tennessee 7th special election — which is their average in federal special elections so far this year — Republicans would win the seat by just 4 points. That would surely be too close for comfort for Republicans, although, importantly, it would still be a win. However, it wouldn’t be unprecedented for Democrats to overperform Baseline by enough to flip the seat outright; back in April, they did 25 points better than Baseline in the special election in Florida’s 1st District.
The Republican Primary
But with the GOP still heavily favored to win the seat in the end, 11 Republicans have thrown their hat in the ring for the chance to be the area’s next representative. While not all of those 11 are serious contenders, the primary so far has been an unpredictable free-for-all. An August poll from Spry Strategies and Americans for Prosperity Tennessee found four candidates bunched up between 7 and 10 percent — with a whopping 58 percent of registered voters undecided. In other words, the race was very malleable.
Pre-primary campaign-finance reports, which were due last Thursday, provided a clue as to which candidates could have the resources to increase their support. Two state representatives have raised the most so far: Lee Reeves and Gino Bulso. However, Bulso loaned himself $493,973 of the $550,005 that he listed as raised. Reeves loaned himself $300,000, but he also took in $269,015 in individual contributions. (Money is useful in campaigns no matter its source, but individual contributions tend to signal more grassroots support.)
Two other candidates have self-funded their way into relevance as well. Mason Foley, a 28-year-old former staffer for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, loaned himself $325,000 to supplement the $71,278 he raised from individual contributions. If elected, he would be the first Republican Gen Z member of Congress.
Real-estate developer Stewart Parks has also contributed or loaned his campaign $298,785, though he’s raised only $35,522 from individual contributions. Parks is probably best known as one of the rioters who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the 2020 election results. He was arrested and convicted for his role but was included in Trump’s pardons of the January 6 rioters earlier this year.
However, two other candidates may be the ones in pole position. State Rep. Jody Barrett and former Tennessee Department of General Services Commissioner Matt Van Epps have been the subject of most of the outside spending in the race, as different heirs of the old Tea Party movement have pushed their preferred candidate. House Freedom Action, the political arm of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, has spent about $350,000 to boost Barrett. However, two prominent members of the Freedom Caucus — Green and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan — have endorsed Van Epps, with the Jordan-aligned American Liberty Foundation spending nearly $400,000 to prop him up. School Freedom Fund, a school-choice-focused arm of the Club for Growth, has also spent nearly $650,000 to attack Barrett for his opposition to school vouchers.
The biggest spender in the race, though, is actually Conservatives for American Excellence, a super PAC that has historically supported establishment-friendly Republicans. The group so far has devoted almost $600,000 to supporting Van Epps or opposing Barrett.
While all this outside spending may drown it out, it’s also worth noting that Van Epps has raised more than any other candidate from individual contributions: $343,227. Barrett has also done respectably by this metric, raking in $236,187. Neither candidate has spent personal money.
The geography of the primary also likely favors Van Epps and Barrett. Barrett is the only candidate from the more rural parts of the district; in the legislature, he represents Hickman County and part of Dickson County, which together cast 13 percent of the district’s Republican vote in the 2024 election. Meanwhile, Van Epps is from Nashville, whose Davidson County cast 11 percent. (Parks is also from Nashville, but his populist politics may not be a good fit for its urban electorate.) And Bulso, Foley, and Reeves are all from Williamson County, meaning they may wind up splitting its 15 percent of the GOP vote. Notably, Montgomery County — the district’s single largest source of Republican votes (24 percent) — is unclaimed.
With a crowded field and no requirement for a runoff, the winning candidate could secure the nomination with a very small plurality. Back in 2020, Diana Harshbarger won the 1st District GOP primary with just 19 percent against 15 other candidates.
The Democratic Primary
The Democratic primary isn’t nearly as crowded, but four candidates are still vying for the nomination on the off-chance that lightning will strike in the general election. And this primary might be even more up in the air than the GOP race.
The leading fundraiser is Darden Copeland, a well-connected longtime Democratic operative who has worked for Al Gore and John Kerry. He has raised $306,600 in individual contributions and self-funded an additional $125,336.
But the race also features three sitting state representatives from adjacent districts in the Nashville area, each of whom could appeal to different parts of the Democratic electorate. Bo Mitchell represents the most exurban district and has talked about the need for Democrats to reach out to rural voters. He has raked in $188,340 in individual contributions (and self-funded $10,000 more).
Not far behind is Aftyn Behn, who has raised $149,028. With her activist background, she would be a more unapologetically progressive nominee; before getting elected to the state House, she organized protests against a corrupt former state House speaker and a Republican state representative who was accused of sexually abusing minors.
Vincent Dixie brings up the rear in fundraising, having taken in $134,730 in individual contributions. However, hailing from historically African American North Nashville, he has strong ties to the district’s sizable Black community. According to The Downballot, he also has more constituents who live in the 7th District than either Mitchell or Aftyn, whose legislative districts are mostly in neighboring congressional districts.
With all four candidates (including Copeland) hailing from the Nashville area, however, the majority of the Democratic electorate doesn’t have a home candidate. Sixty-one percent of Harris voters in the district live outside of Davidson County, and their votes will be decisive. That could advantage a candidate with deep pockets, like Copeland.
The Bottom Line
There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Tennessee 7th special election: uncertainty over who the nominees will be, uncertainty over what the political environment and dominant issues will be by December, and uncertainty over just how close the final margin might be. There has been no public polling of the general election — not that it would be of much use more than two months out.
For now, it’s safe to say that Democrats face an uphill climb in a district that hasn’t voted Democratic in at least a decade. But the wind will likely be at their backs, making this a race worth watching.