Republicans are growing increasingly anxious over a once sleepy special election in Tennessee District 7 next month in a district that President Trump comfortably won by 22 points last year.
While the congressional race has historically been a GOP shoo-in, Republicans are alarmed by a recent poll and fearful that an upset could see their majority in the House slip to a zero-vote margin.
“I’m very concerned about it. Of course, it’s an off-year election. It’s right after Thanksgiving. A lot of the Republicans are out of town. And I worry about them showing up on Election Day,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who represents Tennessee’s District 2, which encompasses Knoxville, told The Post.
“It’s a razor-thin margin.”
Elevating the stakes of the Dec. 2 election is firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) recent retirement announcement.
If Democrats eke out an upset victory in Tennessee District 7, then proceed to win their two vacated seats in special elections, the GOP’s House majority could eventually fall to 218 to 216.
Under that scenario, House Republicans wouldn’t be able to afford any defections on partisan legislation. Over the past year, they’ve often had at least one, usually from Libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) Additionally, the GOP’s House majority could vanish before the midterms if any other rep retires early.
Further fueling those concerns is a shock survey by Emerson College Polling and The Hill out Wednesday that pegged the race in a dead heat.
Republican Matt Van Epps only bested Democrat Aftyn Behn — dubbed “AOC of Tennessee” — by 48% to 46%, which is within the margin of error, the poll found.
“I think the polls are a little bit misleading, because it seems that older Tennesseans are voting and they generally vote more conservative than the younger folks do,” Burchett admitted.
Still, Burchett, who has campaigned with Van Epps twice, cautioned Republicans to “be aware” of the risks.
“If it’s close, that should be a big enough wake-up call,” he added. “If [Behn] wins, I think it could be devastating for us.”
The special election in Tennessee follows a Democratic sweep in the off-year election, where polling often overestimated Republicans, particularly in the New Jersey governor’s race.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows when she stumped for Behn earlier this month, indicating how some Democrats think the special election might be in play.
“Matt Van Epps will be a member of Congress,” National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesperson Reilly Richardson confidently told The Post when asked about warning signs in the race.
Some left-leaning operatives quietly doubt that Behn will win and allege that Republicans raising fears are simply engaging in a ploy to gin up turnout and lay the groundwork to undermine what they expect will be a significant Democratic overperformance.
“The Republicans are dumping over $1.5 million into this Trump +22 district in a desperate last-minute attempt to avoid a Democratic overperformance that will tell us what we already know — Republicans are going to lose the House majority next year,” a national Democratic strategist working on House races said.
The strategist added that a hypothetical Dem overperformance in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District would prove the GOP’s “agenda is historically unpopular even in deep Trump country.”
Top of mind for that strategist is the April special election in Florida when Rep. Randy Fine (R) ultimately prevailed by about 14 percentage points despite GOP handwringing heading into the race.
Trump had seemingly been rattled enough by the GOP’s viability in special elction races that he yanked his nod for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations.
The Tennessee seat had been held by Rep. Mark Green, who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and stepped down in July after Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Green won reelection in 2024 by just over 21 points.
During his special election campaign, Van Epps, a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services, has worked to highlight Behn’s lefty record.
Five years ago, Behn had bashed Nashville on a podcast: “I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country. But I hate it.”
She also tore into Tennessee as a “racist state” in a 2019 op-ed in the The Tennessean and pushed to defund the police the following year.
“Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified,” she wrote on X in 2020 during the protests and riots that swept the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Behn, who has served in the Tennessee state House since 2023, glossed over those social media posts when pressed on it by MS NOW, previously known as MSNBC, saying “I don’t remember these tweets.”
“She’s an extremist,” Burchett chided. “And now she won’t even address the quote she’s made about the police and our military and our border and everything.”
