Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, propelled by Squad endorsements and national progressive money, won the Democratic primary in a newly redrawn congressional district, but the seat now leans heavily Republican.
Pearson defeated three opponents Thursday in the race for Tennessee's 9th Congressional District, capturing 64.9% of the vote to state Sen. London Lamar's 24.9%, the Washington Examiner reported. Community activist Marion LaTroy Alexandria-Williams and attorney Jim Torino also ran and lost. The 40-point margin gave the progressive wing of the Democratic Party another primary victory in the 2026 cycle, and handed the party's moderate faction another loss.
The win, though, may amount to little more than a consolation prize. The district Pearson hopes to represent bears almost no resemblance to the one longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen held for nearly two decades. Tennessee's Republican-led Legislature redrew the congressional map earlier this year, carving up Memphis, the heart of the old 9th District, and scattering its voters across three new districts that extend deep into rural, conservative territory.
The result: a district that voted for President Trump by 21 points. Pearson will face Trump-endorsed Republican nominee Brent Taylor in November.
Gov. Bill Lee signed the new map after the Legislature passed it, a move the New York Post reported would give Republicans all nine of Tennessee's U.S. House seats. Cohen, who held the seat since 2007, announced he would not seek reelection once the new lines were drawn. He called the redistricting "a blatant, corrupt power grab that would destroy the black community's and our entire city's voice."
The redraw followed a recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned precedent on race-based redistricting under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal law that had long required states to preserve majority-minority districts. With that legal barrier removed, Tennessee Republicans moved quickly. The new map splits Shelby County, which includes Memphis, into three districts that stretch into surrounding rural areas, diluting what had been a reliable Democratic stronghold.
Tennessee is not alone. A nationwide mid-decade redistricting battle is underway, with both parties redrawing maps in states including Texas, California, Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, and Alabama. Republicans have used the process to shore up their slim House majority. Democrats have done the same where they hold power.
Cohen had been the lone Democrat in Tennessee's nine-member House delegation, serving alongside eight Republicans. His departure leaves no obvious path for Democrats to hold a single congressional seat in the state.
Pearson's campaign raised millions of dollars, far outpacing his Democratic opponents, fueled by endorsements and organizational support from the national progressive infrastructure. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Summer Lee all backed him and joined him at a campaign rally in Memphis last month. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna also endorsed him.
Groups including Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, MoveOn, and Indivisible poured resources into the race. The backing mirrored the playbook those organizations have used to elevate progressive candidates in primaries across the country, often at the expense of more moderate Democrats.
Lamar, Pearson's closest competitor, ran as the more moderate alternative and secured the endorsement of the retiring Cohen. It did not matter. Pearson's national profile, built during the 2023 "Tennessee Three" episode, gave him a fundraising and name-recognition advantage that Lamar could not overcome.
Ocasio-Cortez's appearance at the Memphis rally drew attention of its own. She faced accusations of adopting a fake accent during her remarks, a sideshow that nonetheless underscored how much national progressive energy was flowing into a race that may ultimately be unwinnable in November.
Pearson first gained national attention in 2023 after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which killed three children and three adults. He, fellow state Rep. Justin Jones, and state Rep. Gloria Johnson staged a gun-control protest on the state House floor, using a bullhorn to lead chants from the well of the chamber.
Republican lawmakers expelled Pearson and Jones for the disruption. Johnson, who represents Knoxville, avoided expulsion by a single vote. Both Pearson and Jones later regained their seats, a sequence that turned them into progressive cause célèbres and generated a wave of national media coverage and fundraising.
That trajectory, from expelled state legislator to Squad-backed congressional nominee, illustrates a broader pattern inside the Democratic Party. Progressive organizations have learned to convert confrontation and controversy into campaign infrastructure. The expulsion did not end Pearson's career. It launched it.
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has publicly criticized what he calls a socialist takeover of the Democratic Party, warning that the progressive wing's primary victories are pulling the party away from the voters it needs to win general elections. Pearson's race offers a clean test of that argument: he won the primary by 40 points, but he now faces a general electorate that backed Trump by 21.
The general election math is brutal for Democrats. Under the old map, the 9th District was one of the most reliably Democratic seats in the South. Under the new lines, it is not competitive. Brent Taylor, the Republican nominee endorsed by President Trump, enters the fall campaign as a heavy favorite.
Lonzo Taylor, a 72-year-old retired postal worker and military veteran in Memphis, told Breitbart: "We only had one district in the whole state of Tennessee, and you don't even want that to be fair? It's just terrible." Milla Meiman, 23, a Democratic primary voter, called the redistricting "a voter suppression tactic."
Whether the new map constitutes suppression or legitimate redistricting is a matter of legal and political debate. What is not debatable is the outcome: Tennessee's Republican Legislature used the tools available to it, and a favorable Supreme Court ruling, to redraw lines that all but guarantee a nine-seat GOP sweep of the state's congressional delegation.
Democrats, meanwhile, are doing the same in states they control. The difference is that in Tennessee, the result eliminates the last remaining Democratic foothold in a state where progressives have poured enormous resources into building a bench.
Ocasio-Cortez and the broader progressive movement have invested heavily in candidates like Pearson as part of a long-term strategy to reshape the Democratic Party from within. But reshaping a party's primary electorate is one thing. Winning a district that voted for Trump by 21 points is another.
Moderate Democrats who backed Lamar, and who watched their wing of the party lose ground in primary after primary, now face the prospect of cheering for a nominee whose politics are tailor-made for a deep-blue district that no longer exists.
As Fox News Digital reported, the new map favors the GOP in all nine Tennessee districts. Pearson's primary victory was decisive. His path to Congress is not.
Winning a primary by 40 points feels like a mandate. Facing a 21-point deficit in November feels like reality, and no amount of Squad rallies or progressive fundraising changes the arithmetic.
