In a close 2025 defeat, Democrats see the beginnings of a 2026 red-state surprise
By John King, CNN
Mount Juliet, Tennessee (CNN) — Megan Schwalm is full of energy. She sees the excitement and ambition of every member of the coffee group she started three years ago. Yet she is often afraid to trust what she sees and feels — afraid she will be let down again.
“It’s a numbers game, right?” Schwalm said before a recent meeting of her Liberal Ladies Social Group. “And so while there are moments of hope for me, there are often overwhelming moments of hopelessness as well.”
The source of the competing hope and worry: a recent House special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. The Democratic candidate lost by 9 points. A year ago, Republican Mark Green won by 22 points. (Green resigned his seat in July.)
“There was so much excitement,” Schwalm said.
But the reality of where she lives is not lost on her. “The numbers are the numbers. If we can keep closing that gap, that’s incredible. But gerrymandering makes it nearly impossible to win.”
Nearly impossible. It’s worth remembering that. But the energy among Democrats here is palpable, and they are vowing to do all they can to make Nashville and its suburbs a most unlikely 2026 midterm battleground.
“There’s something happening,” said Lisa Quigley, who was chief of staff to the last Democrat to represent the Nashville area in the House. “And so as long as we are smart enough to put our best players on the field, I think we’re going to be able to take advantage of that. And I think that next November is going to be a big year for us.”
Quigley, too, is aware of the daunting math.
The old 5th Congressional District included all of Nashville and some of its suburbs. It was represented by a Democrat for 148 years — from 1875 to 2023. But Republicans who now dominate state politics redrew the lines before the 2022 midterms.
Nashville was carved into three districts that stretch from the city into the suburbs and out to reliably Republican rural areas. Republicans won the new 5th, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts easily in both 2022 and 2024. President Donald Trump’s 2024 margins were lopsided: 18 points in the 5th, 35 points in the 6th, and 22 points in the 7th.
“Not easy, but doable,” is nonetheless Quigley’s 2026 take on flipping at least two of those three House seats.
Conversations with Democrats here just after the special election persuaded us to add a Tennessee visit to our “All Over the Map” project, an effort to track major political developments through the eyes and experiences of voters. Democratic successes throughout 2025 give the party reasons to be bullish heading into 2026. But Tennessee is ruby-red, and it would be extraordinary if the House seats that include parts of Nashville are truly competitive come next fall.
Schwalm moved to Mount Juliet from Iowa just as the new lines were taking hold. She’s 25 miles from Nashville, but it seems much farther.
“When you are here, it’s very clear you are in the Bible Belt,” Schwalm said. “Beliefs are very different from beliefs in Nashville, and politically it’s very different going from Nashville to here.”
After her move, Schwalm decided to reach out to a handful of other liberals she had met, then started a Facebook page.
“Within a matter of like two months, the group had grown to over 200 people online,” Schwalm said. “Now we’re almost at 700, and we have a weekly coffee meeting where we come together just really to socialize. It’s really about building community because it’s very isolating here.”
Local school board fights over books and diversity and policies regarding transgender children were the group’s most common shared interest at the beginning. Over time, a few Republicans unhappy with the Trump and MAGA agenda joined the group. And now, the experience of the special House election has the women setting their sights on Washington.
The coffee group members all live within an hour of Nashville but are sprinkled across the three House districts. But even members who do not live in the 7th Congressional District helped in the special election, writing postcards and joining phone banks.
Aftyn Behn, a state legislator, was the Democratic candidate who lost by 9. She is progressive, and there is some chatter here that perhaps a more moderate candidate might have fared even better.
Just the mention of that talk brings a mix of groans and eye rolls at the liberal coffee group.
“We’ve been running moderates,” member Lindsey Patrick-Wright said. “It doesn’t work and hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”
“I really believe the way we win is to run true liberal candidates and not ‘liberal lite’ as we like to do in Tennessee,” Schwalm said. “I think the way we get younger folks to vote is by running candidates who understand the issues we are facing.”
But Schalm did qualify her remarks some.
She said she believed Behn had proven herself worthy of another shot at the 7th District. Schwalm lives in the 6th — the most Republican of the three districts that include slices of Nashville. “We might not be able to run someone quite as liberal,” Schwalm said of her home district.
The Red Bicycle coffee shop, where the liberal group meets, is in the 5th District, which all agree is likely the Democrats’ best shot — though still difficult.
About 40 percent of the 5th District’s voters live in Nashville, and the Republican incumbent, Rep. Andy Ogles, is a lightning rod. Ogles sponsored legislation allowing Trump to run for a third term. It is a nonstarter, but Democrats see it as a plus for their argument that Ogles is extreme.
Republican Matt Van Epps won the special election in the 7th District. Democrats hope a year as an incumbent in Washington proves a drag when the midterm election comes next November. The incumbent in the 6th District, Rep. John Rose, is running for Tennessee governor. But while Democrats promise to contest the seat, they also concede it is even more of a long-shot than the other two.
Quigley worked for former Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate who represented Nashville for 20 years until the lines were redrawn for the 2022 election. Her instincts and experience tell her a moderate has a better shot in the suburbs and rural areas, but the excitement for Behn’s candidacy in the special election makes her wonder.
“She has a national fundraising base now,” Quigley said of Behn. “She has a social media following. These are the things that you need in modern politics to be able to get the excitement and the interest of the voters to come out and cast their ballot for you.”
Now, given the energy among Democrats, Quigley predicts crowded primaries for the Nashville-area House districts.
There are already several declared candidates in the 5th District. Quigley’s favorite is Chaz Molder, the mayor of Columbia, about 50 miles south of Nashville in rural Maury County.
Trump won 72 percent of the vote in Maury County last year, and Quigley’s case for Molder is that he has experience — and some success — winning votes in the deep-red parts of the district.
Behn hasn’t said what her specific 2026 plans are. “This is not the end — it is the beginning of the next chapter,” she said in a statement after conceding the special election. “The road ahead is bright for Tennessee and for this country.”
There is buzz among some Tennessee Democrats that she might run in the 5th instead of trying again in the 7th, because it viewed as more favorable to Democrats.
“I think it would be an unfortunate food fight,” Quigley said of that idea.
Names aside, Quigley’s expectation is there will be several candidates in each district and, yes, almost guaranteed tension between Democratic liberals and moderates.
“Primary voters are going to figure out who they want to be their standard-bearer,” Quigley said. “I do think that voters are also smart enough to figure out who’s the person who’s been able to sort of put this together and is in alignment with the district they are running in.”
The long-shot Democratic hopes here also depend on something beyond their control: the mood of the Republican base. Behn didn’t just run up impressive numbers in Nashville proper. The district spans 14 counties, from the Kentucky border to the Alabama border, and Behn over-performed the Democrats’ 2024 percentage in every one of them. Republicans insist it was a special election and all will be fine next year; Democrats argue results coast to coast in 2025 proved the Republican base is not as motivated to vote.
Luis and Cyndi Cortes own the Mount Juliet location of the coffee shop where the women meet.
They are Trump supporters. Luis can’t vote because his parents brought him to the United States illegally as a child. They were deported to Mexico when he was 17, but he was allowed to stay as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama.
Luis has permanent resident status now and hopes to one day become a citizen and run for office. Cyndi voted for Obama and Hillary Clinton, but said being a parent and owning a business has made her more conservative.
They moved to Mount Juliet from Nashville two years ago because they feel more at home here.
“There is something in this kind of suburban Nashville that we really hold dear. And that’s our love of God first and then our love for family and then our love for country,” Luis said.
The couple own three coffee shops in Middle Tennessee. Tariffs on coffee and paper goods have hurt their bottom line in 2025, but they say they are willing to make a little less to give Trump time for his policies to fully take hold.
“I guess my patriot side — I’m saying I hope that the president is making the right investment in the country so that in a few years and a couple of generations, we can reap the rewards of that,” Luis Cortes said.
Both believe it is imperative the country have a secure border and an organized immigration system. They acknowledge, though, that the aggressive deportation roundups implemented by the Trump administration give them some pause.
“The means at which we are getting there is difficult, not comfortable to watch,” Cyndi Cortes said. “And it’s definitely affected Latin American communities.”
Both believe that their area is too conservative to elect a Democrat to Congress.
Yet Cyndi’s 2026 take could become important.
She voted for Ogles in 2024 as part of a straight Republican ticket. But she had become disillusioned with him because of questions about his financial disclosure and other issues. She plans to vote against him in the GOP primary next year.
“I can’t put a vote for a candidate that I just don’t feel embodies the values that matter to us,” she said. “A strong character and honest, you know, honest character is important.”
And if Ogles win the primary?
“I’m not opposed to voting for a Democratic candidate if his values and what he wants to do for this district is aligned with our goals as well,” Cyndi Cortes said. “So it is not off the table.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
