Democrat Aftyn Behn once said she “hates” the city of Nashville—and the city’s voters signaled on Tuesday they aren’t too fond of her, either.
Matt Van Epps, a Donald Trump-backed Republican, defeated Behn for the special election for Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District. Van Epps, a former state commissioner for general services, held a roughly 9 point lead with 95 percent of the vote in, according to the Associated Press.
Democrats had high hopes for flipping the deep-red district after their party saw decisive gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey. Failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigned with Behn down the home stretch of the race—a sign of how invested the party was in scoring a victory in Trump country.
President Trump and former congressman Mark Green (R., Tenn.), who vacated the House seat in July, won their races in the district last year by 22 points. With the victory, Republicans hold 220 House seats to Democrats’ 213. Two other seats remain vacant, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, has announced she will resign from office on Jan. 5.
Behn could not overcome a series of embarrassing revelations over her remarks about the city of Nashville, the state of Tennessee, and police. In 2019, Behn declared, “I hate this city,” in reference to Nashville. She expressed “hate” for country music, a staple of Nashville, and the bachelorette parties that have become a major tourism draw for the town.
She called Tennessee a “racist” state in a 2020 op-ed. “Our problem with racism in this state is wild and untamed,” Behn wrote, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
She also asserted during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots that “burning down a police station is justified.”
Behn sought to dismiss questions about those remarks, telling MSNBC that her comments about police were a “cable news talking point.”
She memory-holed other provocative remarks, such as her 2020 tweet advising white political candidates to forfeit to black challengers.
“I’m probably going to be trolled for this, but if you’re a white man running in a primary with a progressive POC, I challenge you to ask yourself in this moment ‘is my voice more important?’ And if you think it is, your campaign is more about you than your policy agenda,” Behn wrote in a since-deleted X post on June 6, 2020, the Free Beacon reported.
Behn ignored her own advice by running in the Seventh Congressional District primary against Vincent Dixie, a black progressive who serves in the Tennessee house.
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