Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic show Right Now. I’m joined by Aftyn Behn, who is a Tennessee state representative. You might know her nationally because she ran for the House seat in the Nashville area, which Donald Trump won in the 2024 election by about 22 points, but Aftyn only lost by nine.
Aftyn Behn: Excited to be here.
Behn: Just some background for your audience. Nashville had a consolidated Democratic district until after our redistricting cycle in 2020, and they cut up Nashville into three Republican districts. And in fact, Representative Mark Green, who represented the district prior to resigning, told the supermajority in Tennessee, Do not do this. It will backfire. This election, the backfire happened.
One, the inability for a Republican trifecta in Washington to deliver for working families in the state. And the fact that the Republican supermajority has not ended our grocery tax, has not made life more affordable, really created this race as a referendum on affordability.
Three is that I used to work for national Indivisible, and so I understood the inherent nationalization of special elections like this, and I knew that if I was the candidate, the spotlight would be on Tennessee for something good. And that we could leverage the national spotlight for fundraising to localize margins.
So talk about what specifically you heard from people about why they did not like what’s been happening over the last year.
And I was trying to convince them to flip their vote for me and not vote for the Republican. And as I was inquiring what their issue—their choice issue—was, he said, We don’t want… And he turned to me and said, “We don’t want our tax dollars going to Israel.” And then I said, “I don’t either, and my candidate has taken money from AIPAC.” And so [he] said, “All right, you’ve got our vote.”
And I think what it really surfaced for Tennessee voters was that there are two systems of justice in this country: one for the wealthy and well-connected, and one for the rest of us. And so the Epstein files was really the container to talk about that.
Behn: It was heartbreaking. And I think it’s like very easy in a consolidated majority district—which is not this one; this one was Republican. I was running as a Democrat. But just another anecdote that I think highlights the importance of nuance in politics.
People don’t want to think about their government. They don’t want to wake up and start thinking about if they’re going to get a paycheck because the government isn’t functioning because you have a bunch of Washington bureaucrats that can’t get it together. And unfortunately, tit decimated people’s livelihoods in this district. And so the way that I talked about it was… if I was… they were like, “Would you have voted in favor of the government shutdown?”
Bacon: So after your race, there were a lot of people praising you, and there was also a little bit of commentary along the lines of you having run as a Joe Manchin–type. You mentioned the fact that you were involved in Indivisible. I knew your work before this. You’ve been very involved in what I’m going to call progressive activism.
Behn: I appreciate your framing, Perry, with that question. I think some of my critics would argue that I was an inherently flawed candidate, but I think it’s a trade-off.
And so this race was about turnout, it was about mobilization. I had the highest total voter turnout of any Democratic state rep in a safe house district in Tennessee. I can mobilize my own voters, of which I did in Nashville.
But they immediately centered on the fact that they pulled out a podcast clip of me lamenting about the bachelorettes in Nashville in which they thought that would deter turnout in Davidson County. Jokes on them because Nashville turned out in even greater numbers to vote for me.
Behn: Yes, exactly. And we lost less in rural communities. There were no Trump-Vance voters. And a lot of that had to do with the continuity of organizing from the legislature, which includes corporate accountability and affordability. And I think voters just want someone who they can trust and unfortunately I think the Republican Party still has a grasp on Tennessee. But I do think we used this race to build the permission structure that people might start to question what is happening around them.
Behn: Our schedules just couldn’t align. I was living in 30 minute in increments, unfortunately. But she did come down here to support the race and to turn out black voters in Ashe.
There’s a broader discourse about whether Democrats should move to the right, talk about affordability more, or talk about transgender rights differently. And you did not do a lot of what I’m going to call punching left, for now. You did not do a lot of saying activists are stupid, or dismissing people, or arguing that Democrats listen too much to college-educated voters.
Behn: I didn’t equivocate because I’m just someone who can’t do that. That’s not my politic. And I never wanted to be a politician who sacrificed her values or her communities on the chopping block as political capital. That was never me.
But in terms of the national party, I was so deeply grateful because not only did Vice President Kamala Harris show up, we actually had an event with former Vice President Al Gore and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And for me it was so beautiful because it showed the spectrum of the Democratic Party and that everyone really came together for this race because they understood the existential threat that we are under.
Bacon: Thinking about your race, what do you hope candidates from the party run on, broadly? I think you’re seeing a lot of discussion about affordability, and I personally would like to hear candidates talk about affordability, but also talk about how we shouldn’t have the National Guard in cities, and shouldn’t be taking over cities.
How do you hope to see candidates run in places like where you’re running?
And in Tennessee, there are so many people that are struggling. And so affordability was really the key tenet. And then I would say in what some of the more privileged areas of the district, obviously democracy reform, ending Citizens United was a big issue. And ensuring that our constitutional rights are not foregone.
And so my pitch to national donors in this race was: You have to start investing [in] places like Tennessee and Kentucky because what is happening here will come to your doorstep next. And I think it resonated. In Tennessee, we’ve been living under Project 2025 for 15 years. There are no checks and balances.
Bacon: So talk about that. Skip to that. What is your day job like—what is it like to be a legislator? Because I have some friends who are Democratic legislators in Kentucky, and they also—it’s like, I’m glad somebody’s doing it, but I would not want to. I think you live in Nashville and the capital’s there, so that’s probably easier.
Behn: To give some perspective to your audience, the Tennessee Democrats in the House could leave the state for the entire duration of session and it could proceed without us. That is how little power we have.
And so I really look at my role right now as organizing to create a paradigm in which Democrats and leaders like myself can thrive the next decade. And eventually, perhaps there will be an electoral shift in outcome when the pendulum sways.
I’m not running for the congressional seat again, and instead I’m going to focus my efforts on organizing to build that paradigm in which I can run for higher office and hope to bring along a coalition that will eventually flip a statewide seat.
Behn: To give you some perspective, so 10 years ago, we were able to stop a lot of the anti-immigrant legislation in the Tennessee legislature via the traditional processes. That is not the case anymore. Like I said, our strategy has really shifted to [litigation] because of the supermajority and the culture wars that they are they are emanating from the body.
It’s just, there’s no local autonomy that is enabled right now because of these immigration policies. And then yesterday, a few weeks ago, Republican leadership said they had worked with Stephen Miller to draft this kind of “slate of hate,” this immigration portfolio that they debuted yesterday. And obviously it’s all really bad.
So imagine you are an immigrant and you witness, you are the victim of a heinous crime. They, they’re forcing courts to opt into this program in which ICE agents will be there to pick you up when you go [to] court. It is violent. It is disgusting.
Behn: Yes.
Behn: Yeah. A model of harshness.
Behn: Yes. And some of these—a lot of the legislation—is already federally enacted. Yeah. But who knows how it’s going to materialize in the Tennessee legislature. And once again, all of this is a distraction because they have not lowered grocery prices. They have not made housing more affordable. And they’re trying to create a spectacle over here so you are not paying attention to the fact that they have not delivered for Tennessee families.
Why is it important that people across the country know what’s going on in a place like Tennessee where the policies are not going to go the way we want them to and is going to be a long time? What can we, is it important? And then two, what can they do if you’re not in Tennessee?
And so what is happening here could happen to you next. And so I know, however you think about the South, as W.E.B. Du Bois once said, As goes the South, so goes the nation—and it’s true. And we are fighting. Whatever you think you are dealing with in your blue state… It is suffocating to live under the policies that are being enacted here.
Because once again, things are already bad, they’re going to get worse. You need organizers and thought leaders like myself that understand how to take advantage of the crises, the compounded crises we’re going to face in order to create opportunity to improve and make Tennessee a better place to live.
Behn: Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.
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