This is a lightly edited transcript of the January 16 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
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.
So that was a big over-performance, and a sign not just that Trump is unpopular, but also that Democrats are finding candidates people are connecting with. So welcome. Thanks for joining me.
Aftyn Behn: Excited to be here.
Bacon: I’ll start with that—OK, so you had 22, and then you had nine. Talk about why you think the margin was smaller. That probably has something to do with you, and something to do with the national discourse. So talk about what you think happened there.
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.
And so it includes some of the highest turnout precincts in Nashville, which are historically Black communities, goes all the way up to the Kentucky border and then down to the Alabama border. And this race was competitive for a confluence of factors.
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.
Two, I’m an organizer, and so I’ve been organizing in Kentucky and Tennessee for the past decade. And I have been part of a movement to rebuild the Democratic infrastructure in a lot of these rural areas as well. And so we leveraged that Democratic infrastructure to bolster our numbers.
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.
Bacon: So let’s talk about why Donald Trump is not as popular. You mentioned affordability a little bit, but just to zoom out, why is Tennessee so red? I live in Louisville, so I know that all these “red states” include plenty of Democrats, plenty of people, and plenty of independents—and plenty of thoughtful people who don’t necessarily love to see ICE kill people.
So talk about what specifically you heard from people about why they did not like what’s been happening over the last year.
Behn: One anecdote in particular really stands out because it was incredibly jarring. I was standing outside the highest-turnout precinct in Clarksville, Montgomery County—which, for your listeners, Montgomery County is at the foothills of Fort Campbell, a military base. And there was a Republican-looking couple that was walking into the polling precinct on Election Day during the general; she was nine months pregnant.
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” ... 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.”
So this election was really striking because I think, Israel, the conflict over there, how people felt about it, played a role, obviously affordability. And the Epstein files. My first commercial—obviously the arc of that changed dramatically once Trump kind of jockeying for the Epstein files to be released, although not in their entirety. But it did play a central role.
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.
Bacon: So your race happened during this government shutdown over health care too, so I assume—how did that play out?
Behn: It was heartbreaking. And I think it’s 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: The state rep that lives in Montgomery County held a health care town hall, of which I was the special guest because I was running in the special election. And this African American woman—former veteran or veteran—working in the Social Security offices in Clarksville, when talking about the health care trade-off for the government shutdown, burst into tears. And she said, “Why is my pain being traded for the pain of others? I don’t understand.” And it really encapsulated how people feel about government right now.
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, it decimated people’s livelihoods in this district. And so the way that I talked about it was … they were like, “Would you have voted in favor of the government shutdown?”
And honestly, the district is really diverse, and I would’ve had a bunch of town halls asking people what they thought. But I think that anecdote highlights the nuance of the situation in Tennessee.
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.”
So talk about that a little bit. Would you have done ... I think I know the answer to this, but why did it help, and not hurt, that you actually had a record of doing progressive things, even in Tennessee, in the district?
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.
It’s tough to say what candidate would do well when our districts are so incredibly gerrymandered. If the district was a consolidated Democratic district in Nashville then, perhaps an African American candidate would’ve done better. If it was entirely rural, then the Joe Manchin type would’ve done incredibly well. But that’s just not the case.
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.
And just for your audience, The New York Times reported that the RNC had a 78-page dossier on me, which never feels good. And the day that dropped into the right-wing media ecosystem, the breath was taken out of me.
But they immediately centered on the fact that—they pulled out a podcast clip of me lamenting about the bachelorettes in Nashville. They thought that would deter turnout in Davidson County. Joke’s on them, because Nashville turned out in even greater numbers to vote for me.
Bacon: Yes, because your progressivism probably helped in the Nashville area.
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. 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.
Bacon: So Kamala Harris was in the area and you didn’t event with her, is that right?
Behn: Our schedules just couldn’t align. I was living in 30-minute increments, unfortunately. But she did come down here to support the race and to turn out black voters in Ashe.
Bacon: Let me ask it this way. The question I was getting at is that I read some commentary saying you should have distanced yourself—talk about this in national terms. Think about this race.
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.
And that might be true. But you did not do a lot of that triangulation-style politics. Why not?
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.
And so the narrative that I was able to adopt quite early on because of what is happening in Tennessee was that immigrants and trans kids are not the reason grocery prices are high. You can’t afford your mortgage. Life is unaffordable. It’s not the reason. And the real boogeymen are the billionaires and the multinational corporations that aren’t paying taxes. And that was, once again, it was continuity from my state legislative tenure.
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.
I just felt so lucky and in awe that there was so much attention to Tennessee for something good and that the surrogates and the spectrum of the Democratic Party came together for this moment.
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.
I think it’s worth talking about economic issues that are purely pocketbook issues, but also these rule-of-law and democracy issues. These things do matter, and I hope we talk about those things, too. But what do you see? Affordability is obviously important to everyone, but I think these other issues matter, too.
How do you hope to see candidates run in places like where you’re running?
Aftyn Behn: I think the spectrum of constitutionality and strengthening democracy is in alignment with affordability, but OK. And it highlights the nature of a gerrymandered district, because I’m a social worker, and so Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—for listeners—is a very important framework for me as a social worker to understand. If people are struggling, if they’re in survival mode, they’re not able to self-actualize and think about politics or the strengthening of our democracy.
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.
I tried to articulate this during the congressional race, but the Tennessee supermajority isn’t doing anything transformative right now. They’re actually filing legislation in the Tennessee state legislature so that it makes its way through the conservative Sixth Circuit and ends up at the Supreme Court to undo your federally protected constitutional rights.
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.
I like to say that we are in an “electoral autocracy” because we are, and it makes me … they created these districts to be uncompetitive, but I think the issues moving forward for candidates have to be preserving the real constitutional … preserving the Constitution, democracy reform, getting corporate money out of politics, and, of course, affordability.
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—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.
But what is this like, and more importantly, why is it important that you’re there, even though you’re going to lose every vote?
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.
We’ve officially entered the dark era. There are state agencies that have stopped communicating with Democrats. We can’t get responses for our 60,000 voters. The information that is coming out sometimes isn’t accurate. It’s truly like we have entered a dark era.
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.
And so I think this period of Tennessee politics will be defined by leaders who stand up to corruption and grifting and the austerity that all of our states are going to have to implement because there is no money.
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.
Bacon: Yeah, I was on the Tennessee Lookout website today, and I saw there’s been a lot of discussion about this immigration bill they’re moving through. Describe that bill a little bit, and describe what you can do about it, if anything.
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.
But the immigration … so last special session in January, so last year they passed a bill that would give felonies to any elected officials voting for sanctuary city policies. They voted to reprimand and or federal, state or publicly withhold funding for any municipality that passed … 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.
I’m trying to not be desensitized in this moment because it is so hard to remember from last January, the onslaught of authoritarian … I just—every day I wake up and the horrors persist. The legislation yesterday also included that courts now have to opt into the 287(g) program.
So imagine you are an immigrant and you witness, you are the victim of a heinous crime. 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.
Bacon: You’re saying Stephen Miller literally is writing their immigration bill with them?
Behn: Yes.
Bacon: It wanted to be a model for the country, is what you’re getting at here?
Behn: Yeah. A model of harshness.
Bacon: Yes. OK.
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.
Bacon: Let me finish on why is it important—I assume most of our audience, those people watching don’t live in a red state, don’t live in a gerrymandered state—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?
Behn: An excellent case study of this is the ban on gender-affirming care nationally. It started in Tennessee. They passed a bill to ban gender-affirming care. Our attorney general then took it all the way to the Supreme Court, and they actually sent out the attorney general’s office—sent out an email to the entire legislature inviting us to the tailgate to watch the oral arguments in which they would take healthcare away from the most vulnerable kids in our country. Our leaders went to D.C.—they also tailgated.
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.
And please continue to invest in organizations and organizers like myself that really are thinking forward and thinking about the next 10 years of what’s going to happen and taking advantage.
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.
Bacon: Aftyn, great to see you. Thanks for the great answer to finish there. I appreciate you, and it was a great campaign—congratulations on that. I hope, and I think we’ll be tuning in to other things you do in the future. See you soon.
Behn: OK. Thank you. Bye-bye.
