A growing controversy has emerged in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District as Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn faces renewed scrutiny over her past remarks about race and representation. Behn once urged white candidates to step aside for minority contenders—yet she went on to defeat the only black candidate in her own primary last month.
“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?'” Behn wrote in a since-deleted 2020 post. She added that such candidates should reconsider their campaigns if they believed their voices mattered more. Behn ignored her own call when she ran against state representative Vincent Dixie, the sole black candidate, beating him by roughly 1,500 votes.
During a Sept. 9 forum, Dixie pressed Behn on how she would ensure black constituents had a voice in Congress. Behn answered that she has “always followed the lead of black women.” Dixie pushed back, reminding her that “there are also black men that need to be in that conversation.”
Behn’s history of race-centered messaging extends beyond the primary. In deleted posts, she backed efforts to dissolve Nashville’s police department, supported conditioning school reopenings on defunding the police, and once wrote, “[G]ood morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.”
The district—solidly conservative and carried by Donald Trump and Sen. Marsha Blackburn by 22 points—appears unlikely to warm to Behn’s rhetoric. She will face Republican Matt Van Epps, a former commissioner in Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, in the special election.
Behn, sometimes called the “AOC of Tennessee,” is supported by the Knoxville chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and campaigned with former vice president Kamala Harris last week.
