On October 7, 2025, Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District will become the stage for a special primary election, one that’s drawing national attention not just for its crowded field but for the broader political tremors shaking the United States. More than a dozen candidates from both major parties are vying to fill the seat vacated by Republican Mark Green, who resigned in July to pursue a private sector career. But as voters head to the polls in this reliably Republican district, the contest is unfolding against a backdrop of unprecedented national division, with the very fabric of American federalism coming under strain.
The 7th District, which sprawls across parts of Middle Tennessee and includes a slice of Nashville’s Davidson County, has long been a GOP stronghold. According to The Associated Press, Donald Trump carried the district with about 60% of the vote in the 2024 presidential election, while Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, secured roughly 38%. Yet, the Nashville area—a Democratic bastion—remains a significant part of the district, accounting for about 22% of its vote. The rest is dominated by deep-red counties, with Montgomery County making up the largest share at 24%.
The Republican primary field is particularly crowded, featuring state Representatives Jody Barrett, Gino Bulso, and Lee Reeves; Montgomery County Commissioner Jason Knight; former Department of General Services Commissioner Matt Van Epps (who has Green’s endorsement); health care entrepreneur Mason Foley; real estate businessman Stewart Parks (notably pardoned by President Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol incident); and former state Senate policy analyst Tres Wittum. On the Democratic side, state Representatives Aftyn Behn, Vincent Dixie, Bo Mitchell, and businessman Darden Copeland are seeking their party’s nomination.
Campaign finance has played a central role in this race. As reported by the AP, Van Epps led the Republican pack in fundraising with about $359,000 by mid-September, though he was outspent by rivals who loaned hefty sums to their own campaigns—Bulso with nearly $494,000, Foley with $325,000, and Reeves with $300,000. On the Democratic side, Copeland raised about $335,000 and loaned himself an additional $100,000, giving him a sizable war chest as of September 17. Bo Mitchell, meanwhile, raised $203,000 but had less than half of it left for the final campaign push.
Voters in the district—more than 469,000 registered as of August 2024—will cast their ballots in a state that doesn’t register voters by party. While a 1972 law requires primary voters to be “affiliated with” or a “bona fide” member of a party, enforcement is rare and the terms remain ambiguous. A more recent 2023 law requires polling places to post signs about this requirement, but a federal court dismissed a legal challenge to the law in 2024, leaving the system largely unchanged. As of October 1, nearly 15,000 Democratic and 16,000 Republican ballots had already been cast ahead of the primary, reflecting a growing trend toward early and absentee voting. In the August 2024 state primary, turnout was modest—about 7% for Republicans and 5% for Democrats, both in uncontested races.
The winners of Tuesday’s primaries will advance to a special election on December 2, 2025, to determine who will fill Green’s seat. Given the district’s political leanings, the GOP nominee is widely expected to have the edge, at least temporarily bolstering the party’s slender majority in the U.S. House. The Associated Press will report results and declare a winner only when the outcome is mathematically certain, noting that Tennessee permits recounts solely through legal challenges—there are no automatic or candidate-initiated recounts.
But the Tennessee race is just one piece of a much larger and more volatile national puzzle. In September, Democratic-controlled states on both coasts took the extraordinary step of forming their own shadow federal health agencies—the West Coast Health Alliance and the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. These alliances emerged after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now head of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed the CDC director and ended support for COVID-19 and childhood vaccinations, upending decades of public health policy. As California Governor Gavin Newsom put it, these new bodies aim to provide services “grounded in science, not ideology.”
This isn’t the first time states have banded together to fill what they see as a federal void. The Reproductive Freedom Alliance, launched by 23 governors in 2023, ensures access to abortion and reproductive services after federal protections were rolled back. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative offers a carbon pricing framework for participating states, sidestepping the absence of federal climate policy. These moves, reported by The Globe and Mail, signal a growing trend toward what some call “shadow federalism”—multi-state collaborations that effectively replace or supplement federal functions.
Meanwhile, President Trump has deployed federal troops to several Democratic-leaning cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, and Washington, D.C., citing the need to tackle crime and civil unrest. In a recent address, Trump described these cities as “enemies within” and even suggested using them as military training grounds. “We’re under invasion from within,” he declared, targeting what he called “blue” cities. Notably, these deployments have skipped states with the highest crime rates, which tend to be Republican-led, with Memphis as a rare exception.
Critics argue that Trump’s actions are less about law and order and more about punishing political opponents—specifically, states and cities that have forged parallel institutions in response to federal policies they deem hostile or inadequate. As The Globe and Mail observed, “The places Mr. Trump has declared ‘enemies within’ and sent troops to quell are those states and cities that are busy creating shadow federal agencies to replace governing functions he has destroyed.”
These developments are stoking fears of a deeper national schism. Texas, for example, recently passed a bill to redraw its electoral map in ways that would effectively lock out Democratic candidates, while California is asking voters in a November 4 referendum to authorize a “Republican-proof” map until 2031. The seeds of a divided America—one with competing federal authorities and parallel institutions—are being sown, and some observers warn of the potential for eventual secession or even civil conflict if these trends accelerate.
For now, the Tennessee special primary may seem like a local affair, but it unfolds as the country faces questions about the durability of its institutions and the meaning of federalism itself. As the AP notes, there are 56 days until the district’s special election and 392 days until the 2026 midterms—plenty of time for further political upheaval. With shadow federal agencies proliferating and partisan tensions running high, the stakes in contests like Tennessee’s 7th District are higher than ever, both for local voters and for the nation at large.
As Americans cast their ballots and states chart their own courses, the outcome of this special election—and the forces shaping it—will be closely watched by a country grappling with its identity and future.
