Solid Progressive-- Not Just Democratic-- Win In Nashville This Week

Good political news out of Tennessee is far and in-between. It came Thursday night when Democratic activist Aftyn Behn beat Republican David Hooven for an open state legislative seat in East Nashville (Old Hickory, Madison, Inglewood, Downtown, The Gulch, Germantown and Salemtown). East Nashville is very blue so Behn’s election victory isn’t the real story here. The real story is much more interesting.

Let’s start with… well, the Democrat who represented the district, Bill Beck, had a heart attack and died on June 4. The Nashville Metro Council appointed one of its own, Anthony Davis, as the interim representative. He then announced he would run for the seat as an incumbent. Unfortunately for him, so did Behn, who is far more progressive and was backed by Rep. Gloria Johnson and Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America. She defeated Davis in the August 3 primary with 53.5% of the vote.

On Thursday she won the general with 75.6% of the vote. And that’s the story. Why? Well… she outperformed the 2020 results in her district by a whopping 9 points— even higher than the average Democratic Party special election over-performance so far this year (7.4 points). And the question then becomes… why were East Nashville voters so fired up? How about that it was clear to them that there was no lesser of two evils choice being asked of them. Aftyn Behn is the real thing— something most of us never get a chance to vote for.

The Establishment she is not. She’s been a progressive organizer for years and has clashed with the Republicans who completely control Tennessee’s state government. In fact, she was kicked out of the state Capitol several times, starting in 2019 when she was protesting the legislature’s refusal to take action against one of it’s own, sex predator David Byrd, who represented a rural district in Hardin, Lawrence, Lewis and Wayne counties. He was a basketball coach at Wayne County High School, where he was molesting underage team members. Byrd denied the allegations from 3 former students but one of them taped him saying “I can promise you one thing, I have been so sorry for that; I've lived with that and you don't know how hard it has been for me.” He was reelected in 2018 because… well, like I said, rural Republican district, so everybody does it, right? Gloria Johnson tried to get him expelled from the House so he promised not to run again. But he reneged and ran again— and won again (rural Republican Tennessee). He finally voluntarily retired last year.

Behn led the protest against him at the Capitol, so those fabulous Republicans in the state legislature expelled her instead of him. Of course. During her victory speech Thursday night she said she would align with Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson. Now there are four.

It’s also worth noting that another progressive, Freddie O’Connell was elected mayor of Nashville, beating Republican Alice Rolli, with 63.9% of the vote. They had been the two top vote-getters in the August primary, where he took 27.1% to her 20.2%. The Democratic establishment pick was conservative state Senator Jeff Yarbro, who finished with 12.2%.