State Rep. Justin J. Pearson won the most closely watched Democratic congressional primary in Memphis by a landslide Thursday, then quickly turned his attention to the fight that put the race on the map in the first place.
Literally.
Standing before supporters after winning the Democratic nomination for Tennessee’s newly redrawn 9th Congressional District, Pearson reached back exactly 61 years, to Aug. 6, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, before drawing a line to the congressional boundaries Tennessee Republicans approved this spring.
“The political dilution and deprivation of our rights is happening in our lifetime,” Pearson said. “It’s a blatant attempt to keep people like us out of power and an attempt to make us quit.”
Then, to cheers, he added: “That’s a lie. We’re one step closer to Washington, D.C.”
Pearson took 19,209 votes, or 66.2%, in the Shelby County portion of District 9, more than double state Sen. London Lamar’s 8,049 votes, or 27.8%, according to complete unofficial Shelby County returns.
His victory sets up a November showdown with Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor — and the first major test of what Tennessee’s dramatically redrawn congressional map will ultimately mean for Memphis.
But Pearson will not be testing that map alone.
Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder won the Democratic nomination in the newly configured 5th District, while outgoing Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn captured the nomination in District 8.
Together, the three races raise an intriguing possibility about a map designed to weaken Democratic voting strength in Memphis:
Could dividing Memphis among three congressional districts ultimately give the city influence in three congressional offices instead of one?
The odds remain decidedly against it.
Republicans drew all three districts to favor GOP candidates, breaking apart the compact, majority-Black and reliably Democratic 9th District that retiring U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen has represented for nearly two decades. The new districts stretch Shelby County voters into more conservative territory across West and Middle Tennessee.
But Thursday established the Democratic trio that gets a chance to test that arithmetic.
Pearson: ‘We’ve got a lot more work to do’
Pearson’s election-night speech made clear that he views Thursday not as the conclusion of a campaign, but as the end of its first stage.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he told supporters. “We have a lot more doors to knock. We have a lot more phone calls to make.”
He urged supporters not only to stay involved but to bring someone else with them.
“We are going to celebrate tonight because the first leg is won,” Pearson said, describing the November general election as the more important second leg.
That next leg pits two sitting Shelby County legislators against each other in a district drawn specifically to stretch Memphis’ political influence far beyond the city.
Taylor took 3,252 votes, or 70%, among Shelby Republicans in District 9. Pearson took nearly the identical share — 66.2% — among Shelby Democrats.
The result sets up a sharp ideological contrast.
Taylor has made crime, immigration and public safety central to his political identity. Pearson, who became nationally known as one of the “Tennessee Three” after his 2023 expulsion from the state House, used his victory speech to frame the race more broadly around working families, corporate power, health care, environmental issues and voting rights.
“This is about the billionaire class against us,” Pearson said. “Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, an independent, this race is about protecting our state, our home and our future from the corrupt politicians in D.C. and the billionaires seeking to destroy our lives.”
He also acknowledged the difficulty of what lies ahead.
“If this gathering is the last time that you engage with this campaign for Congress, we’re going to lose,” Pearson told supporters. “If this celebration is the last time we see your face, this is the last time you donate, this is the last time you show up — look, we got 89 days.”
“You can do anything for 89 days,” he said.
Lamar, meanwhile, conceded graciously on social media, congratulating the winners and turning her attention toward Democratic unity in November.
“Tonight, the voters made their choice, and while this isn’t the outcome we worked and prayed for, I am incredibly proud of the campaign we ran and the people who stood with us,” Lamar wrote.
She urged supporters to “make sure we focus on getting Democrats elected up and down the ballot this November.”
Lamar said she would return to her work in the Tennessee Senate and emphasized that losing the congressional race did not change her commitment to public service.
“This chapter ends tonight,” she wrote. “The work does not.”
One city, three districts
Thursday provided the first election results under those new congressional boundaries. And they revealed three very different relationships between Memphis and the Democrats who now carry their party’s banner into November.
Pearson won Shelby overwhelmingly. Kuhn built her victory squarely on a Shelby County political base. Molder did something altogether different: He won District 5 without winning Shelby County.
For decades, Memphis formed the center of its own congressional district. That ended this spring when Republican lawmakers divided Shelby County among congressional Districts 5, 8 and 9, each extending outward into more Republican portions of Tennessee. Cohen subsequently announced that he would not seek reelection under the new District 9 map.
Molder loses Shelby, wins District 5
Molder emerged from the five-candidate District 5 Democratic primary even though Memphis City Councilwoman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton beat him among Shelby County voters. Cooper-Sutton received 9,680 votes, or 41.4%, in the Shelby County portion of the district. Molder received 8,796, or 37.6%. The rest of the sprawling district made the difference.
That may offer a glimpse at the coalition Molder would have to assemble in November.
The radically reconfigured 5th reaches from parts of Memphis north along the Mississippi River, then across Tennessee toward Molder’s Middle Tennessee base. AP estimates that 82% of the district’s voters are new to the 5th.
Molder will face former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, who delivered one of the night’s biggest Republican upsets by knocking off incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles.
Ogles entered the primary with Trump’s endorsement. Hatcher had the backing of Gov. Bill Lee, under whom he served as agriculture commissioner.
Shelby Republicans backed Hatcher as well, giving him 1,416 votes to Ogles’ 1,064.
For Memphis, Molder presents an interesting version of the redistricting paradox. He is not a Memphis politician. His political base is in Columbia. Yet thousands of Memphis voters are now part of the constituency he would have to represent if elected.
Kuhn carries her Shelby base into District 8
Kuhn’s route to the Democratic nomination looked much more familiar. She received 19,734 Shelby County votes — 59.3% of the Democratic ballots cast in the District 8 primary there. Dewey Gordon Bryan finished a distant second in Shelby with 6,422 votes.
Kuhn, who has served as Shelby County Criminal Court clerk since 2018, will face incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. David Kustoff, who had no primary opposition. Kustoff has represented West Tennessee in Congress since 2017.
The new 8th contains the largest share of Shelby County among the three redrawn districts, including parts of Memphis and several suburban communities, before extending through rural West Tennessee.
Kuhn therefore enters November with an identifiable Shelby County base, but must expand well beyond it to defeat an established Republican incumbent in a district drawn to favor him.
Divide — or multiply?
No one should mistake three Democratic nominations for three Democratic congressional seats.
The map was designed to make that outcome unlikely.
Even one Democratic victory would require outperforming the partisan lean built into the new districts. Winning all three would amount to a dramatic political reversal.
But the new map creates a different relationship between Memphis and Congress regardless of which party wins.
Instead of most of Memphis looking to one representative, Shelby County residents will now be constituents of three members of Congress.
If Republicans sweep the three races, critics of the map will likely point to the results as confirmation that Memphis’ heavily Democratic electorate was divided to reduce its ability to choose its representatives.
But if Pearson, Molder and Kuhn somehow run the table, the political irony would be difficult to miss.
