Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen stood in his Washington office on Friday surrounded by staff and photographs of Memphis landmarks, announcing the end of a congressional career that had spanned two decades. The Republican-led Tennessee legislature, armed with a Supreme Court ruling that gutted key Voting Rights Act protections, had dismantled his district — a majority-Black seat that sent Cohen to Washington as one of the last white Democrats representing the South.
“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters. He said he will challenge the state’s redistricting in court and would reenter the race if his old district is restored.
Tennessee was the first state to pass new congressional maps after the Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina have also taken steps toward redistricting, raising the prospect that more Democratic-held seats in the South could be targeted before the November elections.
Cohen, who is the first Jewish person to represent Tennessee in Congress and has held his Memphis-based seat for about twenty years, said the new maps would likely leave Tennessee without any Democratic representative in Washington. He warned that the state would be “out of the loop” when Democrats regain the White House.
Cohen said the Republican redistricting effort was being done “for Donald Trump to get one more vote, he thinks, to stop him from being impeached.” He vowed to use his remaining time in Congress to oppose Trump, calling the president “the greatest threat to democracy and to decorum and grace that we’ve ever seen.”
State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Black progressive who represents much of Memphis in Tennessee’s General Assembly, had already launched a primary challenge against Cohen. On Friday, Pearson told the Associated Press that he would stay in the race for the redrawn 9th Congressional District, even though the new boundaries now include multiple rural counties that backed Trump by double-digit margins.
“The status quo is failing us,” Pearson said. “It’s time for new energy, new voices, and new ideas to meet this present moment, and that’s why I started to run in the first place.” He predicted he would win, though he acknowledged it would be harder. “We’re going to win. It’s going to be harder, but as an ancestor once said, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it,” Pearson said.
Cohen predicted it would be “nearly impossible” for a Democrat to win a seat in Congress under the new map, though he said the redistricting could backfire on Republicans if there was an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and massive turnout.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement calling Cohen “a powerful champion for civil rights” and said that “the City of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference.”
Memphis activists grappled with the new political reality. Tierney Macon, an activist with The Equity Alliance, a local civil rights group, said activists would work to hold the city’s new representatives in Congress accountable regardless of their party.
“Things are going to change. We’re aware of that,” Macon said. “We just have to be engaged.” Demonstrators at the Tennessee statehouse had chanted that the redrawn maps resurrected Jim Crow, the system of state and local laws that for decades enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement across the South.
Cohen, a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee who focused on voting access and civil rights, has often drawn attention for his colorful moments in Congress. During Trump’s first term, he brought a bucket of fried chicken to a committee hearing when then-Attorney General William Barr failed to appear, saying the message was that Barr was “not brave enough to answer questions.” On Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Cohen screamed at his Republican colleagues to “Call Trump. Call your friend. Tell him to do something.” He was one of the first Democrats to join impeachment efforts against Trump and has again signed on to articles of impeachment this year.