What last-minute Trump phone calls reveal about White House fears over TN special election

All eyes on Tennessee Tuesday as voters in the 7th district hit the polls for a special election to fill their vacant congressional seat that has captured the national spotlight. According to a new analysis from Slate, the race is poised to be the "definitive barometer" for the chances Democrats have to usurp Republicans in the 2026 midterms, and its got President Donald Trump concerned enough to call in to the campaign trail.

The seat at the heart of this special election was vacated in the summer, when former Rep. Mark Green left office to take a job in the private sector. GOP nominee Matt Van Epps, a former state government commissioner, was initially seen as the obvious favorite to take the seat, given that the district is solidly Republican and went for Trump by 22 points in 2024. Expectations were upended, however, when Democrats surged to commanding victories on Election Day 2025, spurred on by voter uproar over Trump's second presidency.

Now, Democrats see the race as one where a major upset is possible. Aftyn Behn, an activist turned state representative, is the Democratic nominee, and recently polled only two points behind Van Epps in a reputable Emerson College survey of likely voters. While the Republican is still tipped to win, a close race would still be a major swing against the GOP from voters, while a win would massively imperil their already razor-thin House majority.

Writing for Slate on Tuesday, reporter Ben Jacobs summed up the aspects of the race that could make it the clearest indicator yet of how voters are swinging back to Democrats under Trump and how that swing will impact the 2026 midterms, and led with a story from his time on the ground in Tennessee.

The prospect of a bruising loss or a close race has spooked Republicans enough to get the president involved. As Jacobs detailed, Trump has been making campaign appearances for Van Epps via phone calls, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is there in person, holding up a phone to a microphone to a phone with Trump on speakerphone. On Monday morning, the Slate writer witnessed such a scene at a burger restaurant north of Nashville, where Trump repeated prior attacks against Behn, calling her "anti-Christian" and "anti-country music," while Johnson and Van Epps lavished him with gratitude.

"Polls show the race uncomfortably close for Republicans, and the real shock isn’t that Trump was calling to come up with attacks on a Democratic congressional candidate—it was that he had to call at all," Jacobs wrote.

He highlighted the district's key demographics, ones that both parties will rely on in next year's elections, and the smaller public profile of each candidate, meaning that their platforms will inform their success more than their reputations.

"The gerrymandering left the seat a heterogeneous array, including many of the base demographics both parties will need to turn out next November," Jacobs wrote. "It includes the bulk of metro Nashville’s African American population, plenty of progressive hipsters who’ve flocked to the city from across the South, traditional right wing suburbia and slices of Appalachia."

He continued: "And, unlike the Virginia and New Jersey elections, it’s a federal election featuring relatively unknown candidates without any complicating state issues... Tennessee’s 7th is a far cleaner test of what 2026 will look like—and not just because it’s a congressional election focusing on federal issues. Instead, it’s a test run for everything that will happen next year. Behn focused consistently on affordability in her television ads and on the trail. In contrast, Van Epps—a more establishment-oriented candidate who locked down the Republican nomination after securing Trump’s endorsement—has rotated between touting his Trump support, his biography and, increasingly, going after Behn as 'radical.'"

To highlight why a loss for Behn could still be a "bellwether" for Democrats' success in 2026, he highlighted the 2017 special election in which Democrat Jon Ossoff, a future senator, came close to winning a congressional seat seen as a safe bet for the GOP. His overperformance was a "canary in the coal mine," foreshadowing the heavy Republican losses to come in the 2018 midterms.