| Behn secured 46% of the vote to her opponent’s 52%, making Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District competitive for the first time in decades. In a district carried by Donald Trump in 2024 by 22% points, Run for Something (RFS) alum Aftyn Behn delivered a dramatic performance in Tuesday’s special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District—showing the power of a battle-tested candidate running a campaign rooted in community and focused on the issues people care about. |
| Run for Something President and Co-Founder Amanda Litman: “What you’re seeing tonight is why Run for Something builds a bench *everywhere* – we’ve got great candidates with local experience & authentic communication skills ready to run and win in places no one saw competitive six months (or years) ago.” Behn’s performance proves that when you invest early, recruit boldly, and give young leaders a real shot, they can compete anywhere. Coming this close in a Trump +22 district isn’t an accident. It is the result of having an authentic local candidate who can relate to the issues her community faces. Her performance stands as a clear signal that political dynamics in even the deepest red districts are changing and that Democrats can compete when they recruit strong candidates and invest in long-term organizing. The remarkable results also underscore the importance of RFS’s newly launched Battle Up Strategy, a $50 million five-year effort focused on electing young leaders to state and local offices and building long-term, sustainable bench Democrats need to compete for higher offices in the future. By developing trusted local leadership first and cultivating candidates who can eventually run for seats like TN-07, Battle Up is designed to transform “unwinnable districts” into real competitive opportunities. The wave of enthusiasm for a new generation of leaders is only growing. Since last night, over 500 people have signed up with Run for Something. This builds on the 5,000 people who signed up in the week after the election. RFS’s pipeline of potential candidates is now nearly 250,000 people strong. And as young people are rising up to run, voters are turning out to support them: Roughly 65% of the RFS candidates on the ballot in November won their races, and 43 of them flipped seats from red to blue. ### Run for Something (RFS) recruits and supports young progressive candidates running for state and local offices. Since its founding, RFS has helped elect over 1,600 candidates across the country, including 43 candidates in red-to-blue seats in the 2025 election cycle. Today, RFS has the largest database of any other Democratic organization, with 75,000 people reaching out since last November with interest in running for office. |
