FRANKLIN, Tenn. — The crowd milling around the sleek multimillion-dollar barn full of gleaming vintage cars was already a snapshot of the Republican elite in Tennessee. There were donors, state representatives, five members of Congress, the governor and the candidate for the state’s House special election Tuesday, Matt Van Epps.

Then House Speaker Mike Johnson, who flew in from Washington early Monday, called President Donald Trump and put his phone on speaker.

“The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching your district,” Trump said, his voice crackling over the phone. The election, he added, “has got to show that the Republican Party is stronger than it’s ever been.”

The phone call, coupled with the convergence of political heavyweights, underscored just how much Republicans appear rattled by the Tuesday election for what would normally be a safe conservative seat in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. It is the final special election of 2025 and, as Johnson told reporters, “we think what will happen here will be a bellwether for the midterms next year.”

Van Epps is running against state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat who has energized many in her party despite a political record perceived by some as too liberal for Tennessee.

“I thought Tennessee was deep red. How did that happen?” Johnson said of Behn, calling her “a dangerous far leftist” who would be a “rubber stamp” for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a favorite progressive target for Republicans, among others.

The district, which cuts through part of Nashville and stretches between the borders with Alabama and Kentucky, was left vacant after Rep. Mark Green stepped down for a private sector job this year.

Much of the rally was not about Van Epps, an Army veteran and former state commissioner, but was instead focused on what a Republican victory Tuesday would mean for the party’s razor-thin majority in the House and the country’s future.

Survey Shows Van Epps Beating Behn

An Emerson College survey last week showed Van Epps beating Behn by only 2 percentage points, an uncomfortable margin in a district carefully drawn to favor a Republican candidate. Trump won the area by more than 20 points last year.

“We are out front right now, but we want to finish this fight,” Van Epps said.

Van Epps’ former primary opponents, three congressional representatives and both U.S. senators from the state all lined up to cast the race as a chance to prove the state’s Republican bona fides and reject the liberal tack of national Democrats.

They pointed to Behn’s support for transgender Tennesseans, her enthusiastic trailing of immigration agents in Nashville this year in protest of their presence, and comments she made in 2020 that were critical of the police.

Such a candidate, Sen. Marsha Blackburn told the crowd, is not the type of person who “should be representing Tennesseans, and you all are not going to let it happen.”

Rep. Tim Burchett, who drove in from Knoxville, was more blunt. “Folks, we are one flu season away from losing the majority,” he told the crowd, adding, “This is our chance to tell America we’ve had enough of this far-left craziness and everything that this woman represents.”

He was among those who pointed to one clip in which Behn professed a hatred for Nashville and its downtown tourist scene of pedal taverns, country music and bachelorettes as a sign that she is out of touch with the district. (“How the hell can you elect a person like that?” Trump asked.)

Behn, for her part, spent the weekend canvassing with Democrats across the district and is expected to hold a virtual rally with Ocasio-Cortez and former Vice President Al Gore, the last Tennessee Democrat to rise to the highest levels of national politics.

In a statement that highlighted Behn’s focus on issues of affordability, Abhi Rahman, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said, “Win or lose, Republicans have been forced to spend millions, deploy resources, and pull out all of the stops to try to save a Republican seat in a district that Trump won by 22 points.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Emily Cochrane/William DeShazer
c. 2025 The New York Times Company