Matt Van Epps, the Republican candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, defeated his Democrat opponent, Aftyn Behn, in a special election on Tuesday night.
The race was called by Dave Wasserman, Senior Editor and Election Analyst for the Cook Political Report.
Van Epps and Aftyn Behn were vying for the U.S. Congressional seat that former Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) left vacant, as he resigned from Congress for a job in the private sector.
Van Epps’ win comes after he appeared on Breitbart News Daily, stating that it was “a critical election for the balance of power in the House for Republicans to hold the majority.”
“This is a critical election for the balance of power in the House for Republicans to hold the majority,” Van Epps said. “You know there — when you, when you look out over the next several months and you see the folks that are either resigning, and you know those seats potentially in play, you look at what California is doing, this very well could come down to a single vote.”
Breitbart News’s Katherine Hamilton reported that during an episode of her podcast Grits in 2020, Behn “used the term ‘birthers’ before clarifying ‘men and women who can give birth.’”:
“I think as an organizer and as an activist, we really have an opportunity here in this country to talk about what type of progressive policies we want to see as young women, and I think we have as birthers, as women who can give birth — men and women who can give birth — we can maybe leverage that as collective bargaining, which is the basis of this book that I’ve just started reading called “Birth Strike,” and how we can really leverage collective bargaining when it comes to having children in this country,” Behn said in a podcast episode called “The Plurality of ‘Pro-Life.’”
The Daily Wire reported that after the March 2023 shooting at The Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville, Behn and her family expressed sympathies for the transgender community.
Behn shared during a “candidate forum” in July 2023, that her partner “has a trans son.” Behn added after the shooting, and after information released revealed that the shooter identified as transgender, she was “pulled into a chat with other trans organizers and activists across the state that were fearful of their lives.”
In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump called for “all America First Patriots in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District to please GET OUT AND VOTE” for Van Epps.
