Justin Pearson Trails Brent Taylor in Tight Race for Tennessee's Redrawn 9th District, Won't Concede

Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor has declared victory over Democratic state Rep. Justin J. Pearson in the race for Tennessee’s newly redrawn 9th Congressional District. Pearson has not conceded, saying he wants every ballot counted first.

Final unofficial counts from the Tennessee Secretary of State gave Taylor 111,968 votes (49.63%), about 2,500 votes ahead of Pearson, the Tennessee Lookout reported. Memphis station Action News 5 put the race at 49.6% for Taylor to 48.5% for Pearson as of 11 p.m. Central time Tuesday, with an estimated 99% of precincts reporting. As of 11:55 p.m., the Associated Press had not called the race, according to the Lookout.

Did Justin Pearson win?

Not according to the unofficial count, which shows him narrowly behind. But in the reporting reviewed for this story, the race had not been officially called.

Taylor claimed victory on social media just after 11 p.m. “Thank you Middle and West Tennessee! I won’t let you down!” he wrote, according to the Lookout.

Pearson said he would wait for an official call before conceding. “At this point, we want everybody’s ballots to be counted,” he said. He told the Lookout his campaign had not decided whether to challenge the results, and that he will keep serving as a state representative for Memphis if the race does not go his way.

Conflicting early reports

Reports on the margin have not all agreed. The Tennessee Tribune, citing election-night Associated Press results reported by theGrio, said Pearson lost with 32.21% of the vote to Taylor’s 65.68%. That is far wider than the roughly one-point gap the Lookout and Action News 5 reported from later counts, and the Tribune’s numbers may reflect an early, partial snapshot. Readers should treat the state’s official tally as the final word once it is certified.

A district redrawn months before the election

The 9th District once covered nearly all of Memphis. It had been represented by Democrats for more than 40 years and was Tennessee’s last Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat, the Lookout reported.

In May, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, Tennessee Republicans held a special session and redrew the map. The new plan splits Memphis into three districts. The redrawn 9th is an L-shaped district that runs from the Memphis airport across rural West Tennessee and into part of Williamson County in Middle Tennessee. Action News 5 reported that it stretches about 200 miles, and that more than 70% of its voters are new to the district.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rated the new district “Solid Republican,” though with the weakest GOP lean of the state’s nine districts. Democrats accused Republicans of racial gerrymandering.

Longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who held the seat since 2007, ended his campaign rather than run in any of the three redrawn Memphis districts.

Who is Justin J. Pearson?

Pearson, 31, became nationally known in 2023 as one of the “Tennessee Three.” The Republican supermajority expelled him and fellow Democrat Justin Jones from the state House after they protested gun violence on the House floor following the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. The Shelby County Commission quickly reappointed Pearson to his seat.

His congressional platform focused on economic opportunity, higher wages, expanded health care access and gun violence prevention. He also opposed the expansion of large data centers, according to the Tennessee Tribune. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was among the prominent Democrats who backed him.

“I’m just 31, so I’m ready to do it,” Pearson said Tuesday night, describing the relationships his campaign built in new parts of the district.

Who is Brent Taylor?

Taylor is a Republican state senator from Memphis. He entered the race for the new district almost immediately and was endorsed by President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn. He repeatedly called Pearson a Democratic Socialist. The week before the election, his campaign was hit by a Nashville Scene report on allegations that he sent unsolicited nude pictures to someone in 2021, the Lookout reported.

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