Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) announced on Friday that he would not seek re-election after Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature broke up his district.
The ten-term Democrat, who represents the Memphis area, spoke to reporters in Washington on Friday after votes. “This is by far the most difficult moment I’ve had as an elected official,” he said, revealing he sent a letter to the state capital of Nashville requesting not to be on the ballot.
The announcement came days after Tennessee’s legislature convened to redraw the state’s congressional map.
That move came after the Supreme Court handed down the Louisiana v. Callais decision, which not only forced Louisiana to redraw its congressional map, but virtually killed Section 2 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Late last month, the Supreme Court said that Louisiana had relied too heavily on race to redraw its 2024 congressional map.
The population in the previous iteration of the 9th district of Tennessee was 60 percent Black. Despite this, Cohen, who is Jewish, consistently won re-election despite numerous credible challenges from Black candidates.
“It’s unique in America that an African-American-majority district elected a white guy and that we’ve got a relationship,” he said. “And it shows that that district and those people vote and choose as the second section of the Voting Rights Act, they choose the person they think is the best.”
Most recently, state legislature Justin Pearson had jumped in to challenge Cohen in a primary.
The second section of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting rules that discriminate based on race. That also included drawing congressional lines in a way that disenfranchises voters based on their race.
But with the Supreme Court essentially nullifying that section and therefore, the law, Republican-controlled state legislatures have moved to redraw their congressional maps to give Republicans an advantage.
“The African American population has been very much distressed by this ruling,” he said. Cohen said that if the courts halt the new congressional map, he will run for his old office.
“That’s the office I’ve been elected to for 20 years,” he said. “I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter, but these districts were drawn to beat me. They were drawn to defeat me.”
Cohen said he had considered running in one of the new districts, but none of them include Memphis.
“There’s no commonality of issues and purposes between Willamson County and Orange Mound,” he said.
The 9th district was not a Voting Rights Act-protected district, but Cohen said its majority Black population made it unique.
“Because the fact that it’s majority-Black and there are white constituents there too doesn’t mean they don’t have the same interest,” he said.
Already, Louisiana has sought to redraw its congressional maps to draw out one of its majority-Black districts. And earlier this way, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to redraw its congressional map after a court order had prohibited it from doing so until 2030.
After an initial attempt in the South Carolina legislature to draw out the sixth district, which Rep. James Clyburn represents, failed, Gov. Henry McMaster announced the legislature would try again.
Last year, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans began a push for states where Republicans control the legislature and the governorship redraw their congressional districts mid-decade. Historically, redistricting happens once per decade immediately following the U.S. Census.
But Cohen warned this would cause long-term damage to constituents.
“This is for Donald Trump to get one more vote,” he said. “He think it’s to stop him from being impeached.”
Already, states like Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have gone forward with redistricting.
So far, Democrats have only been able to give themselves a boost in California, where voters passed a ballot initiative to allow for a one-time redraw of its congressional map mid-decade and circumvent the state’s redistricting commission.
But Virginia’s supreme court killed an initiative last month voters passed last month that would have done something similar.
