在某些方面，田纳西州第九国会选区的选举结果早在5月就已注定，当时共和党籍州长比尔·李和田纳西州议会重绘了该州的立法选区地图——将田纳西州唯一一个白人选民非多数的选区拆分为三个新选区，旨在使其倾向共和党，这是继4月最高法院作出削弱联邦《投票权法案》的裁决之后采取的行动。
In some ways, the outcome of Tennessee’s ninth district congressional election was determined in May, when Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the Tennessee legislature redrew the state’s legislative maps—carving Tennessee’s sole district in which white voters were not a majority into three new ones designed to lean Republican, following an April Supreme Court ruling that gutted the federal Voting Rights Act.
虽然共和党的杰利蝾螈划区努力在佛罗里达州和北卡罗来纳州失败了，但它们似乎在田纳西州第九选区勉强取得了成功，该选区包含孟菲斯市的部分地区，共和党人布伦特·泰勒于11月3日深夜宣布获胜，以约2500票的优势击败了民主党人贾斯汀·皮尔森，当时已统计99%的选票。
While Republican gerrymandering efforts failed in Florida and North Carolina, they seem to have narrowly succeeded in Tennessee’s ninth district, which includes part of Memphis, and where Republican Brent Taylor declared victory late on the night of November 3, defeating Democrat Justin Pearson by about 2,500 votes with 99 percent of votes counted.
皮尔森是一位黑人进步派人士，2023年当选田纳西州众议员代表孟菲斯，他最初因作为“田纳西三人组”之一而在全国崭露头角，当时他因在州议会大厦内共同发起一场要求枪支改革的个人抗议而被免职。后来他在补选中赢回了席位。
Pearson, a Black progressive elected in 2023 to represent Memphis in the Tennessee House of Representatives, first rose to national prominence as one of the “Tennessee Three,” when he was removed from office after co-leading a personal protest for gun reform on the statehouse floor. He later won back his seat in a special election.
田纳西州第九选区的民主党籍现任联邦众议员史蒂夫·科恩表示，他将在初选期间退休，而不是试图在一个经过杰利蝾螈划区、共和党如今拥有21个百分点优势的选区中夺回席位。但皮尔森——面临比划区前更糟的胜算，在一个现在包含三K党发源地的选区里——坚持参选。
The Democratic incumbent for Tennessee’s ninth district, Rep. Steve Cohen, said he would retire during the primary rather than try to win back his seat in a gerrymandered district where the Republican Party now held a 21-point advantage. But Pearson—facing worse chances than he had before the gerrymandering, in a district that now includes the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan—kept running.
他将竞选信息的核心放在反对数据中心建设上，这是一种经济民粹主义信息，他希望能引起该选区共和党和民主党选民的共鸣，因为埃隆·马斯克的xAI正在该选区积极扩大其业务版图。
He centered his campaign messaging on opposition to data center buildout, a message of economic populism that he hoped could resonate with Republicans and Democrats in a district where Elon Musk’s xAI is aggressively expanding its footprint.
“这种MAGA设想的州和MAGA设想的国家对我们任何人都没有好处，包括MAGA支持者。尤其是MAGA支持者，”他在10月告诉《商业申报报》。“在世界历史上最富有的国家里，生活不应该这么难。我的观点是，如果你不是亿万富翁，你就是我们中的一员。”
“This MAGA-envisioned state and MAGA-envisioned country are not good for any of us, including MAGA people. Especially MAGA people,” he told the in October. “Life should not be this hard in the richest country in the history of the world. My thing is that, if you are not a billionaire, you are one of us.”
州参议员布伦特·泰勒是皮尔逊的共和党对手，他将自己定位为强硬保守派基督徒。泰勒获得了唐纳德·特朗普总统的背书，但在选举前几天，他的竞选活动因被发现发送了一系列未经请求的裸照而陷入混乱。他驳斥了这些指控，并称这些行为是“青春期的轻率举动”，尽管《商业申报报》发现，泰勒发送其中一些照片的时间最近可追溯至2021年，当时泰勒已53岁。
State Sen. Brent Taylor, Pearson’s Republican rival, has pitched himself as a hard-line conservative Christian. Taylor was endorsed by President Donald Trump, but his campaign was thrown into chaos days before the election when he was found to have sent a series of unsolicited nude photos. He dismissed those allegations and called the acts “youthful indiscretions,” although the found that Taylor sent some of the photos as recently as 2021, when Taylor was 53.
正如ProPublica和总部位于孟菲斯的媒体MLK50最近报道的那样，在他在田纳西州参议院的四年里，他一直致力于破坏少数族裔选民的利益：“在共和党超级多数派的支持下，身为白人的泰勒强行通过了六部法律，取代了地方政客的权力和优先事项，”温迪·C·托马斯写道。
In his four years in the Tennessee State Senate, as ProPublica and the Memphis-based outlet MLK50 recently reported, he has consistently worked to undermine minority voters’ interests: “With the backing of a Republican supermajority, Taylor, who is white, pushed through half a dozen laws that superseded the power and priorities of local politicians,” as Wendi C. Thomas wrote.
在其他经过选区划分的田纳西州选区，民主党人设法翻盘夺得席位。在该州第四选区（纳什维尔以南），维多利亚·布罗德里克击败了连任八届的共和党现任议员斯科特·德贾莱，取得了一场冷门胜利。甚至在第九选区，布伦特·泰勒的胜利也异常微弱，包括在两年前特朗普大获全胜的县份。
In other gerrymandered Tennessee districts, Democrats managed to flip seats. In the state’s fourth district, south of Nashville, Victoria Broderick pulled off an upset victory against eight-term GOP incumbent Scott DesJarlais. And even in the ninth district, Brent Taylor’s victory was remarkably narrow, including in counties Trump won in a landslide two years ago.
“我们选区的每一个县对民主党的支持率都在10到30个百分点之间摆动，这源于我们的愿景：将大额资金腐败赶出政治，阻止亿万富翁在我们自家后院建设有毒数据中心，并挑战两党的惯常政治，”贾斯汀·皮尔逊在11月4日的认输演讲中表示。
“Every single county in our district swung between 10 and 30 points toward Democrats, inspired by our vision to get big money corruption out of politics, stop billionaires from building toxic data centers in our backyards, and take on politics as usual in both parties,” Justin Pearson stated in a November 4th concession speech.
皮尔森的政治生涯并未结束。他将继续担任孟菲斯州议员。他说：“田纳西政治再也不会一样了。”在竞选将原本预计的24个百分点的共和党领先优势缩小到不足3000票之后，他如是说。
Pearson’s political career isn’t over. He will continue to serve as a state representative for Memphis. And “Tennessee politics will never be the same,” he said, after his campaign turned a projected 24-point Republican lead into a margin of fewer than 3,000 votes. ‘I’m really excited about the fact that we’re going into these counties, we’re making inroads, we’re building relationships and connections that are going to outlast a single campaignm” Pearson told the Tennessee Lookout late Tuesday night.
周二深夜，皮尔森对《田纳西观察家》表示：“我真的很兴奋，因为我们即将进入这些县，我们在拓展地盘，我们在建立关系和联系，这些都将超越一场竞选。我们还有大量工作要做，而我才31岁，所以我准备好去做。”
“We’ve got a lot more work to do, and I’m just 31, so I’m ready to do it.”