A 10-term Tennessee congressman announced Friday he will retire from the House after state Republicans redrew his Memphis-based district out of existence, a move that could hand the GOP a clean sweep of the state’s federal delegation.
Rep. Steve Cohen, who has represented Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District since 2007, said Friday he will not seek reelection after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved a new congressional map that effectively eliminated his majority Black district. Cohen called the decision the most difficult of his political career.
The redistricting effort follows a recent Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led states across the South to redraw districts that had previously been protected as majority-minority constituencies.
Tennessee joins a small group of GOP-controlled Southern states moving swiftly to dismantle majority Black congressional districts in the wake of that ruling. The practical effect in Tennessee is the near-certain elimination of Democratic representation in the state’s nine-member U.S. House delegation.
Cohen has served as the only Democrat in that delegation for several years, a distinction that underscored both his political resilience and the ideological lean of the state’s broader congressional map.
First elected in 2006, Cohen noted that he had won nine consecutive reelection campaigns without losing a single precinct — a record he described as particularly notable given that he is a white representative who earned sustained electoral support from a predominantly Black constituency.
The departure of Cohen would mark a significant shift in the composition of Tennessee’s federal representation and reflects a broader national pattern in which redistricting battles, energized by recent court decisions, are reshaping the partisan and demographic character of congressional districts across the South.
