Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen announces retirement after GOP dismantles his district

Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call on May 15, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen announced Friday that he wouldn’t seek reelection this year after Tennessee Republicans redrew the state’s House map, splitting his Memphis-based district between three deep-red seats.

Cohen, who had been facing a primary challenge from state Rep. Justin Pearson before the passage of the new lines, said the seat he could have sought reelection to was “nothing like the 9th District that I’ve represented.”

“I considered running in one of these three districts, but they’re not Memphis,” he said at a news conference in his Washington office.

The sole Democrat in Tennessee’s congressional delegation, Cohen, who is white, pointed out that he’s represented a majority-Black district over 10 terms in the House.

“It’s unique in America that an African American-majority district has elected a white guy, and we’ve had a great relationship and a great amount of support,” Cohen said.

Tennessee was the first state to enact a new House map in the wake of last month’s Supreme Court ruling, which restricted the use of race in drawing congressional districts. The Republican-dominated state legislature approved a new map that would favor the GOP in all nine of the state’s House districts.

The new 9th District stretches from Memphis to the Nashville area along the state’s border with Mississippi and Alabama and would have backed Donald Trump in 2024 by 21 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

Cohen was among a group of Democrats and voters who asked for a temporary restraining order on the new map, but Axios Nashville reported Thursday that a judge had denied that request, although the legal challenge will continue. Friday is the filing deadline for the August primary.

Cohen on Friday left the door open to potentially changing his mind on retirement.

“We are still fighting, and if we prevail in the courts and the 9th District remains intact, I will remain a candidate and will be proud to represent you for another two years,” he said in a statement.

Pearson, who is Black, relaunched his bid for the redrawn 9th District earlier this week. Republicans seeking the seat include state Sen. Brent Taylor, who has the support of Tennessee’s two senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty; and state Rep. Todd Warner. Inside Elections rates the race Solid Republican.

With his retirement announcement, Cohen caps a political career of nearly half a century representing the Memphis area. He served on the Shelby County Commission and later spent more than two decades in the Tennessee Senate. He was first elected to Congress in 2006, succeeding Rep. Harold Ford Jr. While he won his first primary over a largely Black field with a plurality, he has handily defeated prominent Black opponents in subsequent primaries.

Over nearly two decades in the House, Cohen has served on the Judiciary Committee, working on voting rights issues, and on the Natural Resources Committee. In 2019, he made headlines for chowing down on a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to mock Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, who had declined to testify before the Judiciary panel on the Mueller report.