Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson won the Democratic primary in the Volunteer State’s newly redrawn 9th Congressional District on Thursday, besting state Sen. London Lamar to advance to the general election.
Pearson defeated Lamar by a 40-point margin, winning 64.9% of the vote to the state senator’s 24.9% of the vote, according to the Associated Press. Pearson took a chance on the federal congressional primary after he garnered national attention for his role as part of the “Tennessee Three,” the group of state lawmakers who were briefly expelled from the legislature over their gun violence protest on the chamber floor.
As the Democratic candidate for the district after Tennessee’s mid-decade redistricting, Pearson will face an uphill battle in the general election. The 9th District swung from a solid Democratic district to solidly Republican after the redraw, which split Memphis and its suburbs up from one district into three.
Retiring Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who has represented Memphis in the 9th District for nearly two decades, saw the writing on the wall and dropped his bid for reelection after the state’s redistricting move, leaving the primary open to Pearson and Lamar.
The primary race between Pearson and Lamar became another ideological battle between a progressive and a more traditional Democrat, a primary trend that has dominated the Democratic party’s story throughout the 2026 election cycle.
Pearson earned endorsements from the anti-establishment likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), while Lamar won the backing of Cohen, one of the area’s most longtime and prominent Democratic leaders.
Lamar’s agenda focused on issues such as lowering the cost of living through affordable housing, childcare, and utilities; stabilizing rural hospitals; and protecting food security programs, while Pearson campaigned on progressive platform issues such as advancing Medicare for all, fighting back against reported environmental effects of data centers, and “poverty eradication,” as his website reads, through steps like increasing the minimum wage and taxing the rich.
Pearson’s win notches another victory for the more progressive side of the Democratic party, following Abdul el Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Senate race over centrist Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) this week.
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Pearson is expected to face President Donald Trump-endorsed and favored GOP candidate State Sen. Brent Taylor in the November general election. The area encompassing the newly redrawn 9th District, which sits on the state’s southern border east of Memphis, voted for Trump by a 21 percentage point margin, according to the Cook Political Report.