Last week, Tennessee held its primary elections, and MVP partners went all out in the newly GOP-gerrymandered 9th Congressional District to help Democrat Justin J. Pearson secure victory.
MVP partners TIRRC Votes and The Equity Alliance Fund knocked thousands of doors and turned out Black, brown, immigrant, and working-class voters of all races in support of Pearson to help him win in a landslide.
How It Started: GOP Redistricting Hits Tennessee
In May, after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (again) and further opened the door for racial gerrymandering, Tennessee’s GOP-controlled state legislature and GOP governor approved a new congressional map that split Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District covering Memphis and much of Shelby County — the state’s only Black-majority district — into three new districts.
Photo: Organizers in Tennessee descend on the state capital to resist racial gerrymandering after the Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act.
Previously, TN-09 was the state’s only democratically held House seat, but Republicans in the state — at Trump’s urging — “cracked” the district specifically to split and weaken Black voters’ power in the hopes of gaining a Republican seat in Congress.
As Tennessee and other states across the South wasted no time redrawing their congressional maps, MVP partners showed up in state capitals, outside state legislatures, and in the streets to resist racial gerrymandering and make their voices heard.
Organizers in Tennessee harnessed this surge of resistance to turn voters’ anger into political power.
Photo: TIRRC Votes canvassers knocking doors for Democratic U.S. House candidate Justin J. Pearson.
How It’s Going: MVP Partners Help Advance Justin J. Pearson for TN-09
Newly victorious Democratic candidate for TN-09 Justin J. Pearson is best known for being part of the Tennessee Three — a group of Democratic state lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for leading a gun control protest on the state House floor after a fatal school shooting in Nashville in March 2023.
Pearson eventually regained his seat and spent his time in the state House fighting for policies and programs that working-class families need. His congressional campaign platform reflects these priorities — gun safety, healthcare for all, money out of politics, raising the minimum wage, and more.
MVP partners TIRRC Votes and The Equity Alliance Fund endorsed Pearson and hit the streets knocking doors and talking to voters to mobilize them to the polls. Together, they knocked more than 30,000 doors, persuading and mobilizing voters — primarily Black, brown, and immigrant voters— about why they should vote for Pearson.
TIRRC Votes drove busloads of canvassers across the sprawling, 200-mile district that stretches across the rural, southern area of the state from Memphis up towards the suburbs of Nashville. They also hosted phonebanks and provided voting information in English and Spanish, including information for anyone afraid to vote under the current climate of increased immigration enforcement.
The Equity Alliance Fund knocked doors in Memphis and other parts of Shelby County, held events to remind voters of when and how to vote, and even partnered with local celebrity SouthMemphis HypeMan on a community event and canvass launch to get voters to the polls.
Photo: The Equity Alliance Fund and TIRRC Votes teaming up to knock doors for Justin J. Pearson in Tennessee’s primary election.
Why It Matters: Transforming the South Is Not Optional
You may be asking, “That’s great that Justin Pearson won, but isn’t he just going to lose in the general election because of redistricting?” It’s true that with the GOP gerrymandered map, a Pearson victory in November is now an uphill climb. Post-redistricting, Cook Political Report shifted this race from “Solid D” to “Solid R”.
Of course, if Pearson does not win in November, we will need to win elsewhere to flip the House, which political forecasters are saying is still very possible — here’s how MVP is expanding the map this year — but a W for Pearson this cycle is not the only way to measure progress.
Graphic: Brennan Center for Justice, “How States’ Seats in the U.S. House Could Change After the Next Census”, 1/28/2026.
Eyes on the Prize: No Long-Term Power Without the South
Democrats cannot win durable power unless we invest in the South like our political survival depends on it.
After the 2030 census, the U.S. House will undergo a reapportionment of seats that could radically shift the partisan balance of power in the chamber — with traditionally “red” states like Texas, Florida, and others (especially across the South) likely to gain seats, and traditionally “blue” states like California, New York, Illinois, and others likely to lose seats.
If the Brennan Center’s projections hold, “the South would have more seats in the House than at any point in its history, with southerners making up nearly 40 percent of the body’s membership.”
Graphic: Brennan Center for Justice, “How States’ Seats in the U.S. House Could Change After the Next Census”, 1/28/2026.
What this means is simple: Democrats cannot win durable power unless we invest in the South like our political survival depends on it.
What this means for donors and funders is also simple: We can’t invest with a short-term mindset and expect long-term results. If all we do is target and invest in the House districts that forecasters confidently rate a “Toss-Up” in this cycle, we will never build the power we need to win and maintain political majorities two, three, four, or more cycles from now.
MVP partners on the ground know this and live this reality every day, and are organizing accordingly.
Black Political Power Can Beat Racial Gerrymandering
MVP partners have been making it clear to Black voters that, through Tennessee’s redrawn maps, the GOP is trying to dilute their power and take away their ability to be represented fairly. According to new research from HIT Strategies and The Black Opps Project, that’s a motivating message.
In a July press release, The Black Opps Coalition stated, “Some 64% of Black voters say that recent attacks on voting rights and gerrymandering in the South make them more likely to vote in the upcoming midterm election.”
We saw this play out in the primaries. Even after racial gerrymandering split up Tennessee’s only Black-majority district, Democratic voter turnout in the primary election surged in Shelby County — Tennessee’s only Black-majority county that includes part of the new TN-09. Across the three newly redrawn congressional districts, 20 percent of registered voters in Shelby County turned out to vote in the Democratic primaries — more than double the turnout percentage for similar races in 2024.
The Washington Post spoke to local organizers who attribute the spike in turnout to “anger over the Republican-led legislature’s action to break up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated minority voter protections in the Voting Rights Act this year.”
Voters, especially Black voters, in Tennessee and across the South know what’s going on, and they are refusing to go along with the GOP’s conventional wisdom that racial gerrymandering is the path to voter suppression.
Rather than relinquishing the district to racist GOP power-grabs, our partners are doubling down to let voters know what's at stake and why showing up to vote matters more than ever. Whether or not Justin Pearson wins this election cycle isn't the (only) point. The point is to show that Black voters, in particular Black Democratic voters, will keep showing up no matter what vote-suppressing hurdles are thrown their way — and that we will bring about progressive governance in the South, no matter how many cycles it takes to get there. MVP partners are making sure of that.
Building Stronger, Broader Movements in the South
Whatever the outcome of the TN-09 U.S. House race is in November, our partners’ work is helping build a stronger, broader, more sustainable movement for political transformation in Tennessee. Here’s why:
The “Year-Round Organizing to Electoral Mobilization” Cycle
Our local partners don’t just set up shop right before an election and leave. With sustained investment (from MVP and others), they organize in communities year-round, building relationships and trust with voters. Then, when it’s time to mobilize those same voters to the polls, they are successful, because they have built that trust and those relationships.
Think about it: If someone you know asks you to do something, you’re more likely to do it rather than if someone you don’t know asks you. It’s the same idea.
Voters from across the state chose to nominate a leader who fights for Black, brown, immigrant, and white working-class communities.
The converse of this is also true: Talking to voters ahead of an election about the issues they care about and candidates who will fight for those issues is an effective tactic to mobilize them to the polls. It also helps build trust and relationships with those voters to bring them into year-round organizing after an election.
When our partners are out talking to voters and hear that they can’t afford healthcare or the rent is too high, they can link those concerns to, for example, Justin Pearson’s platform to turn them out to vote and to their own organizing campaigns that also address those issues. Our partners now have an existing pool of community members to re-engage in year-round campaigns.
Building a Cross-Race, “Big-Tent” Movement
Pearson’s focus on issues that working-class voters care about cuts across race, from healthcare access to the cost of living to the rise of water-guzzling, pollution-causing data centers. He won every county across TN-09 in the Democratic primary last week, including rural, predominantly white areas.
As MVP partner TIRRC Votes put it, “voters from across the state chose to nominate a leader who fights for Black, brown, immigrant, and white working-class communities.”
While our partners are focused on fighting back against attacks on Black political power specifically, they are also focused on building broad movements that last in Tennessee and across the South. Leveraging Pearson’s appeal to working-class voters of all races is one way to do that.
Leading up the general election in November, our partners will be engaging their core constituencies — Black, brown, and immigrant voters — but they will also be working across the 9th Congressional District to help get Pearson over the finish line and show that a cross-race, “big-tent” movement is possible in the Deep South.
Specifically, TIRRC Votes and The Equity Alliance Fund aim to hit 100,000 doors in the district; let’s make sure they have the resources to do it.
