‘Not the Model’: Centrist Democrats Call for More Moderates in 2026 After Defeat in Tennessee

Centrist Democrats are using their party’s defeat in a special House election this week to argue the party needs to better identify and support moderate candidates, arguing that doing so is the only way Democrats can reliably win races in red districts.

Democrat Aftyn Behn’s history of controversial comments about the police — and insistence on campaigning with liberal luminaries such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — helped contribute to her 9-point defeat Tuesday in Tennessee’s deep-red 7th Congressional District, they say. It also underscores the dangers of running significantly left-of-center candidates like Behn in next year’s midterm elections.

“She’s not the model,” said Adam Jentleson, the president of Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank that promotes ideas and politics that it thinks can win in conservative areas. “She was not a good fit for the district. Left-wing candidates are good fits for left-wing districts. But it is just farcical that left-wing candidates are good fits for right-wing districts.”

Jentleson was one of many centrist party operatives to speak out publicly Wednesday, urging the party to tolerate conservative candidates in red districts even when they hold positions at odds with liberal ideology. Their argument was aimed less at Behn — whom they said ran a spirited campaign — and more toward liberal groups who touted her unabashed progressiveness and focus on economic affordability as a template for other Democrats, which they called folly.

Behn lost to Republican Matt Van Epps on Tuesday in a race that drew a surge of unexpected national attention in its final weeks, after the Democratic nominee appeared to be gaining support despite the district’s conservative lean (Donald Trump won it by 22 percentage points last year).

Behn’s single-digit margin of victory was widely understood as a warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms, but some centrist Democrats nevertheless argued that her strongly liberal profile, coupled with prior support for specific measures such as defunding the police, ultimately cost her votes.

The concern over Behn’s candidacy is the latest twist in an ongoing debate within the Democratic Party about how it can rebuild itself after Trump’s presidential victory last year, which left the party in a state of despair and uncertainty. The debate was further energized last month, when Democrats sparred over the meaning of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race while two more moderate members of the party, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, won a pair of gubernatorial contests.

Zohran Mamdani speaks during a victory speech at a mayoral election night watch party on Nov. 4, 2025, in New York. Yuki Iwamura/AP

Republicans currently hold the majority in the House, with 219 seats compared to Democrats’ 213.

To win back a majority in 2026, moderate Democratic leaders have said the party must temper its policy agenda, especially on cultural issues, to regain a foothold in areas where Democrats had lost ground to Republicans during the past decade.

Liberals have countered that people pushed to financial strain because of rising prices are desperate for bolder solutions that defy the political status quo.

Some liberal leaders and Democratic strategists rallied to Behn’s defense Wednesday, saying she still overperformed the previous Democratic presidential ticket and correctly focused on animating progressive voters in a special election, which traditionally have low turnouts.

“Running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris a year later in a district that no one thought we could win or compete in is still a tremendous outcome,” said Ravi Mangla, a spokesperson for the liberal Working Families Party.

An official with Behn’s campaign also pushed back on the criticism, saying that they were frustrated Democrats were busy infighting after what should be considered a successful result, given the district’s rightward lean.

“Some prefer to operate at a theoretical level, providing armchair critiques of fellow Democrats rather than focusing on beating the GOP in the real world with actual candidates who can win primaries,” said the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the campaign’s behalf.

A state representative, Behn heavily campaigned on cost-of-living issues, featuring them across TV ads and on the campaign trail.

But Republicans countered with a campaign that focused on Behn’s past support for defunding the police, saying it proved she was a radical and out of touch with the vast majority of voters in the 7th District, which stretches between Tennessee’s state lines with Kentucky and Alabama and includes some Nashville suburbs.

Centrist Democrats agree that focusing on affordability issues is politically wise, said Pat Dennis, the president of the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. But they also think candidates must culturally align with their districts — in a way they said Behn didn’t, despite her populist economic message.

“There’s a hope on the part of many in the more progressive wing that you can just bypass a lot of this with economic populism alone,” Dennis said. “And while I think economic populism can be quite helpful, it is just not enough to swamp all the cultural signifiers that matter in these races.”

The need for cultural alignment, especially on issues such as policing or gun rights, is essential in red districts and states, he added, because campaigns that focus heavily on progressive turnout will soon hit a ceiling with their performance. Successful candidates need to persuade voters, even some Republicans, to back them.

“The math isn’t there,” Dennis said. “You aren’t inventing new voters out of thin air.”

Some Democratic strategists quietly say that many of the party’s other potential nominees in red-district House races next year are more moderate than Behn. In the neighboring 5th District of Tennessee, for example, Democrats are lining up to support Chaz Molder, mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, who party strategists think has the moderate profile necessary to win the Republican-heavy area.

“If you look at the primaries in deeper red districts across the country, the candidates are very different from Aftyn,” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “While their specific policies may fall throughout a range, they’re focused on lowering costs and not on defunding the police. They want to keep prices down and keep communities safe.”

Behn narrowly won a four-way Democratic primary in October to become the party’s nominee, lifted in part by endorsements from progressive groups such as Indivisible Tennessee. Progressives like Mangla, the spokesperson for the Working Families Party, say that if more moderate members of the party were unhappy with Behn as the nominee, they should have recruited and backed their own candidate.

Some centrist Democratic leaders said that criticism has merit.

“Centrists need to own this,” said Liam Kerr, a co-founder of WelcomePAC, a group that seeks to bolster moderate Democrats. “Just because Aftyn Behn and AOC are wrong about how to win red districts doesn’t mean that it is their fault. It is the centrists’ fault for not getting our act together in the primary.”

Kerr said his group avoided the 7th District primary but would closely consider involvement in the party’s primaries next year.

“We are looking more at primaries and will likely get involved in several where there is a big difference between candidates,” he said.

Jentleson said he didn’t think that a more centrist candidate would have won the 7th District race, given the eventual 9-point margin. But the party, he added, needs to field the most competitive candidates that it can in as many seats as it can.

“You should be putting pieces on the board that give you the best possible chance of winning the most seats you can,” Jentleson said. “It’s really that simple.”