MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Justin Pearson woke up at 5:30 to make sure he’d be one of the first people here. He arrived just after sunrise, a half hour before the event was scheduled to start, before most of its organizers had even gotten situated.
The organizers, a mix of local pastors and union leaders, weren’t surprised to see Pearson. And they weren’t surprised later by the warm reception he received from many of the hundreds of people who eventually came to the march in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in the city where the civil-rights icon was assassinated 57 years ago.
“He shows up everywhere,” said Keith Caldwell, a pastor and one of the march’s organizers. Like many Democrats in Memphis, Caldwell referred to Pearson as the “next generation” of the city’s leaders.
Pearson has been ubiquitous in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which serves as a de facto seat in Congress for the city of Memphis. The state lawmaker and Memphis native is running an insurgent primary campaign against Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat who has held the seat for nearly 20 years and, at 76 years old, is more than twice Pearson’s age.
Eight months before the August primary, the race has already emerged as a key national test of whether restless Democratic voters are ready to ditch the steady hand of longtime party stalwarts in favor of a younger, more aggressive generation of candidates. Pearson is one of a fleet of Democratic candidates running this year either challenging a longtime incumbent or taking on an opponent backed by the party establishment in an open primary, in a year in which the party appears to face more contentious primaries than any time in recent memory.
Pearson is not new to the national spotlight: In 2023, he was a member of the “Tennessee Three” who led a gun-control protest on the floor of the state House, which led to his expulsion from the legislature (he soon after won reelection). Now, however, he’s focusing his desire for change on a member of his own party, convinced Democrats need new leaders who can better resist Donald Trump’s presidency.
“I recognize and appreciate the decades of service of my opponent,” Pearson told NOTUS in an interview the day before the march. “But the reality is, we cannot continue to keep going with the status quo, because the status quo has gotten us to this place. And there’s no one who I’ve met who is alive who says that things are going well right now.”
The Tennessee race is already bitter and personal: The incumbent has compared Pearson’s entry to the race to the attack on Pearl Harbor, while the challenger has likened Cohen’s rhetoric to Trump’s.
Cohen remains a formidable opponent, with plenty of allies in the city and $1.7 million in his campaign account. And he’s making a blunt and direct argument that contrary to what some younger Democrats might think, this moment requires his congressional know-how and political savvy more than ever.
But at a minimum, many Democrats in Tennessee think Pearson is the most serious challenger of Cohen’s career. And some of them aren’t sure the incumbent understands just how difficult his reelection fight might be.
Cohen didn’t attend the Monday MLK march. Caldwell said he’d been invited, and shrugged when asked why Cohen didn’t show up.
Pearson, who was scheduled to attend three other events that day, said it was telling.
“His absence isn’t felt,” he said.
***
In an interview, Cohen dismissed any questions of why he missed the march.
“I’ve been to many of those marches over the years,” he said. “I’ve been to those marches before he was born. He didn’t know that. I didn’t go this morning because it was 8 in the morning. I had some things I had to do to prepare for my day.”
Cohen spoke to NOTUS while standing under a sign for the Lorraine Motel, near where King had been shot in 1968. The motel has since been converted into a civil-rights museum, and on MLK Day, the line to enter stretched around the block.
Many of the people on hand, nearly all of them Black, either stopped to shake the congressman’s hand or take a picture with him.
“Everybody out here knows me,” Cohen said. “They voted for me in the past. They said they’re going to vote for me again.”
Cohen was first elected to his House seat in 2006, after serving for more than 20 years as a state senator. He won his federal seat despite being a white man in a majority-Black district, and was the first-ever Jewish member of Tennessee’s congressional delegation.
He’s been challenged in primaries before, including once from the former longtime mayor of Memphis, but never failed to win at least two-thirds of the primary vote.
To the extent that Cohen conceded that this primary is different, he says it’s because of David Hogg, a former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee whose new anti-incumbent group, Leaders We Deserve, has pledged to spend $1 million against him this year.
Otherwise, he says Democratic voters in Memphis aren’t restless for new leadership. And even if they were, he says Pearson is too inexperienced and light on substance to take advantage.
Mostly, the congressman defends his own record, which he characterizes as essential for the health and wellness of a poor and disadvantaged city like Memphis.
“I’ve been doing this for most of my entire life. I’ve been in office 43 years,” Cohen said. “My voting record is outstanding. I’ve contributed more money, brought more money from Washington to Memphis than any congressman in history.”
“We’re like Karl Malone,” the congressman said, referring to a former famous basketball player with the Utah Jazz known as the “Mailman,” who retired in 2005. “We deliver.”
The congressman’s allies — and he still has plenty of them in Memphis and beyond — praise his voting record and ability to deliver federal funds to the city. He doesn’t vote like a centrist, for one thing, having recently called for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And in 2024, he announced a $400 million investment from the federal government to build a new bridge spanning the Mississippi River to connect Memphis with Arkansas.
State Sen. London Lamar, who represents parts of Memphis, said she learned how to perform constituent services when she was an intern in the congressman’s office about 15 years ago. To her the choice between Cohen and Pearson is easy.
“People in Memphis are going to have to decide if they want someone who gets something done, or if they want someone who gives good speeches,” she said.
Lamar, who is 35, criticized Pearson’s lack of record as a state lawmaker, calling him a “sweet guy” who is “passionate” but without the means to deliver resources to the city in the way that Cohen has.
“The question is, is passion enough?” Lamar said. “Is passion going to stop the bleeding that we see in our cities?”
Cohen hasn’t hid his disdain for Pearson’s decision to run against him. According to both men, the state lawmaker called the congressman the day before he announced his campaign in October. The conversation was tense.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m grateful for your service. And appreciate you, but I think this is the moment, this is the time,’” Pearson recounted in an interview. “And his response was that, ‘You’re gonna be a loser just like everybody else.’ And I tried to keep it together, I said, ‘I look forward to running with you.’ He said, ‘You’re not gonna run with me. You’re gonna run behind me.’”
Cohen confirmed the conversation, but said Pearson ended it by telling the congressman, “No, you’re going to run behind me.”
In November, Cohen said in an interview that Pearson was not ready to serve in Congress and compared his decision to run to the surprise attack that brought the country into World War II.
“It was kind of like Pearl Harbor,” he said. “And that’s not the way you do it.”
Those comments traveled widely in Tennessee political circles — and didn’t sit well with some Democrats.
“I’ve had people say to me, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize Steve was like that,’” said Justin Kanew, founder of the liberal news outlet The Tennessee Holler. “I think he made a mistake in my opinion, taking it to that place so quickly.”
One Democratic fundraiser in the state, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they hadn’t heard from anybody in Tennessee eager to help Cohen with his race, citing his comments in the interview and a broader sense even within the party establishment that Democrats need new blood.
“There is zero enthusiasm in the Nashville community for supporting Cohen in his primary campaign against Pearson. Zero,” the fundraiser said.
Cohen spent about a half hour outside the Civil Rights Museum talking with NOTUS and shaking hands with the people on hand. He defended his schedule, saying he had been at an event earlier in the day encouraging lawyers to run for office and been attending other events most of the weekend.
Asked directly whether Pearson was running a more energetic campaign, he conceded he might be — even if he doesn’t think it ultimately matters.
“He’s got a lot of energy,” Cohen said. “I had polio as a child, I have a bad leg. It didn’t stop Franklin Roosevelt. It’s not gonna stop me.”
***
Pearson told NOTUS he was “absolutely, utterly shocked” at how Cohen has reacted to his candidacy.
“I fear Steve and Trump and all these other people have gotten so emboldened by being in positions of power that they think they no longer need to have some decency,” he said. “You don’t need to have respect for people.”
Pearson’s challenge is just one of many to entrenched Democratic incumbents or establishment favorites this year. In Senate races, where for years candidates backed by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer usually ran in uncontested primaries, insurgents like Graham Platner in Maine, Jasmine Crockett in Texas and Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan are running and gaining support against candidates broadly seen as the preferred choice of the party establishment.
House Democratic candidates in open races are also facing primaries, as are incumbents like Reps. Valerie Foushee, Katherine Clark and Diana Degette.
“Across the country, we’re hearing the same thing from voters, which is we’re sick and tired of how the Democratic Party is operating,” Hogg said in an interview.
Officials with Leaders We Deserve and other anti-incumbent groups, like Justice Democrats, are buoyed by polls taken throughout last year showing the Democratic Party’s approval rating at all-time lows, driven in part by growing unhappiness even among liberal voters.
Incumbents will also have allies: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement, said that “while battleground districts are our primary focus at the DCCC, we remain committed to re-electing all of our incumbents.”
Even for an upstart challenger, Pearson is young: He never voted for Barack Obama because he wasn’t yet 18 even when the former president ran for reelection in 2012. His Afro and mustache don’t have even a hint of gray in them.
That lack of experience could turn off some voters, especially in a primary where the electorate traditionally skews older. But for others, his youthfulness is a bonus at a time when some are looking for a new group of Democratic leaders.
“When I see him, I just see the next generation,” said Monique Gabriel.
Gabriel, 63 had just taken a picture with Pearson at the New Sardis Baptist Church, located near Memphis’ border with Mississippi, one of more than a dozen mostly older women who took a picture with the lawmaker after the service had ended.
“I think Memphis needs that,” she said. “I like Cohen, I’ve got pictures in my phone with him. But it’s just time.”
Pearson had attended church here the Sunday before MLK Day, receiving a brief recognition from the pastor during the service before spending at least a half hour afterward talking with as many potential voters as he could. He had actually held a town hall at the church two weeks earlier, according to some of the people in attendance, one of 110 campaign events Pearson has said he’s done in the three months since his launch.
“You look at it, that’s energy,” said Melvin Burgess, gesturing toward Pearson as he spoke with people in the church’s foyer. “He brings a lot of energy.”
Burgess, who is running for mayor of Shelby County, said he knows Cohen well, calling the congressman his neighbor. But like some other current or former elected officials, he wasn’t rushing to defend the incumbent, choosing instead to praise both candidates.
“It’s two good people running for office,” said Paul Young, the mayor of Memphis. “We want our residents to have choices with regards to who they want to elect.”
Cohen might not have the massive financial edge over Pearson he would have hoped for, either: The congressman’s campaign told NOTUS he had raised $725,000 during the last fundraising quarter, during the first 84 days of his campaign.
In an interview in the church, Pearson compared the incumbent congressman to former President Joe Biden, saying both men risked their legacies by refusing to give way to the next generation at the right time. Pearson said he liked Biden but emphasized that the crisis now facing the country is at least partly his fault.
“[Biden’s] given his life to public service, and keep them in admiration and appreciation for that. And simultaneously, it’s a recognition that if he had said ‘enough,’ maybe if he had passed a torch, our country would be in a different place than it currently is right now.
“I think most people who are alive right now are saying the house is on fire,” he continued. “There’s some people in power who are like, ‘No, it’s just a little smoke.’ And for the rest of us, we know we have to do something different.”
Pearson’s challenge to Cohen embodies a lot of the Democratic Party’s broader dynamics at the moment, including questions about whether it needs younger leaders or a new generation of elected officials more capable of resisting Trump’s agenda.
It does not, for now, appear to be as much about ideology: Pearson, in an interview, spoke more about building a big tent in his party than specific policy differences with Cohen. He praised newly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill equally, saying all of them were needed for a party that should try to win everywhere.
He also downplayed the importance of impeaching Trump again, didn’t mention Israel’s action in Gaza and emphasized that Democrats needed to unite around an agenda focused on affordability.
“You can’t get distracted by what’s going to be on the news cycle for a month and fail to do the actual work of improving people’s lives,” he said.
To some critics, that lack of specificity on policy differences, combined with what they consider Pearson’s thin two-year record in the state legislature, means that Pearson isn’t ready to serve in Congress.
“He literally didn’t have a track record last year,” said Lamar, a colleague of his in the legislature. “I don’t know what he can do, based on what I’ve seen.”
Pearson and his allies bristle at the suggestion that he hasn’t achieved anything in office, pointing out that Republicans control the legislature. His attendance record was poor last year, they add, because the lawmaker’s brother died by suicide, keeping him from his duties for a time.
In any case, Pearson makes clear that he thinks the race is about the future of the seat. It’s why he attended the Sunday service at New Sardis Church, not just listening to the service but regularly standing and urging on the pastors who spoke.
One sermon, from the Rev. Dr. L. LaSimba M. Gray Jr., seemed to pique his interest most of all. The church’s pastor emeritus delivered an impassioned sermon, calling on leaders in the state and country to release money he said was owed to the city that was necessary to its survival.
“If we don’t change course, soon they will say that’s where Memphis used to exist,” Gray said.
Pearson stood and began yelling in response.
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s it! Tell it! Tell it! Tell it!”
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