Close Enough to Ruin Trump's Night!
To the idiom “Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades” let’s add “and Off-Year Congressional Special Elections” because tonight Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn of Nashville came close enough to winning the special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District to ruin Trump’s night.
Republican Mark Green easily won the seat by 60-40 margins in 2022 and 2024 after the district was Gerrymandered to break up a Democratic seat in Nashville. But thanks to Trump’s dismal performance and approval ratings - and hard work by Behn’s campaign and groups like the Save America Movement - that Gerrymandering was barely enough to stop the Blue Wave that started last month in New Jersey, Virginia, and elsewhere around the country from almost cresting the Republican levee in TN-07!
TN-07 is the type of fight SAM was formed to fight - the right races, right now for the right reasons.
SAM’s mission in 2026 is simple and uncompromising: dismantle the Republican brand by prosecuting Trump’s deeply unpopular agenda and holding every GOP member of Congress accountable for enabling it. SAM understands a fundamental truth of modern politics: the MAGA movement will not break until Republican politicians fear their own voters more than they fear Donald Trump.
All across America tonight, Republicans stayed up late to watch the returns come in, wondering how much Trump and MAGA have damaged their chances to get reelected next November.
Behn almost flipping a 60-40 seat means even Republicans who won by that margin in 2024 will be running scared in 2026. They’ll have to raise more money for themselves, meaning less money for Trump and Mike Johnson to spend attacking Democrats and they’ll have to twist themselves in knots to try to explain to unhappy voters why they are rubber stamps for Trump’s disastrous economic and healthcare policies in Washington.
According to Ballotpedia, 17 Republicans won congressional races in 2024 by a margin of 5 percentage points or fewer. Those incumbents should start parking their bags.
Another 11 Republicans won by margins between 5 and 10 points. They should start shopping for luggage because SAM is just getting started.
Hi Steve,
As you guys are looking around to see who may be worthy of SAM support for 2026, I would encourage you to take a look at the 1st district race in Georgia, a seat held by the self-proclaimed “MAGA Warrior” Buddy Carter, who during the past 12 years has enriched himself from the pharmaceutical lobby and may be eyeing Jon Ossoff’s senate seat depending on whether he gets the nod from the dear leader. I’m supporting Amanda Hollowell, a smart, savvy, articulate and experienced candidate who needs our help. I recently held a fundraiser for her in Savannah with surprising results. If there is ever a chance to flip this one it’s now. Please take a look at Amanda4Ga and let me know what you think.
Many thanks for everything you do and all the best from southeast Georgia.
Thanks,
Michael Richter
Despite its importance in publishing Project 2025, the leading think tank for the Trump movement is not the Heritage Foundation, but rather the Claremont Institute, founded in 1979 in Upland, California. Trump’s neofascist regime is a desperate act of a declining empire. The conflict between neofascism as a more regressive global capitalist project designed to preserve and enhance the power of the ruling capitalists with their global interests, on the one hand, and the national-populist movement of the MAGA radical right focused primarily on the conquest of the administrative state, on the other, means that the mega-capitalist interests will continually betray the MAGA “populist” base, viewed as cannon fodder. https://arxiujosepserradell.cat/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-MAGA-Ideology-and-the-Trump-Regime-1.pdf