Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen to retire after GOP targets him with redistricting
Key takeaways
- Cohen, who will turn 77 later this month, hammered Republicans for orchestrating a power grab to disenfranchise Black voters in districts like his.
- “I don’t want to quit; I’m not a quitter,” Cohen told reporters in his office in the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill. “But these districts were drawn to defeat me.”
- Cohen has long been the only Democrat in Tennessee’s nine-member House delegation, representing the Democratic stronghold in Memphis, which has a majority Black population.
Why this matters: political developments that affect policy direction and public trust.
Steve Cohen (Tenn.), a liberal Democrat in his 20th year on Capitol Hill, announced Friday that he will retire at the end of the term, becoming the earliest casualty of the Republicans’ redistricting campaign ahead of November’s midterms.
Cohen, who will turn 77 later this month, hammered Republicans for orchestrating a power grab to disenfranchise Black voters in districts like his. But with the new map in place — and the cards stacked heavily against him — Cohen said he’d rather step down than go through the motions of an election contest he was sure to lose.
“I don’t want to quit; I’m not a quitter,” Cohen told reporters in his office in the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill. “But these districts were drawn to defeat me.”