Democrats See Williamson County as Important in Congressional Primary Race

Candidates for the 7th Congressional District seat are spending time and money in Williamson County ahead of next week’s primary election, seeing the county as an important piece of their electoral strategy.

Democratic strategist Darden Copeland, the only non-elected official on the Democratic ticket, has been on a 14-county Fed Up Townhall Tour with three stops in Williamson County — two in Franklin’s exclusive Westhaven neighborhood and one in Leipers Fork.

During his latest Williamson County appearance on Sept. 28, Copeland called the 7th District “the center of the nation, at least for the next year,” and spoke about top Democratic Party issues, including access to healthcare and affordability, as well as his support for gun reform, such as red flag laws and reinstating an assault weapons ban.

Copeland also fielded foreign policy questions during the town hall, calling for an end to the Russia-Ukraine War, adding, “I don't think that we need to give up control of Kyiv or anywhere else.”

Copeland also said that the U.S. needs to recognize that the U.S. should join the growing number of nations that have formally recognized a Palestinian state and work towards a two-state solution while confronting threats from Iran and Hamas, calling the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza a “real genocide.”

“This was not a Democratic town hall,” Copeland told the Williamson Scene. “This was a town hall to be the replacement for Mark Green in Congress on Dec. 2nd, and yes, the majority of them are probably going to be Democrats, because they're tuned in and they're plugged in and they want to see what I'm about, but in every single town hall that I've had, somebody has raised their hand to say, ‘I voted for Trump in a previous election.'”

In a Sept. 29 Substack editorial entitled “How To Buy a Congressional Election,” fellow Democratic candidate and state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) criticized Copeland, as well as Republican candidates state Rep. Lee Reeves (R-Franklin) and state Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), all three of whom have, in part, self-funded their campaigns, with Copeland loaning his campaign $125,000.

Copeland pushed back against this criticism, telling the Williamson Scene, “I'm the frontrunner right now, and she knows that.”

“If we want to compete with the Republicans and the amount of money that they have, we need to send somebody into battle that's going to be able to outraise them, and I outraised every single one of them before any loans,” Copeland said. “I outraised every Democrat, and I outraised every Republican with grassroots contributions. The average size of those contributions is $30 and then, yes, I loaned myself some money to get over the hump because I'm not in this to win the primary and raise my profile. I'm in this to win the general election.”

Copeland called the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision a “real setback to American politics,” and said that in general he thinks that “we have to figure out how to get money out of politics,” noting his pledge to not accept any political action committee (PAC) money, while acknowledging that money is needed to win an election in 2025.

Green, himself a former state senator before being elected to Congress, made headlines in 2024 after his first of two retirement announcements, in which he told Axios that Congress is “broken,” something that Copeland doesn’t entirely disagree with, although he argued that it is not beyond repair.

“If we want to change the tone in Washington, we have to change the type of person we send up there,” Copeland said. “If I'm the one person out of the seven that are running and viable, that's not an elected official right now from this broken system, then maybe I can fix the broken system up there in Washington ... sending somebody from this broken system to that broken system to that broken system with the idea that we're going to fix it, that's sort of laughable.”

Copeland isn’t alone in his Williamson County appearances, with Behn and state Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) and state Rep. Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville) have all made public appearances in Westhaven over the last week.

“We have an opportunity to set the stage [for the 2026 midterm elections,]" Dixie said during an Oct. 1 meet and greet. “This particular election can be a referendum on Trump.”

Behn previously spoke about Williamson County’s role in the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy for both the Oct. 7 primary and Dec. 2 general election, along with engaging voters in Montgomery and Davidson counties, the most populous in the 7th District.

“I think a lot of the organizing has to happen in these three counties to mobilize voters,” Behn said. “For the most part, these are highly engaged, highly educated voters who just need the right information, and a lot of them don’t even know there’s a special election going on.”

“Williamson County is probably going to be 10-15 percent of the Democratic Primary, so that’s a significant amount,” Mitchell said. “Anytime that you can get in double-digits when you’ve got 14 counties, you’ve got to pay attention to an area of that size.”