By Leah Douglas, Joseph Ax and Tim Reid
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) – On paper, Democrat Justin Pearson, a 31-year-old Tennessee state legislator, has little chance of winning the state’s 9th Congressional District, which Republican lawmakers redrew months ago from a Democratic stronghold to a deeply Republican seat.
Yet this week the national Democratic Party added the rural district to its list of midterm targets in November, part of a broader strategy to compete in President Donald Trump’s conservative heartland despite long odds of flipping it.
On its face, the strategy may look like Democratic overreach. Voters living in the 9th District’s newly reconfigured boundaries, for instance, picked Trump by more than 21 points in 2024.
More than a dozen Democratic operatives, strategists and candidates told Reuters the goal in part is to force Republicans to spend money defending safe seats, draining resources from the swing districts that will decide control of the US House.
By expanding the map, the party is also signaling to donors that races are becoming more competitive amid high prices and the Iran war driving Trump’s unpopularity, helping unlock money that might otherwise stay on the sidelines, they said.
“These expansions force Republicans to go on defense in more districts,” said one House campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It’s also a signal to donors and outside groups that House Democrats are taking these races seriously.”
REPUBLICANS DISMISSIVE OF NEW MAP
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s US House campaign arm, this week added Pearson’s race and 13 others to its target list, expanding its battlefield to 66 Republican-held seats.
Getting on the target list gives candidates access to national party staff and campaign tools, while also raising their profiles with donors, potentially opening new streams of fundraising for their campaigns.
There are early signs the strategy is having some effect. Republican-aligned groups have begun spending in some newly added districts, while two Democratic campaigns in Republican districts told Reuters their fundraising accelerated after being placed on the target list.
Republicans have dismissed the idea that Democrats have a serious chance of defeating their party in districts that overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024.
Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee – the party’s House campaign group – accused the Democratic Party of “stretching its map a mile wide and an inch deep, pretending every district in America is suddenly a battleground.” He said the strategy will force Democrats to spend in long-shot contests when the party is already being outspent by Republicans.
Analysts, too, are skeptical.
“I’ll take it seriously when they actually put their money where their mouth is. There is a point at which it becomes fantasy land,” said David Wasserman, an elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which rates many of these races as safely Republican.
Democrats say they have chosen these districts for a number of reasons, including the quality of their candidates and the chance they might pull off upset wins to increase the size of a potential House majority.
FOLLOWING THE MONEY
It remains unclear how much money Democrats will ultimately devote to the newly added districts. Recent campaign finance filings are not yet available, and the party declined to tell Reuters where it is spending or how much it plans to spend on its expanded map.
But there are signs Republicans are paying attention. Restoration of America PAC, funded primarily by billionaire Richard Uihlein, spent nearly $750,000 on digital ads backing Republican David Flippo in Nevada’s 2nd District last week, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The district, which Trump carried by 14 points in 2024, is among the recent additions to the Democratic target list.
“Democrats are on offense, Republicans are running scared, even in deep-red territory, and our expansive map reflects it,” DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said in a statement.
The new target list includes districts in Arkansas, New York and Virginia that Trump carried by as many as 24 points. Democrats say rising costs and dissatisfaction with some Trump policies are creating openings in rural and Republican-leaning areas.
“Rural America is unhappy with tariffs and rising fuel and farm costs, and that’s pushing us into redder areas,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
Democrats will need a net gain of four to retake the House. However, only about 50 of the 435 House races are expected to be competitive.
TENNESSEE DREAMING
Tennessee Republicans in May split the heavily Democratic Memphis area into three districts, transforming the 9th from a majority-Black urban seat into a sprawling district stretching more than 200 miles (322 km) across rural western Tennessee, a change that made the seat significantly more favorable to Republicans.
Yet Pearson says he has found independent and Republican voters frustrated by the high cost of living who are open to voting Democratic.
“We’ve traveled across all 15 counties, filling churches and community centers in places people said we couldn’t compete,” said Pearson, a Black lawmaker who gained national attention in 2023 when the Republican-majority legislature expelled him for joining a gun-violence protest at the state Capitol.
Republicans have portrayed Pearson as an outspoken progressive activist, pointing to his participation in gun-control and voting-rights protests.
“The people in Tennessee Nine, they have a clear choice. They can choose confidence over chaos, and they can choose common sense over communism, and they can choose a lawmaker over a troublemaker,” his Republican opponent, state senator Brent Taylor, told Reuters.
There has been little public polling on the race, which Cook rates “Solid Republican.”
EXCITE DONORS
Being added to the target list can quickly pay dividends for a campaign. Candidates or representatives from four Democratic campaigns on the DCCC’s list told Reuters they either expected to see a boost in donations or were already seeing an uptick since their addition.
Pearson said his campaign has seen a surge of financial support after being added to the list, which would boost his get-out-the-vote operation.
“This race is going to be tight. It’s going to be close. It’s going to come down to how many people can we see before Election Day, knocking on those doors and reaching out to them directly,” he said.
But Democrats’ ambitions are constrained by a relative cash shortage.
While Democratic candidates nationally have outraised their Republican opponents, Republican national party committees and Republican-aligned super PACs have far outstripped Democratic counterparts in money raised.
Democrats in tough races in the expanded map said they are connecting with small-dollar donors by focusing on cost-of-living issues and campaigning heavily at town halls and other local appearances.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas and Tim Reid in Washington and Joseph Ax in New York; Additional reporting by Jason Lange; editing by Ross Colvin and Deepa Babington)
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