Rep. Steve Cohen, a longtime Tennessee Democrat, introduced Friday he won’t search reelection and as a substitute retire on the finish of his time period, after his Memphis district was carved up within the state meeting’s redistricting effort.
“That is by far essentially the most tough second I’ve had as an elected official,” Cohen mentioned. his voice choked with emotion as he introduced he despatched a letter Friday to the state capital asking to not seem on the poll.
“I do not need to give up. I am not a quitter, however these districts have been drawn to beat me. They have been drawn to defeat me,” Cohen mentioned.
Cohen is the primary Democratic consultant to go for retirement after the Supreme Courtroom’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which held that race-conscious redistricting beneath Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional.
After the ruling, Tennessee state lawmakers passed a new congressional map that might permit Republicans to flip the state’s lone Democratic-held seat.
Cohen’s majority-minority district, Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, is being cut up in three. Cohen has sued over the brand new map in court docket, as have a number of civil rights teams.
Rep. Steve Cohen pauses whereas talking throughout a information convention in his workplace on Capitol Hill, Could 15, 2026 in Washington.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs
“Butchered,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat whose district shares a border with Cohen, informed ABC Information in regards to the Tennessee district.
“He is represented a majority-minority district as a white individual. He is been properly. He is had a constant vote on behalf of his constituents, and impulsively, the court docket says take that chance away,” Thompson mentioned of Cohen. “However worse than that, Tennessee legislature cut up Memphis in three other ways. So now, so far as the Congress is worried, there isn’t any actual group of curiosity in Memphis, as a result of they’re so divided.”
Cohen is the twenty second Home Democrat to choose in opposition to reelection to the Home this midterm election cycle.
“Memphis is my residence, and that is what I combat for, and I need to do it once more. If I get the possibility, I am going to do it, however in any other case I will be retiring from Congress, and from, I assume, from public life,” Cohen mentioned.
