The Tennessee Secretary of State (TSOS) on Tuesday released a new list of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, revealing more than a dozen new candidates have pulled petitions to begin gathering signatures ahead of potential congressional campaigns.
Prominent Democrats now collecting signatures include former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, who has pulled a petition to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination to represent Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District. Barry, who resigned in 2018 after pleading guilty to felony theft of public funds used to facilitate an extramarital affair with her bodyguard, last ran for Congress in the 7th Congressional District in 2024. Her record was expunged in 2021.
During the 2024 campaign, Barry said she took “absolute responsibility” for her actions in 2018, but was optimistic Tennessee voters “are believers in second chances.” Despite attempting to align her campaign with former Vice President Kamala Harris, the ex-mayor went ultimately lost the general election to former U.S. Representative Mark Green.
In addition to Barry, Democrats Christopher Martin Finley, who has previously received support from organized labor, and Miriam Liebowitz, who works for Vanderbilt University’s Transportation and Mobility Office, have also pulled petitions.
The public document also revealed State Senator London Lamar (D-Memphis) has pulled a petition to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, where U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) was confronted with a fierce primary challenge by State Representative Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) that was expected to decide the general election before Tennessee’s congressional districts were redrawn earlier this month.
Lamar has courted controversy since even before she entered the General Assembly, beginning shortly after her successful election to the State House in 2018, when Lamar garnered national news coverage following her declaration, “Tennessee is racist. Period.” Amid the controversy in 2018, Lamar faced fines from the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance two campaign reports filed after the deadline.
The Democratic state lawmaker drew more headlines in 2021, when she filed legislation calling for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to investigate Tennesseans accused of participating in the civil unrest in Washington, D.C. on January 6. It would also have stripped any elected official in Tennessee of their office who attended the January 6 protest.
Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District has also drawn interest from two more Democrats, Jeannie Michelle Head of Lewisburg and Brenda Woods of Bolivar, as well as independent candidates Wells Blankenship, Dennis Clark, and Trevor Murphy, who have all pulled petitions.
While the redrawing process sparked familiar names entering the races for the 6th and 9th districts, it also prompted five more candidates to pull petitions to run in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.
These include State Representative Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) and Nashville businessman and political consultant Darden Copeland, both of whom also ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2025 special election called after Green’s retirement.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Megan Barry” by Megan Barry. Photo ” London Lamar” by LLTN. CC BY 4.0.
You might say Megan’s campaign has “grave” issues to overcome.
There is nothing MORE shameless than a Democrat politician.