Former Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) put the GOP and President Donald Trump in a very bad position when he decided to retire only months after being sworn in for the current term.
If you are a regular reader, you know I unloaded on him due to concerns about a special election in an off-year that could put the seat in jeopardy.
Well, the race to fill the vacancy is now a coin flip, and even Trump seems to have finally realized that if the GOP loses this seat, we are in big trouble in 2026.
Green resigned his seat in July, while also claiming that he needed to stick around long enough to help pass the big, beautiful bill.
I believe it was a selfish move because had he not run for re-election, he could have endorsed his successor, backed them during the general election, and it would have been an easy win, which would have also given the new member something to have on his or her record for the upcoming 2026 cycle. (Green won his election by 21.4%).
Green, in announcing that he was leaving office, stated, “To my constituents across Tennessee’s 7th District -- thank you. The trust you put in me is humbling. I will look back fondly on my years of serving as your voice in Washington.”
So, there were two problems as I see it. First, we were now missing a vote for several months that was badly needed. Second, we have the dual threat of a special election during an offseason, as well as having to defend the seat with someone who had no discernible record in place. Green never should have run in 2024 because whoever was in the seat was going to support Trump’s spending bill. Green’s reasoning was utterly ridiculous.
The race to fill Green's former seat is now a coin flip, and as I am writing this, voters are pulling the lever to see who their next representative in Congress will be.
The RNC and the Trump administration did nothing to help Republican Matt Van Epps up until a few days ago, when it was revealed that Democrat challenger Aftyn Behn was within two points of the Republican.
We heard the usual rebukes that the polls are fake news, and Trump decided to phone in his support and do some robocalls for Van Epps, and a few big names dropped in on the eve of the election, but in my eyes, this is all being done far too late. Believe me, a last-second push is not going to change anyone’s mind, and the RNC and Trump should have been hammering this race the entire month of November if they really wanted to make a difference.
Suddenly, Trump is worried, stating, “This is a big thing. They say it’s a sign of how we are doing.” Trump later added, “If it’s like two points less than that, they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I guess Trump’s losing his magic.' I want Matt to do better than me, even.”
The GOP cannot just win a seat that Republicans took by 21 points in 2024, as any result that is remotely close is going to be a warning sign. To me, if Van Epps wins this election by anything under 10 points, it is yet another wakeup call that the GOP needs to heed rather than simply saying that this win shows us that the GOP and Trump have not lost their magic. We cannot keep acting as though everything is just fine, and 2026 will be a cake walk just because Trump says that is what will happen.
Changing gears to a key foreign election, Trump just issued a warning to Honduras that if anyone plays games with the vote results in that country, there will be a price to pay.
Salvador Nasralla, of the centrist Liberal Party, currently holds a very slim lead with about 60% of the votes counted. He just overtook Nasry Asfura, a conservative, and someone Trump endorsed in the race.
Trump suspects there may be fraud in the works, believing that someone could be playing games with the vote tally. He then added, "If they do, there will be hell to pay! The people of Honduras voted in overwhelming numbers on November 30th.”
Just prior to the election, Trump announced the pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years for a drug trafficking scheme to bring hundreds of pounds of cocaine into the United States. Trump claimed that people he respected told him the former president was treated badly, so he pardoned him only months into his sentence.
