U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) said he has requested his name be taken off the ballot for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District amid the state’s implementation of a new congressional map.
In a press conference Friday, Cohen, from his D.C. office, called his decision to retire from Congress “by far the most difficult moment” he has had as an “elected official.”
Cohen was first elected to the U.S. House in 2006, after serving 24 years in the Tennessee State Senate. Before that, he had served as an interim Shelby County General Sessions Court Judge and as a Shelby County Commission Commissioner.
While speaking in D.C. Friday, Cohen said Tennessee’s newly redrawn congressional map was drawn to run him out of office.
“These districts were drawn to beat me. They were drawn to defeat me,” he said. “Memphis is my home and that’s what I fight for and I want to do it again. And if I get the chance, I’ll do it, but otherwise, I’ll be retiring from Congress and from, I guess, public life.”
Noting how he is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit seeking to block the state’s new congressional map from taking effect in the 2026 midterm elections, Cohen said if the courts handed him a victory and upheld the old map, he would continue to seek re-election.
Cohen said he believes he would have won re-election over Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson (D-Nashville).
“The people want me again. I have an opponent who’s verbally facial and can jump around and dance and do things like that. And if that’s somebody who they wanted, that’s who they could have because I can’t, I don’t dance anymore. I don’t jump around. But I think I was going to win that race and I’d like to run that race,” the congressman said.
“If the courts will give two more years to the district to be the old District 9 that I’ve represented, Memphis, I will run for that office,” he added.
On Thursday, Chief U.S. District Court Judge William L. Campbell, Jr. issued an order in the case filed by Cohen and other Democrats blocking plaintiffs’ emergency effort to halt the implementation of the state’s newly enacted congressional map and election law changes ahead of the 2026 election cycle.
Following Cohen’s announcement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-08) released a statement saying the Tennessee congressman “will be deeply missed by the House Democratic Caucus family in the next Congress, and we all wish him the very best in his next chapter.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X.
Photo “Steve Cohen” by Michael Jones.
