Tennessee State Rep Aftyn Behn, welcome to KK&F! We talk to the candidate who dominated the news cycle last week, nabbing conservative freak-out headlines calling her “the future of the party” for Democrats. In a Trump +22 district, she made an incredible showing despite losing her race to Matt Van Epps. What does it mean to be the “AOC of Tennessee,” and what does this major step forward for progressive politics mean for the future of the party? We talked to her about all of it! Watch below!

Van Epps was supposed to sweep. The deck was completely stacked in his favor: he was supposed to ride easily into office on a Trump +22 wave in his Republican Tennessee district. But a new progressive politician, Aftyn, caught him off guard and gave him an incredible run for his (dirty) money. From this race, we learned a lot about the power of gerrymandering as a powerful force in American politics. We also learned about how readily working-class American voters turned out to vote, especially in early voting, for a pro-worker candidate — and those early votes say everything about how excited those voters are to see improvements in their everyday lives.

Aftyn thinks of herself as a unifier, closing the gap between Democrat and Republican voter turnout and building a broad coalition that brought in former Trump supporters and rallied them behind a program supporting affordability of housing and healthcare. She was also able to highlight everything that the Republican Party has failed to do in Tennessee, despite how powerful Trump’s rhetoric has been there — people are clearly beginning to reject that rhetoric as hypocritical and harmful to their communities. Aftyn and her coalition aren’t going to let Republicans privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority. And they’re not going to let people like Van Epps coast into office on anti-worker platforms.

This is, as we discuss, a sea change for American politics in a Trump stronghold. But Aftyn knows it doesn’t stop here. She plans to consult her supporters and community about a future run, and no matter what, she’s identified the need for a decade-long project of transforming the Democratic Party to actually support her community’s demands for representatives that reflect and respond to their needs. It seems like a daunting task and one that will take a while to build trust and support. But last week’s election shows that with people like Aftyn taking on that task, things are moving in the right direction.

Thanks for listening to KK&F. You can listen to this episode tomorrow via major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.