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LiberalMind endorses Matt Van Epps
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and voting is already underway in Tennessee. This is the whole race — the records, the claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show.
The setup
Tennessee's 7th District — Clarksville and western Williamson County — is held by Rep. Matt Van Epps (R), and he IS the incumbent, a point older material gets wrong. Mark Green resigned on July 20, 2025 to take a private-sector job, after voting to help pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Wikipedia, 2025 TN-07 special election). Van Epps won the December 2, 2025 special election over Aftyn Behn (D), 53.9% to 45.2% — Ballotpedia News prints 53.8% / 45.2%, a one-tenth rounding difference between compilations, printed as found — was sworn in on December 4, 2025, and was unopposed in the August 6, 2026 Republican primary. The old-lines Cook PVI was R+10; the December 2025 special, run on the pre-redraw lines, was far narrower than that figure suggests. Cook rates the 2026 race Solid R. Four names are on the ballot (Tennessean voter guide; WVLT compilation).
Rep. Matt Van Epps (Republican, incumbent)
The record: Van Epps is a former Tennessee Army National Guard lieutenant colonel and special-operations helicopter pilot, a West Point graduate with an MPA from UNC–Chapel Hill, and a former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services and deputy chief operating officer in the governor's office (Ballotpedia News special-election summary). After his swearing-in he was assigned to House Homeland Security and Science, Space, and Technology — the committee detail rests on a school-publication profile and is labeled as such in our research. President Trump endorsed him in both the 2025 special election and the 2026 primary (Wikipedia; Ballotpedia News). His incumbency is eleven months old, and its central documented fact is the special-election win itself: this district has already voted on him, in a race the other party contested hard.
Pros: A veteran and former agency commissioner who has already won this district's verdict once, in a special election Democrats treated as a national test. Cons: Eleven months is a short congressional record; most of his file is the résumé, not the votes. The flaw, plainly: briefly proven — which under our doctrine is a watch posture, and we print his short tenure as the fact it is rather than inflating it.
Darden Copeland (Democratic)
The record: Copeland is a Nashville businessman and consultant (Tennessean guide; Wikipedia). He also ran in the 2025 special-election Democratic primary, and won the 2026 primary with 39.9% over State Rep. Vincent Dixie, a former Metro Councilmember, and another candidate. No elected office was located.
Pros: A repeat candidate who beat a sitting state representative for the nomination — the primary electorate's choice, twice-tested in this district's politics. Cons: No office held, no documented program detail beyond the candidacies, and no break toward our values. The flaw, plainly: insufficient record against an incumbent the district seated eleven months ago.
Andrew J. Koontz and Lowell Reynolds (Independents)
Koontz (Portland) is a real-estate agent (Wikipedia). Reynolds (Nashville) is a Grammy-winning music engineer now in his third year of law school at Syracuse (The Ballot Brief, per his campaign site); he originally filed in TN-05 and is listed as withdrawn there and running here. No further record was located for Koontz.
OUR CALL
LiberalMind endorses Matt Van Epps.
The district already held this referendum once, in December, and Van Epps won it. A veteran incumbent with a state-agency record against a challenger with no office and no exception case — the call follows the district's own recent verdict.
This race is one of hundreds in LiberalMind's Election 2026 coverage. For the complete breakdown — every race, claim by claim — go to liberalmindhq.com.
Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.
Sources
- Tennessee Secretary of State certified candidate list, as compiled by WVLT; The Tennessean voter guide — the four-name field: https://www.sos.tn.gov/elections
- Wikipedia — "2026 United States House of Representatives elections in Tennessee" and the 2025 TN-07 special election (Green's resignation, the 53.9%–45.2% result, primary outcomes): https://en.wikipedia.org/
- Ballotpedia News, Dec. 4, 2025 — the special-election result (53.8% printing) and Van Epps's biography; The Ballot Brief — Reynolds's record; Cook Political Report — PVI R+10 (old lines, labeled) and Solid R rating.
Winner: Matt Van Epps (Republican) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 6, 2026 (results wave 4); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.
AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.