Former Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed Justin J. Pearson in his bid for Tennessee's 9th Congressional District, throwing national weight behind the Memphis state lawmaker as he heads into a steep general-election fight in a district Republicans redrew earlier this year. Harris cited Pearson's record of standing up for working families in announcing her support, according to the seed report.
The endorsement, first reported by WZTV, lands months after Harris appeared at the National Action Network convention in New York in April, and comes as Pearson's campaign has leaned heavily on his record advocating for wages, health care and housing. Pearson, who currently represents a Memphis-area district in the Tennessee House, won the Democratic nomination for the 9th Congressional District on August 6 with 65.75% of the vote, or 32,092 ballots, defeating State Senator London Lamar and two other primary challengers, according to the Tennessee Secretary of State.
He now faces Republican State Senator Brent Taylor in the November 3 general election. Taylor won the GOP primary with 46.03% of the vote after securing an endorsement from Donald Trump, and has campaigned as a Trump-aligned conservative in the reconfigured district, per WPLN News.
A District Reshaped by Redistricting
The race looks nothing like it did a year ago. During a May special redistricting session, Republican state lawmakers transformed the 9th District from a compact, Memphis-centered seat into a 200-mile L-shaped corridor stretching toward Middle Tennessee, a change that shifted the Cook Political Report's rating to Solid Republican with a GOP+9 lean, according to News From The States. That redraw dismantled the district's majority-Black population, and it is why longtime Democratic Representative Steve Cohen, who had held the Memphis seat for nearly two decades, ended his re-election bid in May, determining the new lines were built to favor a Republican candidate, the Associated Press reported.
Cohen's exit reshuffled the entire Democratic field. Before he withdrew, House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar had issued a joint statement backing Cohen over Pearson, favoring the incumbent's seniority, as Hoodline reported at the time in its piece on the House Dem chiefs backing Cohen. Once Cohen dropped out, Pearson went on to capture the nomination outright, a result that effectively resolved that earlier intra-party rift in his favor.
From State Capitol Protest to National Spotlight
Pearson's path to this moment traces back to April 2023, when the Republican-controlled Tennessee House voted to expel him and fellow Democratic Representative Justin Jones over their role in a gun-control protest on the House floor following a deadly school shooting. Pearson delivered remarks outside the Tennessee State Capitol amid the fallout, and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners unanimously reinstated him to his seat within days, according to the Associated Press. The expulsions drew international attention to Tennessee statehouse dynamics and helped galvanize national Democratic support for what became known as the “Tennessee Three.”
That friction with GOP leadership in Nashville has not let up. In May, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton stripped Pearson and three other Democratic lawmakers of all their standing committee assignments following protests over the redrawn congressional maps, Hoodline reported in its coverage of Tennessee Dems losing committee posts. The move reduced the direct legislative clout of the targeted lawmakers even as Pearson's congressional campaign gained momentum.
Building a National Coalition
Harris joins a growing list of national progressive figures backing Pearson's bid, including U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with advocacy groups such as Friends of the Earth Action and Climate Hawks Vote, according to Friends of the Earth Action. Those environmental endorsements trace back to Pearson's organizing roots: before his 2023 election to the state House, he co-founded Memphis Community Against Pollution in 2020 and led the grassroots campaign that forced energy companies to cancel the proposed 49-mile Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline through South Memphis, per the Pipeline Fighters Hub.
Pearson's economic platform has also shaped his legislative record in Nashville. During the 2026 session, he sponsored House Bill 1399, a proposal to raise Tennessee's minimum wage from the federal $7.25 floor to $20 an hour, which died in a House subcommittee for lack of a second, as Hoodline detailed in its report on the $20 minimum wage effort's failure. That defeat underscored the uphill nature of his agenda in a GOP-dominated legislature, a dynamic that now extends to his congressional bid in a district drawn to favor Republicans.
Whether Pearson's national profile and coalition of progressive endorsements can translate into votes among the rural and suburban communities newly folded into the 9th District remains an open question, as does how much financial and field support national Democratic organizations will ultimately commit to the race, according to News From The States. With the general election roughly nine weeks away, Harris's endorsement signals that at least some of the party's most prominent figures are willing to invest political capital in the newly reconfigured Memphis-area contest.
