Longtime Democratic leader Steve Cohen’s political career is over.
He quit on Friday.
The 19-year liberal congressman from Memphis announced he is withdrawing from his reelection race, becoming the first sitting member of Congress forced out of office by the Republican redistricting wave that followed last month’s Louisiana v. Callais decision. He won’t be the last.
Cohen, 76, removed himself from the August Democratic primary ballot after the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a new congressional map last week that shredded his race-based district and carved it into three new districts that better represent the Republican-leaning majority of Tennessee. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the map into law immediately.
Cohen didn’t pretend his decision to resign was close.
“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters at a press conference in his Washington office Friday morning.
“This is by far the most difficult moment I’ve had as an elected official,” he said, adding that the new lines were “nothing like the ninth district that I’ve represented.”
Cohen has represented Memphis’s 9th Congressional District for nearly 20 years, making him the only Democrat in Tennessee’s entire congressional delegation.
Tennessee moved fast and became the first state to redraw its maps following the Supreme Court’s ruling that colorblind redistricting does not violate the Voting Rights Act. It has opened the door for Republican legislatures across the South to dismantle race-based voting districts. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina have already begun the same process. Cohen himself predicted that Tennessee’s new map would leave the state with an all-Republican 9-member House delegation after November.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose hopes of becoming Speaker in November has been shattered by the ruling, offered Cohen a send-off.
“The city of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference,” Jeffries said.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Steve.