Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York is pushing her party to spend more money on campaigns in the South. This push follows recent successes by Black progressive candidates in races in Tennessee and Florida.
Ocasio-Cortez addressed the question during her Instagram story session with viewers Tuesday night after the mid-term elections, when someone asked the Congresswoman whether the Democratic National Committee would invest more in the South. Although the Democratic representative is hopeful for additional spending by her party, Ocasio-Cortez is ready to start her own spending now.
The results of the mid-term elections gave Democrats a majority in both Houses of Congress, and they won races in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas as part of 7 wins across the country. Additionally, a Senate race in Mississippi remained uncalled on Wednesday morning. The election results reignited heated internal debates within the party about how much money the Democrats should spend in this region, which they haven’t been winning for decades.
“Certainly hope so, but I can tell you that I am, and we started this cycle,” Ocasio-Cortez told the viewer.
She also mentioned state Representative Justin J. Pearson of Memphis, who ran in a congressional race in Tennessee’s 9th District and represents the Democrats.
“Justin Pearson ran an absolutely incredible campaign in Tennessee. I think they’re still counting ballots, but he was within one point … absolutely amazing,” she said.
Finally, the progressive Democrat noted a campaign by Florida state Representative Angie Nixon, who challenged Republican Senator Ashley Moody in the Democratic primary.
“You know, we poured, I myself poured in resources into Angie Nixon’s race, and she ran such a brilliant campaign,” she said.
“So, you know, my hope is to this answer, to, rather, to this question, is yes,” Ocasio-Cortez answered finally. “But regardless, we need to be pulling up for these candidates … in the South, and especially for these brilliant Black candidates that are responding and organizing to the attack on voting rights with just an absolute brilliant strategy … and mobilization.”
Justin Pearson, a 31-year-old Democrat, gained popularity in 2023 as one of the so-called “Tennessee Three,” Democratic lawmakers who organized gun control protests at the state Capital after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. As punishment for this act of dissent, Republican lawmakers excluded both Pearson and Democratic Representative Justin Jones from the Tennessee legislature, but both managed to return.
Democratic Representative Steve Cohen, who has represented this region since 2007, held the 9th District, a historically Democratic region with a majority-Black population. However, Republican lawmakers redrew the district map in May, splitting Memphis into three districts and stretching the 9th District to eastern Tennessee and a suburban part of Williamson County. After that, Cohen decided to leave the campaign and not run in the newly drawn races; the Cook Political Report says the newly formed seat is solidly Republican.
Republican state senator Brent Taylor won the seat that same night, around 11 PM local time. According to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office report, Taylor received 111,968 votes (49.63%), about 2,500 more than Pearson in the final unofficial vote counts. However, AP has not called the race yet by Wednesday morning, and Pearson refused to concede without receiving an official declaration of losing the seat.
In Florida, Nixon, a 42-year-old Democratic socialist from Jacksonville, upset in the Democratic Senate primary of August over former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Alex Vindman. Ocasio-Cortez supported Nixon during her campaign by endorsing her on September 2 and attending her rally on October 27 in Kissimmee, Florida.
Democrat Angie Nixon lost her race, according to an AP projection, as Republican Senator Moody beat her, receiving 50.9% of the vote while Nixon received 48%. This happened even though more than 95% of the votes were already counted Wednesday afternoon. Nixon, who would be the first African-American senator from Florida if she won, conceded in Jacksonville, saying her campaign was out-raised but leaving the door open for the future, when her seat will be up for grabs again in 2028.
Before Tuesday’s mid-term election, Ocasio-Cortez hinted at this Southern plan during a New York fundraising event, naming both Pearson and Nixon. “We are going to be organizing voters in disenfranchised communities across the South,” she said there.
The South became a focus of a national debate on voting rights in April, when the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Louisiana v. Callais, narrowing the circumstances in which Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used as evidence in a challenge of the district map, which reduces the minority’s voting power. Republican lawmakers in the region quickly took action after that ruling. On the night of his victory in the Democratic Senate primary, Pearson told his supporters that the Court and Tennessee lawmakers effectively dismantled the main part of the 1965 Act.
However, Democrats delivered one of their best results in years in Senate races in other parts of the region. Former governor Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews unseated Republican Senator Darline Graham in South Carolina, and Democratic state Rep. … James Talarico defeated Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, AP projections suggest. In Georgia, Republican incumbent Jon Ossoff won reelection.
In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom is leading Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith 462,857 to 462,792 as of Wednesday morning, per WLOX, with 95.6% of votes counted. No runoff is needed in the race. Democrats spent more than $40 million on campaign ads in South Carolina and Mississippi, NBC News reports.
Senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia, who campaigned for Colom, claimed that the way to a sustainable majority in Congress for the Democrats “goes right through the South.”
DNC has already started allocating resources. In August, the committee launched a Southern States Resource Hub to help state Democrats with staffing and messaging, prioritizing Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas. Its Red State Fund provides $22,500 to state parties in Republican-held states each month. DNC chair Ken Martin claimed before the election that the committee made “unprecedented investments in Southern states”.
Progressive critics claim that it is too late and the money didn’t reach insurgent candidates in the region. Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell suggested that Nixon’s race was winnable. He blamed party leadership for holding back additional funding because Nixon was not a preferred candidate. Some Black Democrats and organizers in the region suggested before the election that the money should have been spent earlier and Democrats should have paid more attention to Black voters in the South.
Ocasio-Cortez, who was reelected to Congress on Tuesday, is considering a 2028 presidential or Senate race in New York.x
Meanwhile, Democrat Angie Nixon posted a short message on her social media account on Wednesday morning: “Invest in the South.”
