After dreaming nonstop Sunday night of fevered and intense local competition between Democratic factions over the 2026 9th District congressional race, I wake on Monday to find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that things are nowhere near that point in reality.
All that will come in time, but as of now most stirrings on social media are on other matters — the ongoing federal/state intervention in Memphis affairs and on its roadways being perhaps the most prominent of things addressed.
But partisans of the two Democratic candidates — incumbent Steve Cohen and challenger Justin J. Pearson — as well as the candidates themselves, are weighing in with what appear to be their essential talking points.
Addressing a certain nervousness in Democratic ranks about his challenge to a long-time party incumbent, Pearson said at a campaign rally last week, “We are not running this campaign against a person. We are running this campaign against a problem. And that problem is the status quo.”
As for Cohen, he spoke for his troops when he responded to Pearson’s opening announcement by citing his many years of experience in expediting solutions to the majority-Black district’s needs.
There is more to it than that, however.
Pearson is aware of the effect his persona and oratorical skill have on his would-be constituency — not just the Blacks in it but among its progressive whites as well. The reaction to his instant claim to national — nay, international — fame from his “Tennessee Three” days has continued to mark him as a unique political specimen with generational relevance.
And he keeps his hand in on virtually every topical issue that comes along — most recently, both the xAI matter and the ongoing co-occupation of local options by state and federal authorities.
And Cohen is famous, not just for his quicksilver wit and instinct for the partisan core of current issues but, to those who have paid attention over his long career, for his ability, less heralded but equally real, to work across the political aisle and to strike bargains with the opposition. Witness only his perseverance as a state senator in enacting a state lottery against multiple obstacles.
Whereas Pearson is going after the Trump administration’s actions in Memphis with hammer and tongs, Cohen conducted a trenchant but smooth Judiciary Committee interrogation of FBI head Kash Patel that left room for useful compromises when push comes to shove.
Ideologically, there is little if any difference between the two contenders. Both are capital-D Democrats with demonstrated concern for local grievances.
That will not keep personality factors from inserting themselves in the campaign, however. Pearson has already expressed his conviction that Cohen is “arrogant.” And it’s clear that Cohen, for his part, regards Pearson, a congressional intern of his in the past, as something of an ingrate and usurper. (“I knew something was up when he didn’t invite me to his wedding,” the congressman observed of his former charge.)
In any case, though there will be other races of interest on our ballot next year, there will be nothing else anywhere near as supercharged as the one for the 9th congressional district.
Can I pick a winner at this early point? I cannot. We’ll just have to see the movie, with all its turns and unforeseen plot twists, to find out what happens.