After 32 years total in office, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper will not seek re-election to Congress, in part because of the way GOP state lawmakers split Nashville in the redistricting process.
“I’m not a quitter, but I’ve been gerrymandered out of a congressional seat,” Cooper tells WPLN News. “The Republicans could not beat me at the polls, so they have chosen to wreck the Nashville district. And that’s a tragedy not for me but for Nashvillians because soon you’ll have to look for your congressman in Nashville, not in Nashville but in Clarksville or Cookeville or Columbia.”
The announcement also comes less than a year after the Cooper’s wife passed away from Alzheimer’s.
The son of a former Tennessee governor, Cooper’s congressional career began almost four decades ago, when he was elected as a young Democrat to Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District. He served 12 years in office then, giving up his seat in a failed bid for the U.S. Senate.
Cooper returned to Congress less than a decade later, having moved to Nashville and the 5th Congressional District. A member of the so-called Blue Dog Coalition of centrist and conservative Democrats, Cooper was frequently criticized by progressives within his party and would have faced a well-funded challenger in the Democratic primary had Republicans left his district untouched.
But GOP lawmakers instead pushed through the sweeping changes to congressional and state Senate maps Monday night in a party-line vote. The next stop is Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for his signature.
The maps will split Democratic-leaning Davidson County three ways, separating downtown Nashville, East Nashville, and North Nashville — while combining them with rural districts.
“Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville,” Cooper wrote in an emailed statement. “No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville.”
Cooper says he is announcing his decision now to give other candidates time to campaign.
WPLN’s Chas Sisk contributed to this report.
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