After the 2023 Covenant School shooting by a transgender-identifying assailant, Tennessee Democrat Aftyn Behn said the backlash made her fearful for transgender communities and helped spur her political ambitions. Behn, now a congressional candidate, has described the period as deeply upsetting for her family and for trans organizers, and says it motivated her to fight for greater protections for transgender people.
The March 27, 2023, shooting at Nashville's Covenant School, a Christian elementary school, left six victims dead and was carried out by a shooter who identified as transgender, according to law enforcement and subsequent reporting.
In a July 31, 2023, candidate forum, Aftyn Behn — whose partner has a transgender son — described the emotional toll the weeks after the attack took on her household. “So, for those of you who don’t know, my partner has a trans son, and the month of April and the final week of March was incredibly upsetting for us,” she said, according to The Daily Wire’s account of the event.
Behn said that in the wake of the shooting, and after it was disclosed that the assailant was transgender-identifying, she was pulled into conversations with transgender organizers and activists across Tennessee who were afraid for their safety. She described being included in a chat with “other trans organizers and activists across the state that were fearful of their lives,” the outlet reported.
According to The Daily Wire, Behn told the forum that the Covenant shooting helped inspire her to seek elected office so she could fight “every day” for “protections for trans kids and our trans communities.” She linked that goal directly to pushing back on coverage and commentary from Nashville-based conservative media company The Daily Wire and host Matt Walsh.
“Every legislative session, I promise to carry a ‘trans bill of rights’ so that we can push back against the far-right narrative that is being emanated by Matt Walsh and The Daily Wire, who have set up their home in Nashville,” Behn said at the event. “I promise to do that, and I promise to fight for the trans community.”
Behn’s record in the state legislature has reflected that focus. As reported by The Daily Wire, she opposed a parental-notification measure that would require schools to inform parents if a student adopts a different name or pronouns at school that do not align with the student’s biological sex. She called those students “the most vulnerable kids in our state who are just trying to make it out of middle school alive,” arguing that the bill would “weaponiz[e] their identities” rather than address broader needs of Tennessee families.
She has also criticized legislation designed to shield minors from sexually explicit drag performances. Behn maintained that such proposals “aren’t about protecting kids” but instead about “spreading fear and division,” according to Daily Wire reporting on her remarks.
Behn is now running for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th District in a special election to fill the seat vacated earlier this year by Republican Rep. Mark Green, who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee. Her Republican opponent is Matt Van Epps, a former official in Governor Bill Lee’s administration who won the GOP primary with the backing of former President Donald Trump, according to multiple conservative outlets.
The race has drawn national attention, with Democrats pouring resources into a district that has in recent cycles favored Republicans by wide margins. Green won re-election in 2024 with nearly 60% of the vote, according to election results cited by The Daily Wire.
Behn has come under renewed scrutiny over past statements that critics characterize as anti-police and hostile to the city she seeks to help represent. The Daily Wire and the Daily Caller have highlighted comments in which she advocated disbanding the Nashville police department and said burning down a police station could be justified. In a recent appearance on the liberal network MS NOW, Behn declined to walk back those remarks, the Daily Caller reported.
Conservative outlets have also resurfaced a February 2020 podcast clip, reported by the Daily Caller, in which Behn expressed contempt for aspects of Nashville’s tourism-driven culture. “I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country. But I hate it,” she said on the show “Year Old GRITS.”
Supporters say Behn’s comments reflect frustration with what they see as inequities and cultural tensions in a fast-growing region, while opponents have used the remarks to question whether she respects the district’s residents and institutions. Those competing narratives have become a central feature of the closing days of the campaign, alongside Behn’s outspoken advocacy for transgender rights and her criticism of conservative media coverage after the Covenant School shooting.
