Meet Victoria Broderick, Nashville and Tennessee’s Unexpected New Democratic Representative in Congress

Throughout the 2026 campaign in Tennessee, political groups, donors and the media largely focused their attention on the 5th and 9th congressional districts, two redrawn seats that helped carve up Memphis and stretched all the way to Middle Tennessee. 

Both had well-known, powerful fundraisers as Democratic nominees. At the end of Tuesday night, neither Chaz Molder nor Justin Pearson would win, though, and Democrats were cautiously tallying a razor-thin victory in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District. Districts 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were all within single-digits as Democrats swept elections across the country. 

Victoria Broderick, a mid-30s tech professional from Lincoln County, was the unexpected victor, according to the unofficial tally, in the 4th District, long held by Republican Scott DesJarlais. 

Broderick did not raise very much money, but DesJarlais, whose personal scandals have followed him since the start of his political career, did not do much campaigning. And Tennessee Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting, aimed at splitting Memphis’ Democratic congressional districts, had the downstream effect of moving the southeastern corner of Nashville and Davidson County to the 4th District. 

Broderick won the Davidson County portion of the district by more than 25,000 votes while holding serve in purple Rutherford County, allowing her to win the district by just a couple hundred votes according to the final unofficial tally. As of this publication, DesJarlais has not conceded, nor has the Banner been able to reach him for comment. 

That means heavily Democratic Nashville, which has not had Democratic representation in Congress since 2022 redistricting divided up the city, will have Democratic representation again (though Broderick told the Banner she would open district offices in Tullahoma and Murfreesboro). 

Broderick first ran for office in 2024, also against DesJarlais, when she lost by more than 40 percentage points in the 4th District, then with different boundaries. Broderick has lived in Tennessee since the ninth grade and attended Austin Peay State University. She got involved in the Lincoln County Democratic Party in the years prior to first taking on DesJarlais. 

She filled out the Banner‘s candidate survey. In it, she described her support for Medicare for All, an increased minimum wage and universal pre-K. Read the rest of the Q&A here. 

Broderick also appeared at a nonpartisan campaign forum at Rutherford County Baptist Church in Smyrna in September. Because she was the only federal candidate to attend, the hosts allowed her to answer questions for more than 30 minutes. Some excerpts from that conversation are below. 

“I’ve been doing the work in District Four for two-and-a-half years,” Broderick told the Banner of her path to victory after the September forum. “I didn’t stop campaigning after the 2024 election. I literally hit the ground the next month, and I think that that’s what we’re going to see. We’re also seeing a district that is a little bit different and is more competitive, but it’s been written off by both the right and the left, so it gives me an opportunity to do the work on the ground, and we’re going to see the result of that. And people want change, and I think now is the time to give that.”

Day one priorities

“I would like to see rural hospitals protected. I recognize that the district prior had rural hospitals that were losing maternity wards. There are counties in this district that there’s no childcare, so these are things that I would like to address, because if we fund rural hospitals, that means that our veterans have a place to go. Our mothers have a place to go when they’re in labor. They don’t have to drive to Huntsville or to Nashville. We can address housing. There was a lot of talk about the infrastructure here [at the forum] earlier. My job is to bring that money home so that people in the state legislature have money to disperse.”

Immigration

“I can’t think of an agency that I’d want to get rid of. I do want to reform agencies because we have agencies that are actively, specifically ICE, that are actively causing harm in communities and terrorizing communities. I would like it to go back to a pre-2003 program. We need to make it so that there’s adequate funding to protect our borders, as well as there needs to be adequate funding for judges so that we can process people faster. … It needs to be addressed immediately because it’s terrorizing communities. Immigrants provide so much to our country as far as income, you know, and I want to see it where it’s an easier process.”

Money in politics

“I think both parties are guilty of this, and that’s money in politics. They’ve stopped working for us, and that is something that is core to me running for office. I don’t take corporate PAC money, and I don’t take AIPAC money.

“When you are a politician, you’re no different than your local barista. The reason I say that is because we work for you, and you should treat us no different than your local barista. The only difference between me and your local barista is they serve you lattes, and I serve you legislation, and both can ruin your day if they’re not done correctly. And we all know what a bad cup of coffee does. And right now we’ve had about 20 years of bad cups of coffee in this state. And what we need is fresh pot.”

Term limits 

“When I think about term limits, I think yeah, I think that we should put a limit on it. People are living longer than they were when the Constitution was written, and we also deserve representation that moves with the times.”

Israel and Palestine

“The UN’s independent organization has already … called this a genocide. This is disproportionate to what happened to Israel. We have a duty as a world power to address and protect our allies. We also have a duty to hold them accountable, and accountability needs to happen, and it’s not happening. … We can support our ally, but say no weapons are going to be bombing civilians and children and schools. We can say, if you guys want funding, humanitarian efforts have to go in, and if they don’t, you don’t get that funding because we have a duty, just like with our friends, to say you’re not doing the right thing and standing up against that. That is our job as a world power, and what is happening is disproportionate and not acceptable behavior.” 

Russia and Ukraine

“What Russia is doing in Ukraine is unacceptable. Russia has no business invading another country. We have a duty to stop an authoritarian government from trying to take over another country. Again, if the goal is for peace and for children not to get murdered, why is this still happening? So we have a duty to protect Ukraine because Russia has no good intentions in this, and that’s just what we have to do.”

Iran

“What’s going on in Iran right now is directly affecting District Four right now. You see raised gas prices, call my opponent. He is uniquely positioned to push back. What is going on in Iran is not OK. … We have three branches of government for a reason, and the way that we are supposed to be functioning is that Congress makes that decision, not the White House. … A person who campaigns on no wars and then goes to war lied, full stop, not acceptable. So what can we do? Put some people in government that have some backbone and say no, we’re not going to do this.” 

Abortion

“Roe was a protection, and I trust doctors. I trust medical professionals to understand what the high-risk pregnancy is. I trust medical professionals to say, you know what, this is going to hurt both the baby and the mother. And we have situations now here in Tennessee, thanks to the trigger ban that went into effect, that are killing women and killing babies. And if the goal is to protect children, the goal is to have children, why aren’t we creating an infrastructure so that families want to have children? When we have the best healthcare, the best education, the best paid leave, when families feel safe in their income and groceries. … Every parent knows it takes a village. So why not create the village so that children are taken care of and families are taken care of? 

License plate readers

“Surveillance at this level, where we’re abusing women, where you have police officers using their power to abuse women, where potentially you’re solving a crime, but instead of using mass surveillance, why aren’t we making our communities safer? … It’s mass surveillance. It’s not free. It means that you are being watched, and we all know that every camera in this room is a device to watch you. We have to put regulation around that because your life, your freedom, matters at the end of the day. I think it’s pretty bipartisan issue.” 

Gender

“I played on a boys team until I was about 14 because I like the competition. I’m a politician at the end of the day, and I trust medical professionals, and I also trust the agencies for the sports. I think there’s 50 [trans athletes in youth sports across the country]? Ten? Why are we focusing on 10 children? Why are we bullying for 10 children? I don’t understand that. I like the quote ‘to love another person is to see the face of God,’ and I think that we need to introduce a little bit of kindness here.

“This is an issue that has been hyper focused on to avoid talking about the things that need to be talked about. The average transition age is 27 years old. No minors are getting surgery without parental approval and years of medical surveillance and intervention. And I think that again, I trust parents. I trust parents to know their children. I trust doctors to know their profession, and I think that it’s a scapegoat for politicians to blame a community or fully a community instead of doing their jobs.” 

Technology

“This is something that has to be addressed. Not only is one of the most prominent AI companies, Grok, was utilizing child explicit material, and it was trained by actual child illicit material by the company’s owners and people who work within the company. They thought that that was OK. We have to do something about AI. We have to address it.

“We have to address it in our social media companies, because they are building data on our children. Every child in the United States, every child in the world has a profile already built out about them. We should be putting protections in place to protect children, because you know this takes a village, and we’ve got to protect children.”

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