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FIRST ON FOX: The Democratic Party’s candidate seeking to win a House seat in Tennessee’s upcoming special election has a lengthy record of anti-police rhetoric, which she espoused repeatedly on a now-deleted social media account and in interviews prior to becoming a state legislator in 2023.
Aftyn Behn, who is running against Republican Matt Van Epps in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District special election, also worked as a regional organizing director for the nonprofit activist group Indivisible prior to becoming a state legislator. The radical left-wing entity was also a frequent advocate for stripping funding from police departments, calling it “critical,” during the height of the defund movement.
“Where’s the proposal that dissolves @MNPDNashville?” Behn asked on an old social media account, which has since been deleted, in response to a separate social media post from a Nashville City Council member indicating local officials had submitted a “substitute budget proposal” aiming to strip Nashville police of $2.6 million in funding.
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“If it’s been difficult for all of you to imagine a world without police … we can do it and there is a world,” Behn subsequently said during an interview with a local Nashville advocacy group.
Behn’s comments largely came during the height of the “defund the police” movement in 2020 and 2021 following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Amid violent protests that often devolved into dangerous rioting and looting following Floyd’s death, Behn also downplayed the violence that was occurring and ridiculed white people for criticizing the looting, stating it was simply how minority communities were expressing their grief over Floyd’s death.
Democratic congressional nominee Aftyn Behn, a Tennessee state representative, is running in a Dec. 2 special election for a vacant U.S. House seat. (Aftyn For Congress)
“Looks like Aftyn is getting a visit from the Ghost of Wokeness Past,” quipped Republican strategist Matt Gorman. “Democrats over and over have been haunted by their past positions they thought they could hide from. Ask Kamala Harris about her advocacy of taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries for illegal immigrant convicts on how that goes.”
Behn did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. However, Democrat strategist Eric Koch argued that attacks on Behn have been surging because “Republicans are getting worried in a district that Trump won by over 20 points,” adding that Democrats making this race competitive shows they are in good shape to take back the House in the midterms next year. Behn’s special election is slated to take place on Dec. 2.
While popular in the immediate aftermath following Floyd’s death, the push to “defund the police” has become a political liability for many Democrats running in recent elections. New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faced criticism in the lead up to his victory for his past anti-police rhetoric, which Mamdani ultimately went on Fox News to apologize for. Earlier this month, a progressive candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, was reported to have quietly deleted old social media posts he made in support of defunding the police.
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“I’m currently involved in a transformative justice seminar, and so it’s how to imagine a world without police and what that looks like and what community mechanisms look like. How people cannot police themselves,” Behn said during an interview with Nashville Musicians For Change in July 2020. “If it’s been difficult for all of you to imagine a world without police, please tune in to, maybe not this episode, but the next one. Because I’ll talk about things I’m learning and growing as an organizer. Because I think, especially for those of us that are young, and talking to our parents about what police abolition looks like, that we can do it and there is a world.”
Behn’s comments came amidst her work with the left-wing nonprofit Indivisible, which itself also has a record of pushing to defund the police, calling the effort “critical” in order to “keep everyone safe,” in a Facebook post in 2020. The same year, the group called on people to phone their local, state and federal lawmakers to demand for policies and budgets that steer money away from police departments and toward “Black communities.”
Prior to joining the Tennessee state legislature in 2023, Aftyn Behn served as a regional organizing director for the left-wing nonprofit Indivisible. (Aftyn For Congress; Jason Davis/Getty Images)
“Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified,” Behn said in another post she made, which came in response to polling about who saw the destruction of a Minneapolis police precinct as justified, versus not. The precinct was ultimately razed to the ground and police were forced to abandon the precinct as it burned down.
Amid the chaos spurred by the death of Floyd that resulted in billions of dollars in damage and multiple lives lost, Behn was also co-hosting a podcast at the time. During one of the episodes, titled “Black Lives Matter,” Behn argued that it “is not for us to decide as privileged white people how marginalized communities express their suffering and their pain and their grieving,” referring to the looting and the rioting that was taking place. Behn called it “a trope” for white people to say the looting was bad.
“I would really challenge all of you when you see these stories of looting and you revert to this law and order type of response, I really challenge you to step back from that and think about what’s driving that,” Behn added about the rioting. “You should not condemn it because you don’t know the first thing about being where they come from and what their generational trauma that has been inflicted upon them by the police, by institutional racism.”
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During the same podcast episode, Behn suggested the police don’t actually serve to guard and protect Americans.
“You think calling the cops is going to save you?” Behn asked her listeners. “Black men are being killed when white women call cops.”
Behn also came under fire this week for other comments on her podcast, during which she said she hated her city of Nashville and all the southern-style elements that come with it, like country music.
Metro Nashville Police Department cruiser in downtown Nashville (Metro Nashville Police Department)
Meanwhile, in addition to Behn’s remarks in interviews and on podcasts, the Democrat House hopeful also repeatedly espoused defund the police rhetoric on a now-deleted X account, which was formerly Twitter at the time.
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For example, Behn responded to a post, claiming “the Los Angeles teachers union” was demanding a commitment to “defund the police” before they would commit to returning to in-person learning for students, with a response that called on teachers in her state to do the same. The post Behn was responding to also called for more similar demands across the country.
“Let’s go Tennessee teachers! We have your back!!!!,” Behn wrote in response to the post.
“Your individual positive experiences with cops do not outweigh the fact that the entire criminal justice system was built on institutionalized racism,” another post Behn shared on her now-deleted Twitter account stated.
