Republican Matt Van Epps has won a special election in a race that turned out to be surprisingly closer than expected in a sign of the Republican Party’s increasing unpopularity going into next year’s midterm elections.
Van Epps, an Army veteran, defeated Aftyn Behn, a progressive state legislator, in the race for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional seat with 53.9 percent of the vote as of Tuesday evening with 99 percent of the vote count reported.
