Pearson, 31, won the Democratic nomination in a district that was once Tennessee’s sole majority-Black congressional seat. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the legislature split the district into pieces under a redistricting that critics characterized as part of a broader Trump administration effort to retain control of Congress and dilute Black political power in the South.

Pearson was first elected to the state legislature after organizing against a crude oil pipeline from running through Black neighborhoods in his native Memphis. Months later, he and two other Democratic lawmakers were expelled after they led a gun-control protest on the House floor in the wake of a deadly school shooting. The expulsion drew national attention and Pearson made national headlines.

In the years since, Pearson has been at the forefront of a local movement against Elon Musk’s xAI, which has constructed two data centers in south Memphis powered by soot-producing turbines in a Black neighborhood already affected by environmental damage. He co-founded Memphis Community Against Pollution with his brother, and the NAACP and environmental advocacy groups have fought in court to halt the turbines. The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in that litigation, arguing the data center was needed during “Operation Epic Fury.”

Pearson’s campaign has framed opposition to the data centers as connected to opposition to U.S. military spending.

“Republicans are responding to elected officials who stand up to billion-dollar datacenters, and the billionaires who own them. Democrats are responding to a vision of Medicare for All, ending genocide,” Pearson said. “The confluence that is happening between those issues, is [that] who profits off of war are the same people who are profiting off of polluting our communities and stealing our drinking water for their datacenters that replace our jobs.”

Federal law enforcement has maintained a sustained presence in Memphis since President Trump launched a multi-agency “taskforce” there in September 2025. In the ten months since, federal agents have killed four Black men in the city. A July rally attended by more than 1,000 people drew Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, and Ayanna Pressley in support of Pearson.

Trump, announcing the task force, said Memphis was “suffering from tremendous levels of violent crime.” The week before, local police celebrated overall crime hitting what they called a “historic” 25-year low.

Pearson’s primary campaign was funded overwhelmingly by small-dollar donors, averaging $31 per contribution. His organizing model has been credited to the strategy that powered New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 victory. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats — the organization that helped elect Reps. Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib — both endorsed him.

“These primaries have shown voters of all ages are ready for next-generation leadership, and are more than willing to challenge the aging Democratic establishment,” said David Hogg, co-founder of the progressive PAC Leaders We Deserve, which endorsed Pearson on day one. “From stopping a $2bn oil pipeline to taking on the richest man in the world before most Americans even knew what a data center was to his historic protest for gun safety, he’s consistently out-organized money, power, and corrupt politics.”

Pearson’s win joins similar primary victories this cycle by progressive challengers in Michigan and New York — Abdul El-Sayed and Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, respectively.

Pearson framed his victory as a rejection of both Republican efforts to constrain voting rights and what he described as caution from the Democratic establishment.

“It’s concerning to me that our party would try and put a box around who can be a Democrat when we are literally living in a moment in time where people are trying to put a box around what it means to be an American, what it means to be a citizen,” Pearson said. “It’s the politicos in Washington DC thinking they know what is happening in the south or what is happening in our communities better than we do — and they’re wrong.”

Pearson pointed to a recent rally in Pulaski, Tennessee — the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan — that drew 150 people, and to his long history of community organizing in Memphis, as evidence his campaign model could translate to November.