Special election in TN’s 7th Congressional District on Dec. 2
A special election will determine who will fill the seat left open by U.S. Rep. Mark Green: Democratic Aftyn Behn or Republican Matt Van Epps.
- Matt Van Epps is the son of a Vietnam war veteran and a native of Mentor, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb.
- A West Point graduate and decorated U.S. Army veteran, Van Epps served nine tours in Afghanistan and Iraq as a combat helicopter pilot.
- Van Epps served in Tennessee state government in the Haslam and Lee administrations, serving an administrative role in the state’s COVID-19 response.
Four months ago, Matt Van Epps was virtually unknown. But in a special election primary that lasted just weeks, he was able to score the backing of billionaire-funded PACs, support from current and former Tennessee governors and a presidential endorsement.
Shortly before 9 p.m. on Oct. 7, Matt Van Epps strode onto a stage with an oversized American flag as a backdrop at an Italian restaurant in Clarksville. Holding his wife’s hand, the 42-year-old decorated Army veteran gave a thumbs up as he gazed out on a crowd of Republican strategists, donors and state officials, then stepped up to the podium.
“Tonight you’ve sent a message loud and clear: The people of Middle and West Tennessee stand with President Trump,” Van Epps said. “Thank you, Mr. President, for your trust and support.”
Now, he’s facing Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn in the general election for Tennessee’s heavily Republican 7th Congressional District ― where retired U.S. Rep. Mark Green won reelection last year by 22 points.
So who is Matt Van Epps?
He grew up in an affluent suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Tennessee after a 10-year military career in the U.S. Army. A West Point graduate, he is a decorated combat helicopter pilot who served nine tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is now a lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee Army National Guard.
Van Epps’ professional life outside the military has been primarily as a state government bureaucrat. He has worked in the Veterans Services and Transportation departments, and led the Department of General Services. He helped shape Tennessee’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, strategizing ways to get residents vaccinated. He holds a master’s in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has led operations for a veteran-led recruiting start-up and his own consulting firm, Darkhorse Strategies LLC.
Ohio roots
Van Epps has touted his “deep Tennessee roots.” But he first moved to Nashville just over a decade ago, having spent much of his life in Ohio, New York and deployed overseas.
He was born in March 1983, the child of an Army veteran. His father was drafted during the Vietnam War, and served as an infantryman and a “tunnel rat,” developing “severe post-traumatic stress,” Van Epps wrote in a 2024 Tennessean op-ed.
Van Epps spent his youth in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor, Ohio, where he attended Mentor High School and played baseball and football. He was also in the National Honor Society, Community Service Board and Future Leaders Club, and on the snow king court. He was voted “most involved” in his senior class, according to his high school yearbook.
“[My mom and dad] met at IBM in in Cleveland, Ohio. Neither of them went to college, but they worked really hard. And my brother and I, we were raised middle class. They worked really hard to give us an opportunity,” Van Epps told The Tennessean. “I think that that grit and resilience, my mom knew from growing up and my dad knew from the time in service, was really impactful for us.”
Before heading to New York to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2001, he asked a friend traveling to France to bring him back a film canister of sand from Omaha Beach. It was one of three personal items he chose to bring with him to the academy.
“Having the sand was a reminder that liberty and perseverance comes at a very high price, and that I could handle the challenges at West Point as they would pale in comparison to those faced by the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc and the Allied soldiers on the beaches below,” Van Epps wrote in 2021.
West Point class of 9/11
Weeks into his freshman year at West Point, terrorists rammed passenger jets into the Twin Towers in Manhattan, changing the course of history.
“On that perfect-weather Tuesday morning in New York’s midstate, I was sitting in freshman computer science class when the instructor turned on the TV after news of a plane striking a building in NYC just 60 miles to our south,” Van Epps recalled in a Tennessean op-ed. “As we watched the broadcast, our hearts sank and silence overtook Thayer Hall. First Classmen (seniors) donned the old Army Battle Dress Uniform and told us to prepare for combat.”
Van Epps graduated West Point in 2005 on the dean’s list, with a major in political science and a minor in mechanical engineering.
“9/11, it really shaped our whole experience there,” Van Epps said. “We knew we were going to war.”
After flight school and ranger school, Van Epps deployed to Iraq for 12 months. He was selected for the Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell and deployed eight times to Afghanistan to take out high-value terrorists. During deployments, Van Epps earned the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Air Medal with valor device, according to a copy of his resume obtained by The Tennessean.
In 2011, Van Epps married a high school sweetheart, Meredith Hodulik, according to the Ohio Department of Vital Records. She filed for divorce in 2013.
At the primary victory party last month, fellow Army pilot Matt Bertulli spoke about Van Epps’ courage in Afghanistan.
“Imagine having a flaming football shot at you and you wake up the next day and saying, ‘that was fun,’ after it hit your aircraft. Then you get back in that same aircraft because it just got repaired and you fly back into that target,” Bertulli said. “That’s the kind of leader that you have in the Tennessee 7th.”
Haslam, Lee administrations
Van Epps moved to Nashville in 2015 to join a veteran-owned talent management firm. He also worked as a health policy fellow for U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in Washington before landing his first state government job at the Department of Veteran’s Services in the Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration. After Gov. Bill Lee was elected, Van Epps transferred to the Department of Transportation, where he oversaw the procurement and contracts division.
When the COVID-19 pandemic came to Tennessee, Van Epps was recruited as a strategic planner, reporting to the state Unified Command Group’s chief of staff as he helped administer the state’s response. In his role, Van Epps oversaw procurement and administration, but did not have authority to craft policies around stay-at-home orders, business closures or mask mandates. Van Epps later became deputy chief operating officer in Lee’s office until 2023, when he briefly returned to the private sector.
He led the Department of General Services from October 2024 until June, when he resigned to run for Congress.
“I think that background that I have, it’s a well rounded background, I think: in the Army, in special operations, in small business, in state government, and I’m still serving the National Guard now,” Van Epps said. “And I think it’s that well rounded background ― just in leadership, in boots-on-the-ground experience, in building and managing teams to accomplish objectives ― and that’s what I think this role, legislative or not, is just so important to build, to have really high performing teams, and to build constituencies and have networks so that we can advance priorities for the district and for our country.”
Van Epps married Nashville Business Journal editor Meg Wrather in Nashville in June 2023. They have an infant daughter. He quipped during a candidate forum that running for Congress was the second-hardest thing he’s done this year: “The hardest thing was assembling a crib.”
Why he wants to run for Congress
Van Epps has said he wants to run for Congress to make the country better for the next generation.
“I’m running because duty, honor and country is core to who I am,” he said during a candidate forum in September.
If elected, he says, “there’s a whole lot of things we have to do all at once.”
“Cost of living is really, really important. We have to move on that immediately,” Van Epps said. “There’s a whole host of things we have to do there, from housing and energy to red tape, taxes, health care, childcare.”
Health care costs will be one of the first issues the next 7th District member will have to address, as the expiration of tax subsidies at the end of December will cause premiums for marketplace health insurance plans to spike ― and make as many as 200,000 Tennesseans’ heath insurance unaffordable.
Van Epps’ opponent, Democrat Aftyn Behn has committed to extending the tax credits. Van Epps says he’ll follow Trump’s lead.
“What the president and the speaker have both signaled is that they’re willing to negotiate and talk about it,” Van Epps said. “When I think about health care in general, we have to reduce the cost of health care.”
Van Epps points to cost-lowering strategies like marketplace competition between hospitals, expanding access to tax privileged health savings accounts, and piloting value-based health care models that reward physicians based on outcomes instead of traditional fees for services.
When asked how he would support the health care system in his district would be able to support tens of thousands of newly uninsured Tennesseans, Van Epps said the entire system needs reform.
“This kind of goes, like, goes back to just kind of the broad thoughts on, like, how do we, how do we get health care to a point where its affordable for families? Which is really important,” he said. “And that is, you know, as I mentioned, the full transparency in pricing and quality.”
Van Epps has said his first piece of legislation would be a bill to improve services for veterans. He is still deciding what it would include, but he’d like to focus on helping veterans transition into meaningful civilian work.
“I think if we can work to solve the transition part upstream, to ensure the veterans get reconnected back to purpose, that part is really important,” Van Epps said.
During his time in Lee’s office, Van Epps established a yearlong fellowship program for veterans from Fort Campbell transitioning out of the military to serve in state government.
Loyalty to Trump
Van Epps has run as a “battle tested warrior” who will take the skills he learned fighting terrorists to Washington to “fight shoulder to shoulder with President Donald Trump.” As most Republicans did in the primary, Van Epps pledged to support the president’s agenda.
“We cannot let the president down in this election,” Van Epps said on a tele-rally with Trump on the eve of the primary. “Vote to defend America’s freedom, safety and way of life. We must stand united with President Trump against the radical left who are determined to destroy all we hold dear.”
On policy, there’s little he disagrees with Trump about. He’s praised Trump’s tax cuts and said he would have voted for the Big Beautiful Bill ― despite the fact that it’s raised funding burdens for states.
Van Epps supports Trump’s tariff strategy, despite it’s high cost for Tennessee’s soybean farmers this year, calling the tariffs a good plan “to ensure we stop getting ripped off” by China. He called Trump’s recent deal with China “a great step in the right direction” and said he would be open to using tariff surplus funds to offset losses soybean farmers suffered due to tariffs.
His campaign treasurer is Cabell Hobbs, a compliance guru who served as budget manager for the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign in 2004.
“I know in my heart that he’s going to run for the White House,” Bertulli said in October, “and he’s going to be president of the United States one day.”
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@tennessean.com.
