Democrat Michaela Barnett, a small-business owner and former congressional staffer, is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Burchett for Tennessee’s House of Representatives District 2.

One wild card in the contest is the impact of President Donald Trump’s sinking approval numbers

Barnett faces multiple hurdles in her quest to unseat Burchett, an entrenched incumbent running for a fifth term in a district that hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since William M. Churchwell’s second term ended in 1855.

The district stretches from the Great Smoky Mountains in Blount County to Campbell and Claiborne counties in the Upper Cumberland along the Kentucky border. The city of Knoxville, home to about one-fourth of the district’s population, is the only reliably blue enclave amid the overwhelmingly red rural and suburban counties of the region.

In Burchett’s previous four congressional victories, he has garnered two-thirds of the vote or more. He held a commanding lead in fundraising heading into the home stretch — as of July 17, he had $967,000 on hand compared to Barnett’s $56,230, according to the Federal Election Commission.

One wild card is the impact of President Donald Trump’s sinking approval numbers because of the war with Iran and concerns over affordability. Support for Democrats across the country is surging, with control of the House a virtual lock and the GOP Senate majority in doubt. In Tennessee, which Trump carried in 2024 with 62 percent of the vote, the president’s approval rating fell below 50 percent in August for the first time in polling conducted by the conservative Beacon Center of Tennessee.

In recent interviews, Barnett has said she’s been warmly welcomed by voters in Republican areas of the district who are dissatisfied with the direction of the federal government, while Burchett said voters are pleased with his record and support his reelection bid.

Michaela Barnett

Barnett said that one reason she’s running for office is because Congress seems to work for everyone but the American people. And she said that applies to Tennessee’s House District 2. She said Burchett’s folksy persona would be easier to take if he used it to accomplish something for his constituents.

“Many people think of Tim (Burchett) as the everyman, that he is someone who speaks truth to power,” she said in a recent interview. “He is someone who says some of the right things, but he doesn’t do anything for us. He doesn’t pass legislation, he doesn’t fill out all of his appropriations … 

“I think he’s failing on all of those marks.” 

Barnett said that she would be more effective at working across the aisle to pass legislation. 

“One of those would be regulating artificial intelligence and data centers,” she said. “Another would really be focused on mass surveillance.
These are two huge priorities that we’re seeing in our district right now.”

Barnett’s campaign is built on four “pillars” — the economy, healthcare, infrastructure and representation. She said she developed those priorities after talking to East Tennesseans about the issues they care about. 


“The first thing we need to do is end the president’s war in Iran and end his trade war,” she said.
“I think both of those together so far have cost about $4,500 per Tennessee household at a time when people were already really strapped, and many people voted for the president under the promise of no more forever foreign wars, no more wars in general, and lower prices on day one.

“The trade war, especially with Canada and with some of our allies, is really hurting Tennesseans. It’s hurting us when it comes to building housing, and we need to bring the price of housing down.”

A civil engineer by training, she said she would focus on infrastructure and creating the high-paying jobs it takes to build it.

“We’ve got $7 billion in infrastructure needs in our congressional district,” she said. “Across the state, two-thirds of the infrastructure needs have no funding source identified. And so I think there’s really great synergy to train up the next generation of East Tennesseans who build things to build the infrastructure that we need in a region that is growing so quickly.”

Barnett, 33, was born in Sunbury, Ohio, and spent her childhood living on a horse farm before the family moved to Texas. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Furman University and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Virginia.

After graduating from Furman in 2015, she worked in environmental education for a bit before deciding to move to Knoxville.

“I wanted to put down roots in the Southeast since I’d gone to school in the Southeast, and I made a list of places and I circled Knoxville and I moved here,” she said.

She worked for a while at Tomato Head and met her future husband, Max Ferrari, then a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee. He talked her into going to graduate school, so she split her time between Charlottesville, Va., and Knoxville for a few years. They married in 2019 and live in South Knoxville.

In 2021, she opened KnoxFill, a business in Colonial Village that offers refills for soap, detergent and other household goods, among other sustainable and environmentally friendly products. 

She got her first taste of the political world in 2024, working as a science policy fellow for Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, who represents Albany, N.Y., and the surrounding area. 

“They gave me eight different portfolio issue areas to cover for the congressman,” Barnett said. “I covered Social Security and retirement, financial services, immigration, housing, women’s health — this huge spectrum, really.”

Working for Tonko gave Barnett the confidence to run for the District 2 seat. 

“When you work in a congressional office as a legislative staffer, you are writing speeches, you are writing amendments, you are writing legislation, you are giving vote recommendations, you are doing all of the support work for the member on those issue areas,” she said. “Of course, I would never presume to say I’ve done the job of a member of Congress, but I have a leg up on a lot of first-time candidates.”

Barnett decided to run in the summer of 2025 after talking with local Democratic party leaders about the need for more creativity and unity, and for Democratic leaders in Congress to decouple themselves from the same interests that they’re supposed to be regulating.

“I think it was an opportunity to step up, and I took that step,” she said.

Reforming how Congress operates would be a priority for Barnett.

“That one is the one that is near and dear to my heart because unless we fix some of the upside-down nature of Congress, we’re not gonna solve any of the other crises that we’re facing, because we have entrenched power interests that are more interested in serving themselves than they are in serving us,” she said. 

Barnett said voters have broken down in tears when telling her they can no longer afford healthcare because Congress allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire.

“That’s something that gave some entrepreneurs, small-business owners, farmers, people in our community the ability to access healthcare for the first time in a long time, and not having that in (District 2) is devastating.”

She said the cost of extending the tax credits pales in comparison with the cost of the war with Iran.

“We’re not talking about extravagance,” she said. “I also want to be clear that I do support being able to still purchase a private option if you want to. A lot of Tennesseans want access to a public option, (but) they don’t want their choices taken away, and this is a model that works well in a lot of countries that I think could work here.”

Barnett said removing the income cap on Social Security would go a long way toward resolving the retirement program’s funding crisis. 

“If Congress had done that when I was a kid, we wouldn’t have to consider other things,” she said.

Barnett conceded that running as a Democrat in District 2 presents challenges but said that her message has been well received in the deeply red rural counties.

“Those are often the most special stops and conversations I get to have because those are people that have been hit hardest by decades of failed Republican policies,” she said.

“A few folks will believe (that she’s a radical leftist) and they always will believe it, but a lot of other people have either met me at their doors, they’ve met me at a community event (or) they have seen me on social media, and they’re saying, ‘This actually seems like a bright, reasonable young woman who wants to listen to me.’”

Barnett said she likes to remind people that they have power and that what has moved the country forward has always been a group of ordinary citizens deciding that the nation can do better.

“I am going (to Washington) to represent everyone in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District — not just Democrats and independents. I am there for every single person, whether they vote or not, whether they vote for me or against me. I want to materially improve their lives.” 

Tim Burchett

For a career politician, Burchett takes a dim view of politicians.

“If you have a congressman that goes to Washington and enjoys it and thinks it’s the end-all, you probably need another congressman,” he said in a recent interview. “I haven’t changed. I’m still fighting for fiscal responsibility and I still take on the causes that nobody else will and I still give people a little bit of hope and I’m still plain talking and I don’t mince words, whether it’s with the president, the speaker, or in the talking heads on television.”

Burchett projects a folksy cynicism about Washington politics.

“Ultimately, my goal is to take care of the constituents because Washington is a sewer,” he said. “It’s not a swamp. A swamp is something that’s pretty cool that God created. (Washington) is a man-made sewer, and it stinks for the same reason. It has zero daylight, there is no transparency, there is no oxygen, and that’s why it stinks.”

Burchett hasn’t advanced a lot of legislation, but he said that constituents like what he proposes and that a lot of his ideas get incorporated into bills that others act as primary sponsors for. 

“They like that I’m defunding the Taliban,” he said. “As of late, they’re very pleased with what I’ve said about big oil and don’t buy the whole argument that big oil puts up. Washington is primarily in the tank for big oil, and that’s both parties. Doesn’t really matter.”

Despite reservations about deficit spending, Burchett voted in favor of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill and asserted that some of his suggested cuts were ultimately adopted. 

A deficit hawk, Burchett routinely votes against raising the nation’s debt limit and serves as chair of the subcommittee overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is the legacy of trillionaire Elon Musk’s radical effort to slash the size of the federal government.

“I found over a trillion dollars in duplication, and I did bipartisan legislation,” he said.

He also said that he had a role in Trump’s decision to improve accessibility to “dyed” diesel fuel, which is aimed at lowering diesel prices. 

“I didn’t just sit on Air Force One and keep my mouth shut when I was with him” on a flight to Knoxville on Sept. 26 for the UT-Texas football game. “We had some pretty in-depth conversations.”

Burchett has long pushed, unsuccessfully, for legislation that would prohibit stock trading by lawmakers. He calls many of his colleagues “portfolio warriors” who vote according to how a piece of legislation would affect their investments.

Though Burchett asserts he is on friendly terms with many Democrats on the Hill, he said passing bipartisan legislation is difficult in the current environment. 

“The reality is, 98 or 99 percent of the Democrats will vote with (House Minority Leader) Hakeem Jeffries and (former House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi,” he said. “There is no bipartisanship when they’re in the majority. They’re not looking for any Republican help. That sounds great on talk radio and maybe on a late-night newscast, but the reality is that just doesn’t work in Washington.”

Burchett, 62, grew up in West Knoxville and graduated from Bearden High School before earning a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Tennessee. He briefly went into the mulch business before entering politics.

Burchett and his wife, Kelly, live on a farm in the Gibbs community, with their daughter, Isabel.

Though he frequently rails against politicians, Burchett is a political lifer. He first won an election to the state House of Representatives at age 30 in 1994. He was reelected two years later before winning a seat in the state Senate. He gained national attention by sponsoring a bill that legalized the consumption of roadkill, establishing a quirky reputation that continues to this day with his interest in investigating reports of UFO sightings.

He successfully ran for Knox County mayor in 2010. After two terms, he ran for the District 2 House seat that had been held for a quarter of a century by Rep. John “Jimmy” Duncan Jr. He’s breezed through all his reelection campaigns in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican districts.

Burchett often refers to his late father’s military service in World War II, but his stance on the Iraq War and defense issues is complicated. He didn’t vote for the National Defense Authorization Act because of the nation’s mounting debt, he said.

“I don’t get along with the war pimps,” he said, referring to his pro-defense colleagues. “They sure don’t like me calling them war pimps, but their business is war and their business is very good.”

He does not use the term “war pimp” to describe President Trump, however. He said crippling Iran’s nuclear program was justified and blasted the Islamic nation’s leaders for destabilizing the region. He said that he has told Trump that war represents a policy failure.

“Do I want war? Hell no!” he said. “I told the president, I said, ‘Mr. President, economic pressure is what we do best in this country. When we completely fail is when we have to bring in our military.”

Contrary to the consensus of economists, Burchett asserted that the war isn’t causing the current surge in fuel prices.

“I don’t buy (the idea) that oil is going up because of Iran, since we don’t get any oil from Iran,” he said. “I just think the oil companies are using that as an excuse to gouge us, and they do it very well … They’re protected under America. They profited greatly under our system. They ought to make sure that America is first, and they’re not.”

Burchett, who has been a Trump loyalist for the most part during his tenure, acknowledged the president’s declining popularity across the nation but said he doesn’t think it would hurt his own reelection chances. 

“In the 2nd Congressional District, he still would win overwhelmingly,” he said. “But when I agree with him, I agree with him; when I don’t, I don’t.” 

Burchett is concerned that the GOP will lose its House majority in the midterms because Democratic Socialists have emerged as a force in the Democratic Party.

“It’s not my granddad’s Democrat Party and it’s not John F. Kennedy’s; it’s not Bill Clinton’s. Heck, it’s probably not even Hillary Clinton’s Democrat Party,” he said. “It has just gone completely off to the left, and you know they’ll argue, ‘Oh, I’m not a communist; I’m a socialist.’ Well, make that argument in East Tennessee. I’ll let them do that all day.”

Burchett said he’s avoiding complacency by knocking on doors and meeting with groups throughout the district. He said he doesn’t pay much attention to Barnett’s campaign. 

“I just run on what we’ve done and what we’re doing and what my beliefs are, and the people of East Tennessee know me and they know my beliefs,” he said. “I want them to see me out there working. They know I’m working, and I’ve got the suntan to prove it.”