In Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, Democrat Barnett tries to flip a long-held GOP seat

Michaela Barnett, a Knoxville small business owner and scientist, is attempting to overturn more than a century of Republican domination in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District  by beating U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett in November.

Barnett, the Democratic nominee, began thinking about taking Burchett on in 2025 when she worked in Congress as a Science Policy Fellow in the office of U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, a New York Democrat. There, she worked on issues advancing science-based policy. The experience also endeared her to the concept of running for office.

On a personal level, she found Burchett “embarrassing” after watching him theorize about the existence of aliens and other such things, she said. Working in Congress gave her the idea she could do the job herself.

“I saw really how ineffective at his job, and how ineffective he was at delivering for the people of East Tennessee,” she said. “I am not someone who complains about problems. I think it’s much more effective to propose a solution, rather than point out a problem.”

Barnett has no legislative experience. She has a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia and her day job is running KnoxFill, a refillery selling alternatives to various household products, reusing products that would’ve been thrown away to make soaps, cleaning solutions and pet products.

Speaking with Tennessee Lookout, she criticized President Donald Trump’s war in Iran for raising prices on gas and other necessities, and said she’d work hard to fix local problems with health care (“there are people in my district who have to drive 90 minutes to get care”) and infrastructure, which she said hasn’t been kept up as more people move to the district.

Elsewhere, her priorities range from supporting abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights, which includes banning conversion therapy and discrimination, and supporting veterans through more VA funding and job training.

She pledges on her website to “return ICE to 2024 funding levels” and hold them accountable for crimes, and on education, states she wants to raise teacher pay and make college more affordable.

Money talks

Barnett has raised $638,378 as of September 30, nearly all from individual contributions.

That is still far in the shadow of the over $3 million Burchett has raised, which includes tens of thousands of dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, just this year. AIPAC is by far his biggest donor.

Burchett has handily won all of his elections in the district since his election in 2018, taking over 60% of the vote every time against Democratic challengers.

No debate

Barnett said Burchett has refused to debate. Burchett did not respond to multiple requests for an interview by Lookout for this article.

Barnett told Lookout that she challenged Burchett to do a town hall where she wasn’t present, so as to avoid platforming her as he claimed he feared. Yet Burchett hasn’t done that either.

“Voters deserve to hear from those who represent them,” she said. “The way I like to put it, this is a job interview, and I’m the only one showing up for the interview.”

She called it “really quite baffling” that Burchett was refusing to hold town halls or participate in debates, given how much money he’d been raising.

“He’s both raising and spending more money than ever before,” she said. “But we’re not seeing where that money is going. He’s very absent from the district. I’ve seen a couple yard signs, but I’m not seeing ads or mailers.”

She said it seemed like he “doesn’t think he has to, thinks he can win no matter what he does.”

Burchett’s record

Burchett was elected in 2018, after U.S. Rep. Jimmy Duncan retired from Congress. Jimmy Duncan represented the district from 1988 until his retirement; his father John Duncan, held the seat from 1965 until his death in 1988.

Burchett initially said he was “probably a no” on Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, though he changed his tune after meeting with Trump in the White House later that year.

Burchett said Trump “answered all our questions, was very informative. It was a very good day,” and said they’d “hopefully get this worked out and do some great things for this country.”

Amid the burgeoning war in Iran, Burchett has wavered in his support. He called his colleagues in favor of bombing Iran “war pimps” last year, but then later said he was “comfortable” with Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites later that year.

“Any time there’s a loss of life, I’m a little hesitant,” he said, but added that he knew “first hand” from his parents’ experience in wars “what impact a war can have on a country.”

This year, he said he opposed the idea of sending ground troops to Iran, but voted against a measure that would’ve forced the White House to stop the war.

He’s also introduced a pair of bills which would attempt to address the rising gas prices from the war — one which would ban exported diesel fuel and another which would ban it in the event of gas prices rising to $5 a gallon nationally, and would end the ban after those prices lowered to below $4.50 a gallon.

Recently, he introduced a bill, HR-10225, which would prevent federal money from being used to provide housing assistance to undocumented people living in the U.S.

He’s one of 12 co-sponsors on HR 9160, the No Safe Haven for Terrorist Families Act, which would ban family members of known terrorists from entering the country.

And he has co-sponsored U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace’s Preserving Social Security and Medicare for Citizens Act of 2026, which would limit Social Security and Medicare benefits to U.S. citizens and immigrants who have been lawfully admitted for permanent residency.

The road ahead

Barnett knows it’s a tough road ahead if she does manage to win — facing “a lot of establishment interests in both parties who want to maintain the status quo.”

But she thinks there’s “a degree of social and political capital” to be had if she wins the district, which has been held by Republicans since 1855.

“Democratic leadership might want to keep the seat, so they might throw me a bone they might not throw other freshmen,” she said.

She has some aces up her sleeve in case, though, describing coalition building with other aspiring political outsiders in this year’s midterms, planning to have a bloc that can vote for various issues if they win.

“It’s a voting bloc,” she said. “We’re not just striking out on our own. It’s absolutely critical if we want to deliver on common issues constituents are asking us to work on. We have to be doing coalition work right now.”

On the campaign trail, she’s talked to people of all political alignments who are dissatisfied with the status quo — and she thinks she can get them on her side.

“I was raised in a very conservative Republican family,” she said. “That’s helped me reach across the aisle. Republicans feel politically homeless. They feel they were sold a false bill of goods by this president who told us he’d bring prices down and ran on not getting us into more forever foreign wars, and what do we have? Still high prices and more foreign wars.”

Barnett, who was born and raised in Ohio, called East Tennessee her “chosen home,” joking that she “couldn’t coordinate it with her parents” to be born there originally.

“I tell folks who were born here, ‘I didn’t have the good fortune to be born here but I got here as fast as I could,’” she said. “This is my chosen home. I started and grew my business here, I met my husband, we got married, he got his Ph.D. I have so much love and appreciation for my chosen home, I want better for my neighbors than what we have right now.”