The campaign to flip Tennessee’s lone Democratic-held U.S. House seat was rattled on Tuesday by the Republican nominee’s acknowledgment of a “past indiscretion.” The acknowledgment came after The Nashville Scene, an alternative weekly newspaper, reported that the candidate, State Senator Brent Taylor, had sent “an unsolicited nude picture” as recently as 2021.
Mr. Taylor, who is married, was in his early 50s at the time, before he was elected to represent Memphis and part of Shelby County in the State Senate.
“I’m willing to acknowledge my past indiscretion,” Mr. Taylor, 58, said in a statement released by his campaign in response to the report. “The frustrating part is that my wife now has to relive this nonsense we’ve already worked through years ago together and moved on from.”
The campaign statement did not offer any details about what indiscretion Mr. Taylor was referring to.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Taylor told Matt Murphy, a radio host for WWTN, that the contact was consensual and described it as “a text communication with somebody that I shouldn’t have been communicating with.”
“I know people will be disappointed in what I did, but I think the important thing is to know that I’m willing to be held accountable,” Mr. Taylor said. He added, “If I didn’t want to talk about it seven days before an election, I shouldn’t have done it.”
Mr. Taylor, a hard-line conservative with President Trump’s endorsement, is favored to flip Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, which once included the entirety of the majority Black city of Memphis and has long been held by a Democrat. The district was redrawn earlier this year to include more rural, white voters and to give Republicans an advantage after the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Democratic incumbent, Representative Steve Cohen, said he would retire rather than try to run under new district lines. Mr. Taylor is running against State Representative Justin Pearson, a Black Democrat who first drew national attention for his brief expulsion from the General Assembly over a gun control protest.
The race quickly became ugly and personal.
In his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Taylor said Mr. Pearson “would be an ongoing public embarrassment if elected.” Mr. Pearson, in his own statement, said the report “reflects very disturbing behavior.”
“This disgusting behavior is unbecoming of any elected official,” Mr. Pearson said.
Early voting, which is underway in Tennessee, ends Thursday.
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