A week before Tennessee's 7th Congressional District voted on December 2, 2025, the Tennessee Lookout added up what outside groups had already spent trying to pick our congressman.

Seven million dollars.

That is for one special election, in one district, for a seat that had not been remotely competitive in years. Mark Green won this district in 2022 and in 2024 by nearly identical 20-point margins. In 2025 it suddenly became the most expensive thing on the political calendar — and most of that money came from people who will never have to live with the result.

Matt Van Epps won that race with 53.9% of the vote. Here is who paid for it.

More outside money than his own campaign raised

Start with the number that matters most, because it says exactly who this congressman answers to.

Van Epps's own campaign — every check from every donor, every PAC contribution, every fundraiser — raised $1,982,057.

Outside groups that don't answer to him, don't disclose to us, and don't take our calls reported spending more than $2.4 million on ads and mail supporting him. That's according to the Federal Election Commission's own records of independent spending in his race.

More money was spent on Van Epps by strangers than he raised as a candidate.

That is not a normal congressional campaign. That is a purchase.

The list

These are the biggest groups the FEC shows spending to elect him:

• MAGA Inc. — $843,897. Trump's own super PAC. Its largest individual donors this year are Jeff Yass, the Wall Street investor best known as a major backer of the Chinese-owned app TikTok, and Kelcy Warren, the billionaire owner of the pipeline company Energy Transfer.
• American Liberty Foundation — $383,777.
• American Patriots PAC — $329,827.
• Conservatives for American Excellence — $297,317. Most of its money comes from Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, two hedge fund billionaires.
• Patriotic Fund — $198,837.
• Club for Growth Action — $165,763. Its main backers are Yass again and Virginia James, a longtime funder of private-school vouchers.
• Special Operations for America — $111,000.
• School Freedom Fund — $74,956. This is the Club for Growth's voucher arm, and it spent around $850,000 more in the primary to help Van Epps, mostly on attacks that never mentioned his name.

Count the Tennesseans on that list. There aren't any.

We have followed this exact money before. The School Freedom Fund is the same outfit that just put $3 million behind Marsha Blackburn's campaign for governor and its money traces back to Yass, who is not a Tennessean looking out for Tennessee kids. Club for Growth spent more than $3 million in Tennessee legislative races in 2024, running a smear campaign against Republicans who had voted against Gov. Bill Lee's voucher plan. Those races flipped, and the voucher bill passed in 2025 by a hair.

Now the same donors have bought a seat in Congress.

Four days before the primary, Trump picked the winner

The Republican primary started with 11 candidates. Three sitting state representatives were considered the front-runners, and none of them was Van Epps.

Then, four days before the October 7 primary, Trump endorsed him, calling him a "MAGA Warrior." State Rep. Lee Reeves suspended his own campaign and endorsed Van Epps, citing the endorsement. Van Epps won the primary with about 52% of the vote.

Nearly $3 million in outside money had already been spent in that primary, most of it to make sure he was the one standing at the end.

This is what Trump's money machine is built to do. We wrote about it in July, when the Wall Street Journal traced more than $781 million flowing into a web of funds Trump and his allies control — including MAGA Inc., which was sitting on $382 million in cash. That war chest exists to reward loyalty and punish dissent. In Tennessee's 7th District it bought a nominee in four days.

Worth noting: some of the money went the other way inside his own party. House Freedom Action, the House Freedom Caucus's political arm, reported spending about $88,000 against Van Epps. He was the establishment's candidate and Trump's candidate, and that combination was enough.

What $2.4 million buys

Van Epps was sworn in on December 4, 2025. He has been in Congress for eight months. The record so far is exactly what you would expect from a member elected by that list of donors.

On the environment, he has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025 — and a 0% lifetime score, earned in a matter of weeks.

On immigration enforcement, he put out a press release celebrating his vote to fund ICE and CBP, while families in Nashville were being swept up in enforcement operations.

On the things that actually cost us money — groceries, insurance, rent — he has told Tennesseans that Trump's tariffs are leveling the playing field, which is a strange thing to say to people paying the tariffs.

Not one of those positions is a surprise. They were priced in before a single vote was cast.

Why this matters more than the usual "money in politics" complaint

It's easy to shrug at a big number and move on. Don't.

A congressman who raises his money from the people he represents has to go home and face them. A congressman whose seat was delivered by Trump's super PAC, two hedge fund billionaires, and a voucher fund from out of state has a different set of people to keep happy — and none of them live in Clarksville, Dickson, or Nashville.

That's the real cost of a $7 million special election. It isn't the money. It's that the people who spent it now own the first call on his time, and we're left hoping we come second.

We deserve better than a representative who was handed to us.

Source

Adam Friedman, "Super PACs have now spent $7 million in Middle TN U.S. House special election with a week to go," Tennessee Lookout, November 25, 2025. Photos by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout. Independent expenditure totals are from the Federal Election Commission's records for the 2026 cycle.