Who is Josh Sales? Pegram resident enters race for Tennessee’s 7th District

A Pegram resident, teacher and Army veteran has entered the race for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.

Josh Sales, 35, recently announced his candidacy as a Democrat for the seat representing a large swath of Middle Tennessee, including Cheatham County. The seat is currently held by Republican Matt Van Epps, who won a special election in December following the resignation of Mark Green.

Sales, who lives in Pegram, said his decision to run grew out of both personal experience and what he sees as a need for more community-focused leadership.

“What I want people to know about me is that I am in this fight because I have just as much skin in the game as they do,” Sales said. “I am a teacher that is watching education lose funding left and right.”

Sales grew up in a small farming town in Northern California.

“It's called Live Oak,” he said. “If you take Highway 99 going north out of Sacramento, you'll hit a stoplight, and you'll keep going and be like, what was that? That was Live Oak.”

He described the town, with a population of about 6,000 when he was growing up, as similar in feel to communities like Kingston Springs and Pegram.

After graduating high school, Sales enlisted in the Army. He was stationed at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, but was honorably discharged after an injury and is now considered a disabled veteran.

Later, he moved to Knoxville, where he attended community college and eventually the University of Tennessee while working full time in the restaurant industry.

While in Knoxville, he met his wife, Rebecca, a Williamson County native who later took a medical research job at Vanderbilt University.

The couple moved to the Nashville area and eventually purchased a home in Pegram in 2022.

“We knew we wanted somewhere with land. We wanted somewhere out in the countryside,” Sales said.

A career in teaching

Sales said a personal loss helped steer him toward a career in education. After his mother died in 2020, he began reconsidering his work in the restaurant industry.

“It made me kind of re-register what I was doing with my own life,” he said.

He joined a teacher residency program and now teaches AP English language at a charter school in North Nashville serving a largely underserved student population.

“We have, in the couple years I've been there, doubled the pass rate for the AP test for those students from what it was before I was teaching,” Sales said.

Why he decided to run

Sales said he was drawn into local political activity after receiving a letter inviting him to attend a meeting of the Cheatham County Democratic Party. He and his wife attended and ended up becoming the party’s representatives for Pegram.

Since then, he said his involvement in local campaigns and community events helped push him toward running for federal office.

“I want to underscore the notion that I am not a candidate who is interested in pitting left against right,” Sales said. “I am a firm believer that we are all individuals who are working to try to make the American dream happen for ourselves.”

Sales said the rising cost of living is one of the biggest issues he sees affecting residents across the district.

“If we can't, as a country, figure out a way to guarantee people a place to live, we've got an issue,” he said.

He also pointed to education and health care access as concerns, particularly in rural communities.

“Tennessee is one of the lowest in the nation when it comes to education, and to me, that's only making it worse for the future,” Sales said.

As a teacher, he said he sees firsthand the challenges facing students and teachers.

“I am at Costco buying snacks for my kids out of my own pocket, because that's what we have to do these days,” he said.

A message of unity

Sales said he hopes his campaign will focus on bringing people together rather than deepening political divides.

“The smartest person in the room is the one who realizes they don't know everything,” he said. “Being willing to listen.”

He added that his own background shapes how he approaches politics.

“I grew up in a working class family where there were evenings where dinner was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Sales said. “But that's created an empathy in me to try to make life better for others.”

While he acknowledges the uphill battle facing a Republican in the district, Sales said he believes the effort is worthwhile.

“I am not interested in running and campaigning and only being here for the Democrats,” he said. “I am here for every single person of this district because they deserve to have that representation.”