In the unlikely event of a Cooper retirement, TN-5 could become somewhat interesting. It's an interesting district demographically in that it is mostly Nashville (a big city, but not quite as crazy liberal as other big cities) but has some pockets of suburbs. It is rated D+5 and has one of the last blue dogs in right now. If he happens to retire in a Republican wave year, I would think that there would be a chance of that seat flipping.
I really doubt it. The Republicans haven't really competed in the district since the 70's. The reason it's D+5 is because the Democratic candidate for president is seen too left wing for Nashville by "some" and they switch parties, the dem House candidate for the seat regularly pulls in 65%+ of the vote.
Also it's one of the few areas in TN that both the African American and Hispanic populations are rising quite a bit, and also the college population there is increasing too. If anything it's going to become more of a mainstream Dem seat in the future, at least until redistricting.
If the GOP added the very conservative Williamson county to the south to the district and took away parts of Davidson they could gerrymander the district to be red. The only way to accomplish this would be county splitting though and I think TN has some statue against that.
Actually, Shelby County (Memphis and suburbs) is split, with urban Memphis comprising the 9th (D+some huge number) and the rest of the county in the 7th (R+some huge number). Shelby County as a whole is quite competitive and voted for both Governor Haslam and Senator Alexander this time around (Davidson even voted for Haslam). The 5th is the only district in Tennessee with an at all competitive PVI. Now, I do think that Tennessee might be pretty easy to gerrymander into 9 safely Republican districts, but lawmakers were probably worried about protecting the other 7 before they were quite as far right as they are now.
