Is Knox County turning purple?

County Mayor Glenn Jacobs' vote share dropped by 10 points or more in 52 precincts.

Local Democrats have for several years been proclaiming shifts that could return the party to competitiveness on a countywide level. Last Thursday’s election results suggest that may be more than wishful thinking.

It is possible to tell many different stories with any given election, depending on how you look at it. And because no two elections are alike, comparisons between them across time are always complicated.

You could argue that last week’s results — in which no Republican in a contested countywide race won more than 57 percent of the vote — are a fluke, driven largely by a huge drop-off in Republican turnout from previous cycles. 

But a look at precinct results across the county, as well as voting patterns over the last two decades, suggests something more substantial.

Consider the trend in presidential elections, which see the highest turnout from voters across the political spectrum. In 2004, President George W. Bush won 62 percent of the vote in Knox County en route to his reelection. GOP candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney fared similarly in 2008 and 2012, with 61 percent and 64 percent, respectively. 

But former President Donald Trump slipped below 60 percent in 2016, taking 58 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton. In 2020, he fell farther, to just 56 percent. In between those two elections, in statewide Tennessee races, Republican Bill Lee won 58 percent of the Knox County vote in his first run for governor in 2018.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, running against popular former Gov. Phil Bredesen in 2018, just barely won Knox County with 51 percent. Sen. Bill Hagerty fared better in 2020 against challenger Marquita Bradshaw, who was essentially unknown in East Tennessee, but still topped out at 59 percent of the local vote.

Against that backdrop, the 55 percent that County Mayor Glenn Jacobs won last week in his successful reelection bid seems like less of an outlier than his huge 66 percent win in 2018. Other indicators in the Aug. 4 results also suggest some narrowing of the local partisan gap. City-limits Knoxville remains the blue center of a mostly red county, but there’s flux around the edges.

One result of the school board elections is that the now partisan board will have a 5-member Republican majority, with two Democrats and two independents. That is the most ideologically balanced of any of the local legislative bodies — the nine-member City Council, while nonpartisan, has only two members who are Republicans, and the 11-member County Commission has only two Democrats. But Thursday’s results also suggest a few Republican-held Commission districts could be competitive in the future.

The Mayor’s Race

Jacobs’ win in 2018 over Democrat Linda Haney was decisive. Haney was little-known and underfunded, raising less than $20,000 against Jacobs’ $300,000.

But 2018 was also an exceptional year for Republican contests in the August election. For the third gubernatorial cycle in a row, the Knox County GOP had a local name in the governor’s race: Randy Boyd, seeking to follow in the footsteps of two-term former Gov. Bill Haslam. In addition, former County Mayor Tim Burchett was in a bruising congressional primary against former state Rep. Jimmy Matlock.

The combination of those races pushed overall turnout in the August 2018 election to 81,195, a 33 percent turnout of registered voters — much higher than the 60,744 who turned out for the same election in 2014, or the 63,280 who voted in 2010, Haslam’s first run.

And most of those voters were Republicans, or were at least motivated to vote in Republican contests. 

This year’s total county vote count fell to 55,823, for just a 19 percent turnout. With no significant statewide Republican primary on the ballot this year, GOP interest appears to have dropped considerably. Although Jacobs still won, he did it with 30,300 votes, down by more than 20,000 from the 51,814 he tallied in 2018.

This year’s Democratic challenger, Debbie Helsley, actually received fewer total votes than Haney did in 2018 — 24,512, down from Haney’s 26,241. But because Democrats had a much smaller drop-off than Republicans, down by just 7 percent compared to Jacobs’ 42 percent decline in total votes, Helsley held Jacobs to a 10-point win rather than the 33-point margin he had over Haney.

Democrats were probably helped somewhat by their own competitive gubernatorial primary, which was won by Middle Tennessee physician Jason Martin. But judging from yard signs and social media chatter, most interest seems to have stemmed from local candidates in local races.

Helsley more than quadrupled Haney’s fundraising totals, raising nearly $80,000 — still far behind Jacobs’ more than $400,000 this year, but enough to mount a serious countywide campaign.

Jacobs’ share of the vote fell in every part of the county — out of 103 voting precincts, there was one where his percentage remained the same, and none where it increased. In 52 precincts, his vote share fell by 10 points or more.

The drop was most pronounced in districts within city limits Knoxville, which looks bluer than ever after last week. The city has had a Democratic lean in presidential contests for 30 years, but it has grown at the local level.

In 2018, Jacobs won 21 out of 44 city precincts, and tied in one more. This year, after political maps were redrawn following redistricting, the city has 49 precincts. Jacobs won only seven, in the Alice Bell, Norwood, Pleasant Ridge, Cumberland Estates and Rocky Hill areas. 

Helsley won 45 precincts overall, all but three of them inside city limits. The (literal) outliers were Precinct 55, an older residential area off Middlebrook Pike that includes Joe Hinton Road and Chert Pit Road, which Helsley won by just six votes; Precinct 68E, which includes Walker Springs and Cross Park Drive out to Cedar Bluff; and Precinct 69W, a narrow West Knox band between Westland Drive and Nubbin Ridge Road that includes A.L. Lotts Elementary School.

Close Calls

There was no reason to think the newly redrawn 3rd County Commission district, which takes in an urban-suburban stretch of northwest Knox County, would be more competitive for Democrats than the old one. It shed some city precincts and added a large suburban one to the west, which would tend to suggest the opposite. 

The district runs along both sides of Middlebrook Pike at different points past Cedar Bluff to Lovell Road. The seat has been held by Commissioner Randy Smith, who is term limited. He had no Democratic opponent in his first run in 2014, and in 2018 he beat Democratic candidate Cody Biggs by a 62-38 percent margin. 

But Republican candidate Gina Oster just squeaked out a victory in the district against Democrat Stuart Hohl last Thursday, winning by 89 votes for a 51-49 percent margin.

Oster is a somewhat divisive figure — she ran a tough primary against former state Rep. Eddie Mannis in 2020, accusing him of not being a real Republican, and served on the politically charged Merit System Council. But her results don’t look much different from other Republicans on the ballot. Jacobs won the precincts that make up the 3rd District by just a 52-48 percent margin.

The 3rd District school board representative, Daniel Watson, is an independent but one of the more progressive voices on the board. The diminished city portion of the district overlaps with City Council’s 3rd District, which is represented by progressive Councilwoman Seema Singh. Together with the strongly conservative Oster, that creates one of the county’s most interesting trios of local representation.

Hohl won just two of the district’s seven precincts, but he won 48 percent of the vote or more in another four of them. 

Similarly, Democrat Katherine Bike’s 51-49 percent win over Republican Will Edwards in the 4th District school board race suggests the political diversity of that West Knoxville district, which runs from Sequoyah Hills out through Rocky Hill to Bluegrass.

Like the 3rd District, it was redrawn last year and added a more suburban precinct to the west. But that precinct was the aforementioned 69W, one of the three Helsley won outside city limits. Bike also won it, by a 52-48 percent margin. She won seven of the district’s 11 precincts, scoring her biggest numerical gain on her home turf of Sequoyah Hills — Bike won the affluent once-Republican neighborhood by more than 200 votes, for a 59-41 percent margin.

The 4th District will now be the only one in the county to be represented by a Democrat on school board and a Republican, Kyle Ward, on Commission. Like the 3rd District, it is likely to receive attention from both parties in future elections.

And in the 9th District school board race, board Chair Kristi Kristy’s 52-48 percent win over Democrat Annabel Henley neatly illustrated the divides of the South Knox district.

Henley won the four precincts that make up the heart of city-limits South Knoxville, stretching along the waterfront and taking in Vestal, Sevier Avenue, Island Home, South Haven, Colonial Village and Lake Forest, as well as much of the Urban Wilderness.

Kristy won suburban and rural areas farther south, although the margins were narrower the closer to the city they were. She took 80 percent of the vote in Precinct 92, which includes Kimberlin Heights and Johnson University, but only 53 percent in Precinct 89, which includes Lakemoor Hills (on the river bend across from Sequoyah Hills).

The Legislative Ledger

Elaine Davis’ win last week over City Councilwoman Janet Testerman in the Republican primary for the state House District 18 seat showed that it is no longer a bastion of the West Knox establishment. Although regular GOP donors bolstered Testerman with a war chest more than twice Davis’ total, she won just four of 15 precincts and tied one other.

Testerman won West Knoxville from Sequoyah Hills through Bearden, Lyons Bend, Rocky Hill and Deane Hill. Davis won parts of Northwest Knoxville, including Cumberland Estates, as well as areas around Cedar Bluff and Ebenezer Road, and a swath of South Knoxville along Alcoa Highway to the Blount County line.

She will face Democratic candidate Greg Kaplan in November. Kaplan, a University of Tennessee professor making his first run for office, is not a familiar political name. But last week’s results suggest the race could be competitive. Jacobs won the precincts that make up the 18th District by only a 52-48 percent margin.

Less competitive looking is the county’s only new legislative district, the 90th state House seat. It was carved out of pieces of the old 13th District, currently represented by Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson. She had no primary challenger and will face Republican Dave “Pozy” Poczobut in November.

Although legislative Republicans went out of their way to draw Johnson’s personal address out of the district — she had to move in order to be eligible to run for another term — they do not appear to have put her at a partisan disadvantage. Of the 20 precincts in the new 90th District that registered votes in the election, Jacobs won just three, taking a total of 36 percent of the vote. 

Poczobut would appear to have his work cut out for him.