An open seat in the 5th District has attracted the largest pool of County Commission primary candidates in more than 15 years.

Growth and infrastructure are top issues for all the candidates in the race.

Five Republicans, all of them first-time candidates, are running to represent the affluent West Knox County district, which covers Farragut, Concord and Choto. The winner in the March 5 primary will face Democrat Arthur Moore in the Aug. 1 county general election.

The Republican contenders are Brad Hall, Angela Russell, Toni Scott, Dale Skidmore and Brian Walker. They are varied in background and the paths they’ve taken to seeking public office, but for the most part they sound similar themes. As a top priority, all cite the need to balance the county’s ongoing growth and development with local infrastructure and quality of life. They share an aversion to property tax increases, a commitment to public safety and a concern about an increasingly visible homeless population.

Protecting the interests of homeowners and residents has been a proven winning message in the district, which includes some of the county’s priciest residential property and highest median incomes. Current Commissioner John Schoonmaker, who can’t run again after serving two terms, had a long history of involvement with homeowners groups before seeking office.

The district has the interesting feature of including the entirety of the Town of Farragut, which has its own town board and planning commission. The town provides only minimal public services, relying on the Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement and Knox County Schools for education, making the local county commissioner a necessary partner in local governance.

With so many candidates in the race, fundraising totals for all five have been relatively modest. Excluding personal loans, only one candidate — Scott — reported raising more than $5,000 through Jan. 15. 

The crowded field means that the winner of the primary could struggle to break 50 percent, or even 40 percent. The last time there were five candidates in a Commission primary was in the 2008 District 1 race, which had five Democrats running. Sam McKenzie — now a state representative — won that contest with just 43 percent of the vote.

We will profile Moore ahead of the general election, but for now, here’s a look at the Republican quintet on the primary ballot.

Brad Hall

Hall, a captain with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, is the first beneficiary of a recent rule change that allows sheriff’s employees to seek office without taking a leave of absence. He said he is careful to separate his day job from his campaigning, as regulations strictly prohibit any politicking while on duty. (He is also not allowed to use any sheriff’s logos or equipment in campaign photos or materials.)

“I think running for the office is just a continuation of the work that I've been doing for over 30 years of public service at the sheriff's office,” Hall said.

He has deep personal and professional connections to the 5th District. He grew up in West Knox County and graduated from Farragut High School, where he was on the football team. He is now head of the KCSO’s West Precinct, which includes the 5th District. As a result, he said, he is in regular contact with local business and civic leaders about issues in the area.

“For the most part, most of my adult life I’ve been here in the 5th District,” he said.

He sees growth and infrastructure as the district’s biggest ongoing challenges. The challenge is compounded because most of the major highway corridors that feed or run through the district — Interstate 40, Kingston Pike, Northshore Drive — are state roads, subject to Tennessee Department of Transportation funding and priorities.

Hall said he was disappointed to hear that TDOT had pushed back planned improvements to the Campbell Station Road interchange, which is a perennial bottleneck of traffic headed to both Farragut and Hardin Valley.

“I’ve got to follow up with that,” he said. “I’m not sure what the status is of widening the interstate from Lovell Road west.”

He is also familiar with the increasingly visible homeless population, a relatively recent development in the suburban area. Hall said the Sheriff’s Office often receives calls about it.

“We get calls from people over in the Turkey Creek area, Parkside Drive, Lovell Road, Campbell Station,” he said. He said his working relationships with the Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee and the newly established Office of Housing Stability will help him address the issue as a commissioner.

Hall said he thinks his boss, Sheriff Tom Spangler, has “done a good job with public safety.” He said he appreciated County Commission funding historic raises for KCSO deputies and jailers last year, but he cautioned that salaries will need to continue to keep pace with other area agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the federal facilities in Oak Ridge.

“You're always going to have those people that want to go out there to the plants to make more money and provide better for their families,” he said.

Hall made some unflattering news about five years ago, when he was involved in an off-duty drunken brawl with another sheriff’s officer in the Old City. According to a KCSO investigation of the incident, the fight started because Hall wanted to drive home and the other officer thought he was too drunk to drive.

Hall did not end up driving, but the fallout from the incident led to him being demoted from detective to captain and reassigned for a time to the department’s juvenile division. He was eventually then assigned to head the Western Precinct.

Asked about the incident, Hall said, “As humans, we all make mistakes, right? I made a mistake, I’ve learned from it, I was punished for it. And I’ve moved on with my life.”

He reported raising $3,940 through Jan. 15, from contributors including former County Commissioner John Griess. None of the donors are identified as sheriff's employees.

If elected, Hall would be far from the first active county employee to serve on Commission, which the county’s charter allows. But he promised that he would be there to represent the 5th District, not the Sheriff’s Office.

“I’m not holding anyone’s agenda or anything,” he said. “I’m going to be fair and do the things that my constituents want me to do. I don’t think I’m going to favor any single person.”

Angela Russell

Russell is an East Tennessee native, as were generations of her family before her. She said she loves the area — but she has growing concerns about it. 

“I’ve lived in District 5 for 30 years now,” she said. “My grandchildren live in Knox County. And what made me decide to run in the race is the direction that we’re currently taking. I don’t feel like Knox County is as good a place as it used to be. We’re going in the wrong direction.”

She graduated from Lenoir City High School and earned a degree in accounting from the University of Tennessee. She has worked for several decades as a certified public accountant, which she said gives her a strong basis for making informed decisions about the county budget.

Russell serves on the board of her local homeowners association, but it was a proposed development nearby — a proposed affordable housing complex on Northshore Drive — that pushed her into the broader civic arena.

“We can't just continue to add development to Northshore,” she said. “All the traffic from Northshore then goes into Farragut, and Farragut is so overcrowded. But every car on Northshore is another car in Farragut also, because that's where we go do our shopping.”

Russell said local residents were concerned about the density of the development, which would have brought 56 townhouse units to the 12-acre site.

“The high density does not fit into this area,” she said. “People moved to this area to be away from (density). They don't want apartments, they don't want attached units.”

That housing complex was ultimately dropped in the face of fierce community opposition, when a local resident stepped up to buy the property outright from the owners.

But to Russell, it illustrated what she sees as problems with the way growth has proceeded across the district, with new developments straining infrastructure and outstripping the county’s ability to handle it. She said it’s not only a matter of traffic jams creating inconvenience for local residents, it can be a safety issue when emergency vehicles can’t make their way through congested two-lane roads.

“We had an accident down in this area a little over a week ago now,” she said, “and they had to send in a helicopter to get to that, because of the fact that the roads are so crowded that if there’s any issues at all you just can’t get through.”

She has some reservations about the Advance Knox planning process, which she said did a good job of collecting community input but has not relied on it sufficiently in drafting recommendations for guiding future growth.

“The problem is the implementation,” Russell said. “I think they knew what they wanted, which is to allow more development. And they took the comments that people made and twisted them.”

Also the plan is supposed to help the county prepare for adding tens of thousands of people over the next 20 years, Russell said she thinks it’s setting up both current and future residents for frustration.

“We're doing people a disservice by building and then they come here and they realize that this is not what they thought they were getting,” she said. “We’re selling them damaged goods that we're not disclosing, because we know that the roads aren't adequate.”

She is also concerned about homelessness in the district and across the county. Russell said she supports efforts to provide shelter and assistance to people experiencing homelessness, but emphasized that those who do not seek those services need to face consequences.

“We need to address that, and we need to have police address that,” she said. “I do believe we give people a chance. But everyone is not going to take that opportunity.”

Russell is presenting herself as one of the more conservative candidates in the race, and she has been endorsed by the Knox County Conservative Republicans — a group that embraces “constitutional conservatism” and is affiliated with local political consultant Erik Wiatr’s Knox Liberty Organization.

“I was just humbled that basically they said, ‘You seem like someone who lives the everyday struggles that the rest of us live,’” she said.

Toni Scott

Scott, a former middle school teacher, said she has long been civically active in what she calls “silent service” — “always had my hand in something, whether that’s a big event or a little event.”

This year, she’s ready to make a little more noise.

“I feel like at this point in the world and what's been going on, it's probably time for some of us more average Joes to take a bigger role in local government,” Scott said. “So that’s why I’m here. And I think my kids need to see that, too. The world they live in, it's going to require for them to be a little bit more uncomfortable, stand up for things a little bit more, than the one we grew up in.”

Scott and her husband are both Farragut High School graduates, and their three children are in Farragut schools now. She left teaching to devote her time to parenting — “parent organizations, room moms, booster clubs, dugout moms, all that good stuff.”

But over time, the things she started to see in Farragut and the county more broadly have compelled her to take a broader civic role.

“I love Farragut,” Scott said. “It’s growing a lot. It’s growing very quickly. We want for our communities to grow and to prosper, but at the same rate I and a lot of my friends and my peers want to see Farragut grow but still maintain some of that character that we've loved about it for decades. And so that’s kind of where this desire to run comes from.”

She has been following the Advance Knox process and thinks it has potential to strike the kind of balance she’s seeking.

“I'd say there's been a lot of good public input,” she said. “And I think that the more input is given, the more we can kind of tweak and come up with a program that I think is going to be really beneficial for the community going forward.”

As far as specific infrastructure needs in the district, she points to the Campbell Station Road/I-40 interchange as needing particular attention. 

“There's a lot going on with that coming down from the state,” Scott said. “I think that's going to be a really interesting conversation and discussion over the next few quarters, probably even longer than that. But that’s a substantial piece of the infrastructure puzzle right there.”

Although County Commission doesn’t have direct supervision of either school or sheriff’s employees, Scott said she wants to support both teachers and law enforcement officers. “I think we need to do a good job funding them, giving them all the necessary resources,” she said.

As a commissioner, she said she would work closely with the Town of Farragut and serve as a liaison with county government. She said she can draw on her personal connections to Farragut to help understand and amplify the concerns of the community.

“I look at things and remember, you know, when there was a farm there before it burned down and now it's a new this or a new whatever,” Scott said. “I feel like the context that I can provide and bring to the table is very helpful.”

For a first-time candidate, she has some political clout in her corner. Her donors include state Rep. Jason Zachary — who represents Farragut — and David Colquitt, son-in-law of former Gov. Bill Haslam. Also on the list are former County Commission candidate Clayton Wood and former school board candidate Will Edwards. She also has help from political consultant Andrew Davis, former policy adviser to County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.

She does not favor a property tax increase and said the county should rely on its continued growth to build its tax base, and then budget efficiently to prioritize its needs.

“I think that Advance Knox program really does help to grow commerce as you look forward down the road,” she said.

Dale Skidmore

Skidmore grew up in Dandridge, in Jefferson County, and earned a degree in sociology from the University of Tennessee. From a young age, he wanted to live in Knox County — from the perspective of the next county over, Knoxville was where everything was happening.

“I always thought it would be my hometown,” he said. “You watch the news, that’s where we went to the mall.”

After graduating from UT in 1994, he contemplated becoming a probation officer, but as he learned more about the field it lost its appeal. He has worked for the past 30 years in insurance, and for the past 10 has owned his own agency. 

And he has stayed in Knox County nearly the entire time, except for an 18-month stint in Nashville — which just made him appreciate Knoxville more.

Skidmore said he has long taken an interest in politics and government, and with his children older and an open seat in the district, he decided to take the plunge.

“It has just always been in my blood to get involved in trying to solve problems, just trying to go out and make a difference,” he said. “I just thought it would be a good education to see it from this side of actually being a candidate.”

He lists three priorities:

• Public safety — “If we don't have safe streets or safe neighborhoods, such as, ‘Something's gonna happen to me if I go outside my home,’ and then that's a real issue.”
• Fiscal responsibility — “I’ll always take spending the taxpayers’ money really seriously.”
• Development — “We’ve got to be intentional and smart and make decisions, because our population is going to grow.”

Skidmore said he has been following the Advance Knox process with interest. “I guess now we're kind of getting to where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see, we’re getting more into specifics.”

Skidmore reported raising $2,425 in donations, in addition to a $4,000 loan he made to his campaign. 

Mostly, he said, he wants to be of service to his 5th District neighbors.

“I just at the end of the day want to hear from my constituents,” he said. “That’s the most important thing, that’s who my bosses would be in that situation.”

Brian Walker

Walker is representative of some of the growth Knox County has seen in recent years. He and his wife relocated to East Tennessee in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they became fed up with government restrictions in their previous home state of California.

“My daughter was finishing her sophomore year of high school, and that’s when they shut all the schools down,” Walker said. “And then the governor came out and said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to shut them down for the foreseeable future.’ And we were like, no. My daughter wants to go to school. She came to me and said, ‘I want to play sports and I want to get involved and I want to go to prom.’”

Walker and his wife had friends in Knoxville and visited the area on a scouting trip. After weighing pros and cons, they packed up, sold their house in Riverside County outside of San Diego, and moved cross-country.

They love it here, he said. And like a number of new arrivals in recent years, they come with experience of what they say they don’t want to see happen in their new home.

“I’m starting to see some of the things that I saw 15-20 years ago in California, some of the laws being passed, some of the people are coming into office with different ideals than myself,” Walker said. “And I’m like, I’ve heard this story before, I’ve seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.”

The move to East Tennessee was actually Walker’s second cross-country relocation. He grew up in New Hampshire and headed west for college, where he met his wife. He majored in criminal justice and then earned an MBA. He has worked in insurance for the past 23 years. He and his wife also ran a martial arts studio in California for about five years, and fortuitously decided to close it about six months before COVID hit.

After talking with friends who encouraged him to run, Walker entered the County Commission race. He said he thinks county government is — for now — “at a good spot.” He wants to make sure it stays there.

He is alarmed by the growing local homeless population, something that has become a massive and intractable problem across California. In his old home state, he said, “They’re throwing money out there, putting people in hotels and motels and just doing all the services for them. That’s not helping the homeless population, it’s not helping them at all. In my opinion, we need to be looking at the transparency of what’s going on with them. Is it a drug issue? Is it PTSD, veterans, what is the actual issue that’s underlying them being homeless?”

As a recent transplant, Walker said he understands both sides of the growth issue — why people want to move here, but also the impact it can have. In the 5th District, he said it is important to protect quality of life and not overwhelm it with development that is too dense for the surrounding community.

“We need to start securing our infrastructure before we start putting these things in,” he said, “before we start putting all these homes in, commercial, and just everything. We need to make sure the roads are, number one, safe, but number two, big enough to accept the traffic.”

Walker reported raising $2,762.40 through Jan. 15, but he has augmented that with a $24,000 personal loan to his campaign, giving him the most reported cash on hand. His donors include former County Commissioner Mike Arms and former Commission candidate Steven Weiner.

Walker said he has good problem-solving skills that would serve him and his constituents well in working with both county and Farragut officials to address local needs.

“We all want kind of the same thing, moving forward it’s just how we get there,” he said. “Working with the Town of Farragut is going to be key obviously for District 5, and I'm going to bring my knowledge, my conversation skills and just being able to bring it together and say, we need to find a complete closure on this or, or we need to move forward on this and work together.”