Knox County’s 8th District is its largest in land mass, stretching from Gibbs and Corryton in the northeast corner around to Midway in the southeast, taking in the communities of Mascot and Carter along the way. It even reaches into the city to cover the Holston Hills neighborhood.

Parts of the 8th District are seeing traffic jams and other consequences of rapid development.

It is also the least densely populated district, comprising much of what remains of Knox County’s rural landscapes and working farms. That has made it a particular focus of proposed changes to the county’s growth plan, which would designate some rural areas for “Planned Growth,” allowing a higher intensity of residential and commercial development.

The 8th District County Commission seat is open this year because incumbent Commissioner Richie Beeler opted not to seek re-election. Beeler is a Republican, and the district as a whole leans strongly that way — which may be why three Republicans have stepped forward to contend for the seat in the March 5 primary.

D.J. Corcoran, Kara Daley and Adam Thompson are all first-time candidates, although their range of experience with local government varies widely. Whoever wins the primary will face Democratic candidate Charles Chandler in the August general election.

The three Republicans are fairly close in fundraising, all reporting between $5,500 and $6,700 raised through Jan. 15. They each also have specific bases of support, which could make this an interesting race.

We will profile Chandler ahead of the general election, but for now here’s an overview of the GOP contenders.

D.J. Corcoran

Corcoran, 58, has been around local government in various capacities since his childhood. Growing up in Knoxville as one of seven children, his father was a police officer who mounted a run for sheriff in the 1970s.

He didn’t win, but another member of the family has been more successful — Corcoran’s sister, Sherry Witt, is currently the Knox County clerk and previously served as register of deeds.

Corcoran, who attended Fulton High School and Pellissippi State, ended up working for the Knoxville Fire Department after first running a print shop and then working as a local TV news cameraman. It was while covering a fire that it occurred to him that he would rather be doing something about the blaze than just documenting it.

“Watching them, it was like clockwork, they were a really well-oiled machine and I was impressed with that,” he said of the firefighters. “And I thought, you know, I would rather help people than be a bystander and watch their pain through the lens.”

He ended up spending 28 years at KFD, where he eventually put his media experience to use as the department’s spokesperson and media liaison. Reporters across Knoxville became accustomed to seeking him out at the scene of fires at any time of day or night.

Corcoran and his family were also in the news for a tragic reason in December 2018, when his son Pierce was killed by a reckless driver in a traffic accident on Chapman Highway. The driver who caused the crash was an undocumented immigrant, and Corcoran and his wife, Wendy, became civically involved in calling for better immigration controls.

After retiring at the end of 2021, Corcoran said he started looking for other ways to remain involved with the community.

“I’m not the type that sits still, I don’t do that very well,” he said. “So I started attending some of the City Council and County Commission meetings and took an interest in that.”

When he found out that Beeler wasn’t going to seek another term, he saw an opportunity to offer his own service.

“So many times we ask ourselves, why don’t good, decent people get involved?” Corcoran said. “I thought, well, I’m a pretty decent guy.”

He started attending Commission meetings regularly and was the first to announce his candidacy for the seat last year, soon after Beeler made his decision public.

He has also been making the rounds of residents and civic groups in the district, and while he said that growth and development are top concerns everywhere, those concerns take different forms in different communities.

“In campaigning and meeting folks, the Corryton and Gibbs area are more concerned with leaving everything as is, trying to keep that rural distinction about the area, the farmland, and this growth plan has kind of got their ears perked up,” he said. “On the other side, Carter and Asheville Highway and Rutledge Pike, they are welcoming more development. They want more commercial, they'd like to see some more restaurants, they'd like to see some grocery stores and things like that.”

As a commissioner, he said he would try to address all of those priorities by supporting growth where it makes sense and won’t overwhelm existing residents and infrastructure.

“It looks like there may be some growing pains, but you just want to make sure that all of that stuff is done in a smart manner,” Corcoran said. “One of the things that they’re concerned about is Hardin Valley. They’ve watched it develop out there, and gridlock is crazy. So we don’t want anything like that.”

Corcoran reported raising $6,667.02 in campaign contributions through Jan. 15. His donors include Property Assessor John Whitehead, former Planning Commission Chair Rebecca Longmire and Tennessee Strategies, the consulting firm of former County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and former County Commissioner Mike Arms.

He said he sees the role of commissioner as primarily being a conduit and voice for his constituents, relaying their concerns to county government and communicating the county’s plans and priorities back to residents for their input.

“If there's something coming down the pike that people need to know about, then I'll be that person in between saying, let's have a little community meeting,” he said. “Here's some things that are concerns and I want to get some feedback, and vice versa.”

Kara Daley

Daley by her own account has not been much engaged in or attentive to local politics until relatively recently. At 32, she is one of the youngest candidates on this year’s ballot, and she said that as with many younger people, local government was not much on her radar.

“I never understood the importance and how it really truly starts here with us and our local government,” Daley said. “That’s what I want to change. I want to educate the younger generations how important it is for us to be heard.”

She is an East Tennessee native who graduated from Union County High School but has roots in the Corryton community going back to her childhood, when her family attended church there. When she was 16, she started working at Twisters diner in Gibbs. What started as a teenage job started to turn into a career as she assumed more responsibilities.

Eventually she became operations manager and planned with the family that owned what were then two Twisters locations — with the other on Washington Pike — to buy them out when they were ready to retire. That happened about two years ago. Soon after taking over, she opened a third location on North Central Street in North Knoxville.

“That kind of started piquing my interest in the political world,” Daley said. “We hosted some GOP meetings at the Central location, and I really just started paying attention and listening. I was like, OK, what should I be doing, what could I be doing to help and make a difference?”

The question has personal resonance as well — “I have a 7-year-old daughter, and I always think of, what is this world going to be like for her as she grows up? And what should I be doing to change it?”

The two Twisters locations in East Knox County are also both community hubs, where she sees and hears from local residents, officials, sheriff’s deputies and more. Much of what they talk about is the growth they are already seeing in the area and expect to see more of, and what it means for local roads and schools and quality of life.

Daley said that overall she thinks growth is positive, but that it needs to be managed.

“We have the most available land,” she said. “I’ve said 1,000 times that if we don’t grow, we die. But our infrastructure that’s in place is concerning.”

She thinks the Advance Knox planning process and the updated county growth plan proposed by County Mayor Glenn Jacobs strike a good balance in protecting much of the existing rural areas while allowing for development.

“I 100 percent support the growth plan, I think it’s very well thought out,” Daley said. “The growth is coming, whether we like it or not. People are moving here. It's going to happen, and what this growth plan is here to do is to make a plan for that to come. Without that, it’s going to be terrible.”

She notes that roads in the area are already getting backed up at rush hour. It can take her more than an hour to drop her daughter off at school and then get to work on Central Street.

“That’s why this infrastructure we have to get in place before we add any more homes,” she said. 

But as a local business owner, she sees a lot of upsides to growth, too. More people means more customers who can support more local businesses and create more economic opportunities for those who live and work there.

Daley reported raising $5,500 from supporters through Jan. 15.

She said anyone questioning her youth or lack of past civic involvement should see it as a positive that someone who grew up in the area and is deeply committed to it wants to take a leadership role.

“I’m only 32, I have a 7-year-old, I have three businesses, I’m truly invested in our community,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. And we need a new perspective in our government, we need positive change. If we keep putting the same demographic of people in the same seats, we’re going to get the same results.”

Adam Thompson

There may be no better introduction for Thompson than the way he introduced himself when he spoke at public forum during the first meeting of the county’s Growth Policy Coordinating Committee in October.

“I'm a sixth-generation farmer in northeast Knox County, over in Corryton,” he said. “I have my great-great-grandfather's voter registration card from the late 1800s. We have done this for a long time.”

Thompson was at the meeting to express concerns about plans to redesignate properties — including some of the best farmland in the county — from “Rural” to “Planned Growth Area” in the updated growth plan.

“You bring in 70,000 people and put them in this area, it’s gone,” he warned committee members. “And it will not be back. They're not tearing down buildings and tearing up pavement to put in farmland.”

That same dedication to the agricultural heritage of East Knox County and the deep-rooted sense of place that many of its residents share has fueled his run for County Commission.

“Honestly, I just really feel like we wanted a vote on Commission that actually listened to our district,” Thompson said in an interview. “When we go with concerns and we don't feel like our commissioner is actually on our side, or that they're willing to listen, or they tell us one thing and we think we're going in with a vote and they change their mind and do something else, it tends to rub you the wrong way.”

Thompson, who is 42, grew up on the family farm, which was a dairy farm until 2006 and has been a beef cattle farm ever since. He earned a degree in animal science at the University of Tennessee, and works as an insurance agent alongside running the farm.

It currently has about 170 head of cattle on 300 acres of land. Most of the farm’s sales are direct to local customers, who order by the quarter- or half-steer. Thompson Tender Beef is also available at some local retailers and via online distribution.

Thompson said farms have seen resurgent interest in recent years from customers looking for healthy local options, and that experience with supply chain disruptions showed the importance of having food sources that don’t require global shipping.

“If we’re not going to grow it in Knox County, it’s going to be grown somewhere else,” Thompson said. “And if the folks in Knox County want to get that locally grown produce and food, they're gonna have to leave Knox County to go find it.”

He said he first became engaged with local land use issues after a few developments were proposed for the Gibbs area that seemed out of character and out of scale with local infrastructure. 

“There was quite a bit of pushback from the community, and so we started doing a little digging and got involved,” Thompson said.

He and other community members formed the group Gibbs Planning Advocates to seek better planning and infrastructure in their part of Knox County. It is part of the Knox County Planning Alliance, of which current at-large County Commissioner Kim Frazier was a founding member.

Thompson has been critical of some parts of the proposed growth plan changes, but he said he thinks some steps have been taken to protect rural areas.

“I think moving forward when we're looking at the growth plan, there's places that we can tweak and improve it,” he said. “Maybe even put some safeguards in there to help protect the still vulnerable farmland in the Planned Growth Area. We’re not done yet, it’s going to be a long process. But I’m optimistic.”

Thompson reported raising $6,550 through Jan. 15, with some locally significant names on his donor list. Knoxville Focus publisher Steve Hunley, long a political force in East Knox County, has contributed $1,600, as has Lisa Starbuck, a well-known local community advocate and also a founder of KCPA.

Overall, Thompson said people in the 8th District aren’t anti-development. But they want safeguards and rules that have some force.

“It needs to be responsible,” Thompson said. “Whatever rules are in place, whatever ordinances we have, we need to make sure that they're followed. And so when the new growth plan comes out, we just need to make sure that we follow what was put in place.”