Voters in the Knox County Republican primary have a choice between two starkly different candidates.

Herrera amassed more campaign funds than Buuck by a 2-to-1 margin.

David Buuck, the incumbent, is a seasoned litigator with 44 years of experience as an attorney seeking his second term; his opponent, Daniel Herrera, is a conservative firebrand who has been practicing law for four years.

The winner of the March 5 primary will face Democrat Jackson Fenner, who is unopposed, in the Aug. 1 general election.

The law director oversees the county Law Department, which provides legal services to all branches of county government: the mayor’s office, County Commission, the school board and the various elected fee offices.

Knox County is unusual in Tennessee because voters elect the law director; most counties fill the office through appointments by the mayor or county commission. Buuck won the seat in 2020 by defeating former Circuit Court Clerk Cathy Quist-Shanks by 20 percentage points in the GOP primary and Fenner by 26 percentage points in the general election.

Buuck is highly regarded by the legal community — about 55 percent of the respondents to a Knoxville Bar Association membership survey said they would recommend or strongly recommend him in this election. About 56 percent said they would not recommend Herrera, with nearly 43 percent saying they strongly would not recommend him.

But Herrera, who served a term as the Knox County Republican Party chairman, has proven to be a formidable fundraiser and is attempting to appeal to the broader GOP voter pool. 

Herrera raised $46,179 during the campaign finance reporting period ending Jan. 15 and had $25,394 on hand at that point. His donors include business owner Pete Claussen, former state Rep. Martin Daniel, County Commission candidates Andy Fox and Garrett Holt, and 2023 Knoxville mayoral candidate Jeff Talman.

Buuck raised less than half that amount — $20,400, including $15,000 he loaned to the campaign — and only had $3,947 left after expenses. His donors include business owners Bill Weigel, Harry Stowers, Oliver Smith IV and Tim Graham.

We will profile Fenner before the Aug. 1 general election, but for now we will turn our attention to the GOP primary candidates.

David Buuck

As the incumbent, Buuck is running on his experience, both in office and over the course of his career. He has been the law director for the past four years and served as former Law Director Bud Armstrong’s chief deputy for the previous eight years.

“For the last four years, what I learned was how hard it is to deal with politics,” Buuck said in a recent interview.  “You're having to deal with all the many personalities of the elected officials, so I've learned how to do that.”

One major challenge of his term was dealing with the legal issues surrounding response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Buuck emphasized that as law director, he doesn’t set policy, and that he advised officials to follow the flurry of executive orders that came down from Gov. Bill Lee.

“I had very angry people out there calling me and raising Cain when there was nothing really I could do,” he recalled.

Buuck said the county Board of Health, which he emphasized is an unelected body, had broad powers under state law to impose mask mandates and take other measures to protect public health. Mayor Glenn Jacobs and several county commissioners asked him to look into the legal authority.

“When we researched it, the statute said that it was discretionary whether or not you had a health board,” he said, saying he then drafted an ordinance, which County Commission eventually approved, taking the decision-making powers away from the Board of Health.

The Law Director’s Office also defended the county in a lawsuit challenging the mask mandate in schools, though the school board hired outside counsel prior to a mediated settlement.

Buuck said the legal wrangling over COVID-19 mitigation measures “was tough for everybody. So I'd hope we never have to go through that again, and get back to just defending lawsuits.”

Buuck is generally averse to hiring outside counsel, unless his office has a conflict of interest. He said staff attorneys have an average of 23 years experience, and most of them have extensive experience litigating in federal court.

“We’ve got some brilliant attorneys and I'm blessed with that,” he said. “They know more than I, every one of them, and we don't need outside counsel.”

Buuck, 76, was born in China, where his parents were Lutheran missionaries. They fled the country when the communists took over in 1949, and he grew up in northern Indiana. He moved to Knoxville to attend the University of Tennessee in 1968, earned a bachelor’s degree, and then completed his law degree in 1980.

Buuck came to the office with considerable government and land-use law experience. He worked with the town of Louisville in Blount County when it incorporated in 1990 and served part time as the town’s attorney.

He worked with the group Citizens for Home Rule to successfully represent hundreds of property owners who were fighting annexation by the City of Knoxville during former Mayor Victor Ashe’s tenure. He also prevailed for community groups opposed to the rezoning for the development of Midway Business Park in East Knox County (the  property was eventually rezoned via a compromise forged by former County Mayor Tim Burchett).

Despite his extensive background in property law, Buuck said he’s kept his distance from the Advance Knox land-use planning process so far. He said the policymakers make policy, not the law director.

At a recent forum, Buuck said the biggest legal challenge to Knox County is a “cottage industry” made up of attorneys who file what he considers frivolous civil rights lawsuits against the county in federal courts. 

“Those are the ones that affect the taxpayers more than anything else,” he said. 

Herrera has styled himself a “conservative alternative” in the race, which Buuck said is puzzling. “I find it’s a misnomer. I'm a Republican, I consider myself conservative,” he said.

Buuck said fundraising wasn’t a priority heading into the campaign, but it’s picked up since the campaign finance reports came out showing he lagged behind Hererra. 

“I'm running for a job that pays very well. It's got great benefits. It didn't seem proper to go out and beg for money,” he said. 

When talking to voters, Buuck stresses his experience advantage over Herrera. “I just tell them that I've got the experience and I've got the demeanor, and my opponent doesn’t,” he said. “That's basically what I tell them.”

Daniel Herrera

As a former GOP party chair, Herrera has branded himself as the conservative option in the race. In a recent interview, he defined that in part as saving money by not being too quick to settle lawsuits.

“Taking cases to trial, making sure that those get adjudicated on the merits, I think will ultimately save money, especially in cases where the facts are on our side and the law is on our side.”

Herrera was controversial as the head of the local Republican Party. He spearheaded an effort in 2021 to run a slate of Republican candidates in the officially nonpartisan Knoxville city elections. All of them lost. 

Still, he’s convinced that GOP voters will reward him with their support. “With our efforts with the City Council elections, I think that really put a lot of the system on the map,” he said. “Our hardcore Republicans and conservatives, they remember (me) from there.”

Despite his position as a former party leader, he said he “didn’t think about the optics” of running against a Republican incumbent.

“The reality is that no one is entitled to a seat just because you're incumbent,” Herrera said. “These are the seats belonging to the people in Knox County. And we're offering a big alternative. We're offering a more conservative approach to the Law Director's Office and trying to save taxpayers money and moving forward.” 

Herrera said he’s running because “people have lost confidence in the current law director,” and he downplayed the significant disparity in experience between the two candidates. 

“Let's look back at the last four years and see the experience we got,” he said. “We had a law director who did not not fight against these unconstitutional and illegal shutdowns and mandates.” 

Herrera said he would bring the values of his firm — which focuses on family law, probate and estate administration, and landlord/tenant issues — to the job. 

“Getting in-house attorneys who understand the law, understand litigation, and want to go to trial will ultimately save taxpayers money,” he said. 

Herrera, 31, was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents — his father was from El Salvador and his mother from Guatemala. He obtained a bachelor’s degree from American University in 2015. He earned his law degree from Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law in 2019, and went into private practice the following year.

Asked to name the top legal issue facing Knox County, Herrera said, “It's very clear that the top legal issue facing Knox County residents is illegal immigration.”

The federal government has jurisdiction over immigration matters. The Knox County Sheriff’s Office has an agreement to do limited work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through its 287(g) program, but the county has no immigration policy role.

Herrera said voters are concerned about immigration, and that he personally supports Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempts to defy the federal government over border security. 

He also said he’s concerned about an increase in lawsuits involving the Americans with Disabilities Act. “We need to have somebody who really understands the ADA,” Herrera said. “We may have to look for talent, and someone who understands how to avoid litigation.”

He said that if he had been law director last year, he would have fought to support a resolution from County Commissioner Rhonda Lee that would have withheld county funds from any activities that “sexualized children” by exposing them to sexual material. Commissioners tabled the vaguely worded resolution.

“I do think that resolution was legal, and I think that had the county adopted it. it would have survived a court challenge,” Herrera said.

He said Advance Knox, like the city’s Recode Knoxville process, is confusing to voters. “I don't think many people really understand it right now,” he said.

Herrera asserted that his 2-to1 advantage in fundraising shows that donors and voters have lost confidence in the Law Director’s Office and that his campaign has a winning message. He’s also unconcerned about the Knoxville Bar Association poll results. As chair of the county Republican Party, he said, he’s used to negative news stories about him.

“At the end of the day,” Herrera said, “it's going to come down to the voters and we're going to find out on March 5th.”