The race for Knox County Law Director this year is a rematch of the 2020 contest.

Buuck won the first matchup with 63 percent of the vote.

Four years ago, Republican David Buuck easily defeated Jackson Fenner, who ran as an independent, with 63 percent of the vote. This time around, Fenner is running as a Democrat.

In between, Fenner made an unsuccessful bid to become the district attorney general in 2022, losing to incumbent Charme Allen 57.5-42.5 percent.

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.

The fact that Knox County holds an election for law director at all is an anomaly. Among all Tennessee counties, Knox is the only one with an elected law director. In other counties, the mayor or county commission appoints the legal representative.

Buuck is well regarded by the legal community — about 55 percent of the respondents to a Knoxville Bar Association membership survey taken prior to the March primary said they would recommend or strongly recommend him in this election. In the same survey, 21 percent said they would recommend or strongly recommend Fenner.

But Buuck had higher name recognition among lawyers who participated in the survey — 57 percent said they didn’t know enough about Fenner to render an opinion, compared to 25 percent who didn’t know Buuck well enough to rate him.

Buuck has maintained a fundraising lead, though both candidates say raising money is the least enjoyable part of running for office and neither has a large war chest.

As of March 31, Buuck had $3,167 on hand after spending $14,343 during the first three months of the year. His fundraising effort has benefited from $32,000 in loans he made to the campaign.

His donors include business owners Bill Weigel and Wes Stowers; County Commissioner Larsen Jay; and developers  Oliver Smith IV, Tim Graham and Chris Ooten.

Fenner had just $1,971 on hand at the end of March, and his fundraising amount — $6,800 for the reporting period. His donors include Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, Vice Mayor Tommy Smith and former Election Administrator Greg Mackay.

Here’s a look at the two contenders. (Buuck’s profile has been updated from our primary coverage.)

Jackson Fenner

Fenner takes an expansive view of what the law director should prioritize and has vowed to take a stand against what he characterizes as extremism. He sees school vouchers as a “scam” that should be resisted.

“If this supermajority that we have in the Legislature gets their way, I think that it's unconstitutional,” he said. “(We) need to have people in positions of power who are pushing back or advising the leaders and people who are calling the shots that this voucher plan is a scam and it violates the constitution. We need to do everything we can to fight back against it.”

Fenner said giving families taxpayer money to attend private schools siphons money from public school systems and invites lawsuits from advocacy groups like the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Fenner said too many people don’t understand what the law director does — the office handles all the civil legal affairs for the county — and that more transparency is needed to educate the public.

“I talked to a school board member, and this person told me that they asked someone from the law director's office how many lawsuits there are currently pending against the schools. They didn't have an answer,” he said.  “There needs to be some sort of public-facing person, or there needs to be some sort of public outreach. People should know not only what they do, but how much money their decisions are costing the people of Knoxville, and what kind of exposure we have financially because of these lawsuits.”

Fenner also said the Law Department could do a better job advising officials about the best course of action in litigation.

“Ultimately, the decision to settle or not to settle is going to be up to the people who make the decisions, not the lawyers,” he said. “So it's up to the mayor and the County Commission, but the law director can do a better job of spelling out whether a case could be settled or not, given what the pros and cons are of the litigation.”

As an example, he cited University of Tennessee sociology professor Meghan Conley’s successful lawsuit against the Knox County Sheriff’s Office over access to arrest reports and other documents related to its 287(g) immigration enforcement program. The county also had to pay part of Conley’s legal fees.

“There shouldn't have been resistance on that,” Fenner said. “This is public information regarding how police officers treat people. They dug in their heels when they didn't need to.”

He also took issue with the polarization surrounding the COVID-19 response and the Law Department’s role in removing decision-making authority from the Knox County Board of Health. 

“I'm always the kind of person who wants people to have actual knowledgeable expertise to be in positions where they're calling life and death shots,” Fenner said.

Named for singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, Fenner was born in Buffalo, N.Y. His family moved to various parts of the country. After a short stint at college, he migrated to East Tennessee.

Fenner said he worked in a variety of jobs in Knoxville and eventually took classes at Pellissippi State Community College, then transferred to the University of Tennessee, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science in 2007. He earned his law degree from the UT College of Law in 2011.

Fenner and his wife, Amy, live in Powell and have three children. Amy Fenner owns a salon in South Knoxville. 

Fenner said he thinks he’s got name recognition now that he’s running his third campaign in as many election cycles, but he still hates asking people for money. 

“I come from a blue-collar background,” he said. “I take pride in putting myself through school and through law school and building my own practice, and just to turn around and to ask somebody to give me money is kind of contrary to my thinking, but I know I have to do it.”

If elected, Fenner said, he wouldn’t make wholesale changes in the Law Department.

“Staff members, like the paralegals and the assistants, the people that actually make the office run, are pretty in their secure jobs. I'm not going to touch any of them,” he said. “Lawyers are easy to find, but those people are the backbone of a law firm.”

Many candidates for local offices express frustration that voters often ask them their stances on national issues that can’t be addressed on the local level. Fenner, however, embraces the opportunity to talk about national issues because it highlights shared values and the thought processes that he would bring to bear on local legal issues.

“I want people to know what I believe in and the things that are important to me in general,” he said. 

David Buuck

As the incumbent, Buuck is running on his experience — 44 years, both in office and over the course of his private-practice 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 an 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 fended off a primary challenge from Daniel Herrera, a conservative firebrand who served a term as chair of the Knox County Republican Party. He garnered 61.3 percent of the primary vote.

Buuck 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. He and his wife Debby have lived in Knox County for more than 50 years.

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 kept his distance from the Advance Knox land-use planning process. He said the policymakers make policy, not the law director.

At a candidate forum prior to the primary, 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. 

Buuck said fundraising wasn’t a priority heading into the primary campaign, but he ramped up his efforts when campaign finance reports showed Herrera was able to raise a substantial amount of money. Still, he’s not comfortable asking for donations.

“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. “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.”