As residents of the 8th District like to point out, it is the largest of Knox County’s nine County Commission districts.

Both candidates run different kinds of farms on long-held family land.

Primarily rural, it stretches from the county’s northernmost point in Heiskell around through all of East Knox County to just south of Interstate 40. The reason the district is so big is that its population density is so low. Apart from the communities of Corryton, Gibbs and Carter, it consists mostly of farmland and — increasingly — new residential subdivisions.

The growth of those subdivisions and their impact on the surrounding infrastructure and landscape has been the most persistent topic of political conversation in the district in recent years. During the Advance Knox planning process and the adoption of new county growth and land-use maps, residents spoke up loudly to advocate for rural and agricultural preservation.

Still, the new plans call for denser growth along Washington Pike and other major roads in the area, setting the stage for what will no doubt be continued tension as new development projects are proposed.

Contending to represent the district as it faces those challenges are two candidates with deep ties to the area, who both operate farms on long-held family property: Republican Adam Thompson, whose family owns a cattle farm; and Democrat Charles Chandler, who has a tree farm.

The district leans heavily Republican overall, and saw a hard-fought three way battle in the GOP primary in March. Thompson edged out D.J. Corcoran by a 40-38 percent margin, with third-place finisher Kara Daley taking the other 22 percent of the vote.

Reflecting the partisan advantage in the district, Thompson reported raising $21,700 for his campaign through the end of June, with $3,734 on hand. Chandler reported just $470 through the end of April. His second quarter report is not yet posted online.

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

Charles Chandler

Chandler recognizes the long odds he faces on paper, but he is equanimous about them.

“I’m basically running what I call a termite campaign,” he said in an interview. “I’m gonna eat the house, and it’s gonna fall down before they notice.”

He lives on 230 acres that he has put to use as a registered tree farm, where he grows and harvests oak and other hardwood. The property is part of what used to be a larger family holding, which dates back about 200 years.

Chandler, who was born in 1939, has known it for a good portion of that time. He graduated from Knoxville Catholic High School and then studied at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y., as an optical engineer.

He went to work for the Rochester-based optical giant Bausch and Lomb, where among other things he said he worked on designing soft contact lenses and also helped with the Hubble telescope. Eventually he left the company to return to Tennessee, where he started a small computer company in Strawberry Plains that he and his two sons ran through the 1990s. 

In subsequent years, besides the tree farm, he has continued his studies in multiple fields. Intrigued by artistic expression, he spent some time at the University of Tennessee pursuing a fine arts degree that he ultimately didn’t finish. More recently, in his 80s, he has been taking UT classes toward a forestry degree.

“I’m studying soil science this semester,” Chandler said. “You know, we have to do what the world wants us to do, instead of piling it up and paving it over with blacktop.”

Conservation of the district’s farmland and rural character is the largest priority in his campaign and the main reason he’s in the race — becoming, he likes to note, the first Democrat in decades to run for the Commission seat. He thinks Commission has for too many years been willing to make exceptions and grant variances to its own plans to enable new development.

“A lot of the early (county) plans really were more soil and environmentally conscious than the stuff we get now,” he said. “If you buy the land, it’s to be used for what the plan says it’s to be used for. Stop offering a variance and paving it over and building a house. We do that continuously.”

On the tricky question of the county’s overstretched revenue streams, Chandler said he doesn’t want to raise property taxes because it disproportionately affects those who own land rather than rent. Instead, he’d rather see a tax on capital assets, which he said would more fairly spread the burden. (A proposal like that might require a change to state law.)

He said his longtime identification as a Democrat comes from being “a socially conscious person.” He is a big believer in community action to identify needs and solve problems. He is nostalgic for the days of community barn-building.

Chandler is an advocate of the European village model of development, where housing, services and amenities are clustered together — often within walking distance — and are surrounded by productive farmland. He suggests Knox County could take a similar approach on a larger scale, with an agricultural belt running through East and South Knox County, half-encircling the urbanized center.

“If those were designated rural areas, then let's invite people in that want to be homesteaders,” he said. 

Summing up, he said, “I just want to change the dialogue. I want to get some sense into it. One person making a big fat profit is not the same as a community thriving. We have to work together.”

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 last 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 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.”

Even in the primary, Thompson had support from some locally significant names. Knoxville Focus publisher Steve Hunley, long a political force in East Knox County, has contributed, 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.”