Knox County Democrats flipped one County Commission seat and nearly snagged another during Thursday’s election. The party also seized two school board seats currently held by independents, defeating an incumbent in the process, and narrowed margins in other contests against Republicans.

The GOP retains its majorities on school board and county commission.

The GOP continues to dominate county politics — all countywide offices, eight of 11 County Commission seats and five of nine school board positions will remain in Republican hands — but the Democrats’ strong showing continues a steady return to relevance.

“We have a platform that better represents young people, families, seniors, our workers, our teachers,” Knox County Democratic Party Chair Stuart Hohl said Thursday night. “I think people are starting to get that message, and the way they get that message is all the hard work that we’ve done.”

In the state and federal primary, two local legislators fended off intra-party challenges, and Knoxville Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson became her party’s standard-bearer in the U.S. Senate race. She earned 70 percent of the statewide primary vote for the opportunity to run against GOP incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

Commission and Countywide Offices

Democrats were in a festive mood Thursday night at Holly’s Gourmet Market and Cafe in Bearden.

The signature Democratic triumph came in the 4th Commission District, where newcomer Shane Jackson defeated Republican Garrett Holt by 170 votes out of 10,628 ballots cast — 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent. 

The seat is currently held by Republican Kyle Ward, who opted not to run for reelection. The 4th District has been progressively turning blue, however, electing Democrat Katherine Bike to the school board two years ago.  

When the results came in, Jackson worked the crowd, hugging his family and giving supporters high-fives. “I feel great,” he said before praising Holt for running a tough campaign.

While his victory won’t dramatically change the partisan math on Commission, Jackson said he would be able to use his background as a banker in future decision making.

“We have a debt crisis on our hands coming up, and I can be somebody that can provide some experience and analytics to the County Commission in that capacity,” he said.

Democrat Matthew Park fell 221 votes short of defeating Republican Andy Fox in South Knox County’s 9th Commission District. Fox garnered 49.8 percent of the vote, compared to 46.5 for Park and 3.7 percent for independent conservative Stacey Bryan Smith.

Current 9th District Commissioner Carson Dailey, a Republican, could not run for reelection because of term limits. As Fox supporters unsuccessfully challenged Smith’s candidacy, Park tried to build on a core of support in the district’s precincts inside the Knoxville city limits and came close to flipping the typically red seat.

Fox, a conservative firebrand, said at the end of the GOP election watch party at the Crowne Plaza that he overcame forces arrayed against him to win — establishment Republican figures such as former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe and former Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale, the media and people who urged Smith to run as an independent. 

“I look forward to bringing what I campaigned on,” he said. “I campaigned on being a conservative, an unapologetic conservative Christian.”

The Republicans at their traditional watch party at the Crowne Plaza were less exuberant than their Democratic counterparts, and several registered concerns about the Democrats’ progress undermining the GOP’s strength in the county.

Commission Chair Terry Hill, who won reelection to the 6th District seat over Democratic challenger Daniel Edward Greene by more than 17 percentage points, said she’s worried about the gradual erosion of the GOP’s majority.

“It’s one (seat) at a time, and the next thing you know, you no longer carry a majority,” she said in an interview. “It’s significant. One thing I’ve always valued about our county is its strong conservative values and I really do not want to see those slip away.”

Hill said Commissioners would continue to work together, though, regardless of party. “We’ve done pretty good so far,” she said, “and fortunately a lot of things that go on with Knox County government aren’t partisan-related.”

Law Director David Buuck defeated Democrat Jackson Fenner for the second consecutive election, but the margin of victory was significantly smaller this year. In 2020, Buuck won with 63.1 percent of the vote; this year, his winning share fell to 55.3 percent.

Buuck said Republicans need to work harder to keep from losing ground. “We’ve got to get out and vote. Democrats are organized,” he said. “We’ve got to get together.”

Republican Phil Ballard was elected property assessor, the office he held from 2008 to 2016, over Democratic newcomer Drew Harper, 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent. The very fact that the Democrats put up a candidate could be seen as progress — this was the first property assessor’s race determined in a competitive general election since Ballard’s first run in 2008.

The other four Commission races followed typical patterns, with Republicans and Democrats holding serve.  

Andy Fox, winner of the 9th District Commission race.

In the 5th District, which covers Farragut and Southwest Knox County, Republican Angela Russell handily defeated Democrat Arthur Moore, 63.9 percent to 36.1 percent. The GOP’s Adam Thompson blew out Democrat Charles Chandler by amassing 72.2 percent of the vote in heavily Republican East Knox County’s 8th District. 

The 1st District seat being vacated by Dasha Lundy, who opted not to run for reelection, will stay in Democratic hands after Damon Rawls crushed Republican Charles Frazier, 76.2 percent to 23.8 percent. Incumbent Democrat Courtney Durrett garnered 62 percent of the vote in winning a three-way contest in the 2nd District against Republican Debbie Phillips and independent Ethan Grantham.

Though Republicans still have the upper hand in county politics, many GOP leaders focused on how they fell short this year. Knox County GOP Chair Buddy Burkhardt said he is looking at the future. According to the Knox County Election Commission, more people under the age of 55 voted in the Democratic primary than in the GOP primary.

“We’re getting older, and we need younger people to get in here and support us,” Burkhardt said. “I think the young people will come around and vote for conservatives in the future.”

He also lamented the recent drop in voter turnout — more than 75,000 people voted in the county general election in 2020, compared to 57,768 this year.

“I’m going to keep working, I’m going to try to keep Republicans involved and get more people out to the polls and hopefully we’ll see an increase in numbers in the next election,” Burkhardt said.

Board of Education

The school board election will bring three new faces and a clearer partisan divide to the nine-member body, but not necessarily much of an ideological shift.

Democrats Anne Templeton and Patricia Fontenot-Ridley won their races in the 2nd and 3rd districts, respectively, succeeding two current nonpartisan board members, Jennifer Owen and Daniel Watson. They will join fellow Democrats Rev. John Butler and Katherine Bike on the nine-member body.

Republicans will maintain their five-member majority, with GOP newcomer Lauren Morgan easily beating Democrat Terrye Whitaker in the 5th District. (Susan Horn, the 5th District incumbent, did not run for reelection.) In the 8th District, Republican board member Travis Wright — who was appointed to fill the seat earlier this year after the death of incumbent Mike McMillan — faced no opposition in seeking a full term.

Both the 2nd and 3rd district races were interesting in several ways. Owen had served two terms and was seeking a third, running as an independent. Although she has typically voted with the board’s more progressive faction, she opposed the change to partisan board races two years ago and declined to run as a Democrat this year.

Instead, the party got behind Templeton, which clearly helped in the Democratic-leaning North Knoxville district. Templeton raised considerably more money than Owen and ran a more visible campaign, taking 50.63 percent of the vote to 29.62 percent for Owen. A third candidate, the Republican-leaning independent Pat Polis, took the remaining 19.75 percent.

“I was able to win this race because I knocked on a lot of doors and I talked to a lot of constituents and heard about their concerns and their perspectives,” Templeton said Thursday night. 

She promised a more collaborative approach as a board member than Owen, who has often rankled both the administration and her board colleagues.

“I would like to be more boots on the ground in my leadership style,” Templeton said. “I would like to engage the community and the schools together, and work on projects that are high priorities for the schools in our district.”

Owen is the only former educator left on the current school board, down from six when she first joined it in 2016. However, Fontenot-Ridley’s win means there will still be a former teacher on the body. She just retired this spring after 30 years as a physical education teacher in Knox County Schools. She defeated Republican parent activist Angie Goethert by a 52-47 percent margin.

During her victory speech last night, Fontenot-Ridley became emotional just a few words in, pausing before the crowd cheered her on to continue. 

“I want to thank first and foremost — my mother is no longer with us, but she instilled in me the importance of doing for others before you do for yourself,” she said. “She was one of the most selfless people that I know, and I daresay I won’t know anybody like her again.”

She continued by thanking her husband, and joked that “for once, our votes didn’t cancel out.”

On the board, she said, “I will do my best to be a voice for the students, the teachers and build a relationship with the parents as well. Because we need to make sure that our parents and our students and our teachers are together instead of pulled apart.”

She will succeed Watson, an independent who did not seek a second term and typically votes with the board’s Democrats on more politicized issues. As with Templeton, Fontenot-Ridley’s victory does not necessarily signal a power shift on the board overall. 

Overall, the school board’s 5-4 partisan split will make it the most proportionately representative of local legislative bodies, approximately reflecting the 55-45 percent divide between Republicans and Democrats countywide. It will mean that the Republican majority has a thin line to walk on any particularly controversial issues.

State Primary

Most legislative primary races involved unopposed incumbents or unopposed challengers to them. Two exceptions were the 15th House District and the 6th Senate District, where incumbents faced primary challenges. 

With 64.9 percent of the vote, Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie turned back Lundy, the current 1st District Commission representative, in a race that focused on school choice — McKenzie is a supporter of traditional public schools, while Lundy is a charter school advocate and is at least open to school vouchers. 

He said Lundy was a “formidable opponent” and that this year’s successful resistance to Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher proposal triggered special interest groups to line up against him.

“I’ve never had a race like this one, with all the money that came in from the outside,” he told supporters at the Democrats’ watch party. “At first it shocked me, but it’s a testament to the small but mighty organization that we had in Nashville that — we whooped the governor’s ass.”

Republican state Sen. Becky Duncan Massey handled a challenge from businesswoman and anti-abortion advocate Monica Irvine, 59.8 percent to 40.2 percent. 

In an interview, Massey said Irvine called to offer support in the general election. “We always reach out,” she said. “I tell people we’re not always going to agree, but I want people to feel like they can talk to me. They can tell me what they think as long as we do it in a respectful manner.”