On one hand, Tennessee’s 18th state House district doesn’t seem like the most obvious target for Democrats seeking to flip a Republican seat.

Democrats see the West/South Knox seat as their best chance to flip a district.

Although it had been trending toward closer races through 2020, a substantial redistricting before the 2022 elections was clearly aimed at bolstering its Republican voter base. The district shed some of its bluer West Knoxville precincts, like the West Hills neighborhood, and added a big chunk of red-leaning South Knox areas.

In the 2022 race, Republican Elaine Davis defeated Democrat Gregory Kaplan fairly handily, by a 54-46 percent margin and nearly 1,800 votes. 

But that was still the smallest margin of any of Knox County’s Republican legislators, and Democrats see potential in the district. They are also excited about their candidate this year, Bryan Goldberg, an energetic former competitive swimmer for the University of Tennessee and U.S. National Team presenting himself as a commonsense moderate.

That has made the race the most-watched among politicos of Knox County’s legislative contests this fall, as Democrats seek any way to put a dent in the state House GOP supermajority. Of the chamber’s 99 seats, 75 are currently held by Republicans. 

Democratic excitement has certainly shown up in fundraising. Through July 25, the end of the pre-primary reporting period, Goldberg reported raising $86,261 for his campaign, with $51,617 on hand heading into the general election. That’s more than the $60,905 Davis reported raising from donors through the same period. But she had $61,893 on hand, counting $11,000 in loans she has made to her own account.

There has been a little mudslinging in the race from Republicans, with the House Republican Caucus launching a sinister-looking website attacking Goldberg and his wife for being three months late paying their property taxes in 2023. Goldberg said the delay resulted from a check fraud identity theft the couple dealt with that year. (The Goldbergs are current on their taxes, were assessed no penalties, and have paid on time all other years since moving into their home in 2018.)

Davis denied any knowledge of the website and said she didn’t condone it. But the site remains up, and the allegation has also been used in a text message campaign funded by the House GOP.

Here’s a look at the two contenders.

Elaine Davis

Reflecting on her two years in the Legislature and the issues she’s most proud of working on, Davis does not immediately mention the topics that have generated the most public attention during that time: the state’s abortion ban, Gov. Bill Lee’s efforts to expand his school voucher program, gun safety, the public hearing on expelling a trio of Democratic lawmakers.

Davis has supported the Republican position on all of those, but she said what matters to her most are some more practical — and in some cases, more personal — concerns.

For example, she initiated a bill to collect and report data on nurses in Tennessee schools. One of her own children was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was young, which meant Davis had to make sure he was receiving adequate medical attention at school. (She has three children, now grown.)

“There's so many more students now that have serious health issues or chronic illnesses or serious allergies, or just the number of students, the student population has increased,” Davis said in an interview. “And so it's become even more important to make sure that we have a medical professional that can respond in an emergency situation.”

She noted that the state’s new school funding formula provides for one school nurse per every 750 students, which should work out to at least one per building. But in researching the issue, Davis found that there was no data collection about how many nurses were actually in each school, and also whether they were special needs nurses assigned to just one or a few students or were available to the whole student population.

“What I was able to pass was a reporting bill to really try to gather that data, to make sure that we know specifically what the needs are in our school districts, to find out how we're meeting those needs and if there's gaps in care, what can we do to try to help fill those gaps?” she said.

She pointed to other bills she sponsored: one to streamline fire inspections for food trucks that operate in multiple jurisdictions; one to provide for remote monitoring of fetal health for pregnant women on bedrest in rural areas without easy medical access; one that allows vision-impaired voters to request an “accessible” mail-in ballot. One that didn’t pass but she hopes to keep working on would provide period products for girls in school bathrooms.

Davis grew up in Farragut and now lives in South Knox County. A University of Tennessee graduate, she has worked at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church and as a substitute teacher; served as a caregiver to her parents before their passing; and has been the host of a local conservative talk-radio program.

She has been active in local politics for most of the last two decades. She ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for a County Commission seat in 2006, but she was appointed to a Commission seat two years later in the aftermath of the Black Wednesday scandal. Her term was brief — later in 2008 she lost her chance for a full term in the Democratic primary. 

Davis then switched parties, saying she was no longer aligned with the Obama-era Democratic Party. She subsequently lost a bid for school board in 2012 and a race against Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson for the old 13th District House seat in 2020. After redistricting placed her South Knox address in the redrawn 18th District, she ran and won in 2022.

Her donors this year include political action committees for groups like the Tennessee Highway Contractors, Tennessee Manufactured Housing, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Tennessee Firearms Association, the charter school advocates Team Kid, the payday loan PAC for TN Advance Financial and other industry interests. 

Asked about the state’s abortion ban, Davis said she voted in favor of a bill last year that provided exemptions for ectopic and molar pregnancies and in cases where the life of the mother is in immediate and irreversible danger.

“We want to protect life in all forms, and that’s where I stand,” she said. “I just want to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to protect the innocent.”

In response to gun violence, like many Republicans she favors expanding mental health services over any kind of restriction on access to firearms. She said she supports the push for a new state mental health facility in or near Knoxville, to provide more long-term beds for people in need of extended treatment.

“It's important for us to want to try to help and make sure that they're looked after and they're protected, because obviously they're not thinking clearly,” Davis said.

She noted that she voted for both “Jillian’s Law” — which requires that people charged with crimes are found to be not mentally competent to stand trial must remain held in a mental health facility until the case is resolved — and a “duty to warn” law, which mandates that health care professionals alert local law enforcement if they believe a patient is a threat to themselves or others to local law enforcement.

Maybe the Davis bill that received most local attention and pushback was one eliminating an exception in state law that allowed the City of Knoxville to conduct a hybrid form of elections for its City Council seats — in district races, candidates ran in primaries within their districts, but then citywide in the general election.

Davis said she thought that system had the potential to overrule local voices — the whole point of district representation.

“You're disenfranchising those district voters, because the entire city, all other five districts, are voting and overwhelming your district candidate,” she said.

Of course, the change would also theoretically make it easier for more conservative candidates to get elected in some districts — the current system has produced a City Council that is broadly center-left, in line with the overall city voting majority.

City Council members reacted angrily to what they saw as the state’s usurping local authority. They have responded with a referendum on the November ballot that would change all nine Council seats to at-large representation, meaning they would still be elected citywide.

On the House GOP attacks on Goldberg, Davis reiterated earlier statements distancing herself from them.

“It’s not anything I was aware of, involved in, or support,” she said. “I don’t like that stuff. I don’t like negative politics. I don’t think it’s useful or beneficial. I would just rather articulate my message and what I’ve accomplished and what my goals are, and how I want to help other people in the community.”

Bryan Goldberg

Goldberg thinks that the Legislature’s Republican majority — very much including Davis — is not actually focused enough on helping people across the state.

He had long been politically aware, but he said that he started paying more attention to the state Legislature in recent years as he kept hearing it prioritize issues that seemed far removed from most people’s daily lives.

“Just as a passive observer of state politics for a while, I was just very shocked at the legislation that would come out of Nashville,” said Goldberg, who is married with two young children and works in the insurance restoration industry. “What would make news here in Knoxville didn't really ever reflect anything that I would talk about with my friends and families and social acquaintances, about the problems that we would see. And the need to address the issues that we lived in would never really be talked about or legislated.”

He is a first-time candidate with limited campaign experience — he helped with the County Commission run of Democratic candidate Donna Lucas in 2016, in a race she lost to Republican Brad Anders. He presents himself as a community-minded problem-solver.

“I just felt called upon to say, ‘Hey, let me put my hat in this ring,’ to see what I can do to improve the discourse and maybe refocus legislative efforts to help people and not divide people,” he said. “Because I think that that's what we all want.”

Goldberg grew up in south Florida, in the Hollywood-Fort Lauderdale area, and was an avid swimmer from a young age. He was a competitive swimmer throughout his youth and adolescence, which led to scholarship offers from universities across the country. He visited five schools and narrowed his choices down to Stanford and the University of Tennessee.

“I chose to be a Vol,” he said. He arrived on campus in Knoxville in the fall of 2002.

During his time at UT, Goldberg captained the swim team and also swam on the U.S. National Team. He won a gold medal at the Pan American Games. He was a four-year letterman and swam in just about every meet. His specialty was the 200-meter freestyle, but he saw his role as “a utility guy,” able to compete as needed.

He was awarded a Haslam Scholarship for athletes in the UT business school (not yet at that time named for business titan Jim Haslam), and was in the business honors program. After graduation, he decided to stick around in Knoxville.

An early job in the insurance business led to an offer from Belfor Property Restoration, the largest disaster restoration company in the world. It was looking to expand into East Tennessee, and Goldberg took charge of opening the office. He still works for the company, 14 and a half years later. It helps people restore residential and commercial property after disasters, which can be localized like a house fire or broader like regional flooding.

“Any given day,” Goldberg said, “my crews are sucking up water, or we're putting drywall back, or we're installing a roof, or we're doing framing, or we're doing flooring, or we're building, you know, all sorts of stuff — acoustical ceiling tiles, mirrors, paneling, electrical, plumbing, mechanical.”

He has been active in the community, particularly with swimming. He was the head swimming coach for Halls Middle and High schools for nine years, also serving on the board of the statewide association of swim coaches. He has served as president of the Knoxville Jewish Alliance, which both represents and serves the local Jewish community. It owns and runs the Arnstein Jewish Community Center, including a preschool, day camps and a fitness center with a pool.

Goldberg was on the National Young Leadership Cabinet for the Jewish Federations of North America. He was also featured in the News Sentinel’s annual list of “40 Under 40.” His supporters include a host of regular Democratic donors, leaders in the local Jewish community, and also Joan Ashe, wife of former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe (who has been critical of Davis in his columns for the News Sentinel).

All of Goldberg’s civic engagement has only increased his sense that the state needs and deserves better political leadership. It was crystallized for him by the “Tennessee Three” fracas in the state House, where he said rather than responding to public outcry after the Covenant School shootings in Nashville, the Legislature spent its time trying to punish some of its own members.

He was also disappointed by the subsequent special session called by Lee, ostensibly to talk about gun safety, that the governor himself stayed away from.

“He called the session and then he just said, ‘Hey, you guys figure it out,’” Goldberg said. “It was just too much.”

Among his top issues:

• Eliminating the sales tax on groceries — “We’re talking about a tax cut that would actually help families, as opposed to more and more and more tax relief for businesses.”

• Reproductive rights — “We have an outright ban (on abortion), and to not have a rape or incest exception is just a moral stain on our state against women.”

• Expanding Medicaid — “Just speaking economics, every year we refuse to expand Medicaid, it is almost a $2 billion fiscal hit. Taking our tax money and going up to some other states. … It’s well past time to get over the political disagreement and start looking at it as a fiscal issue.”

He said he supports “common-sense gun laws” to restore some responsibility and accountability to the state’s increasingly anything-goes gun culture. “The other side doesn’t want to create or allow the environment to have a conversation, and that’s a shame,” Goldberg said. “It’s almost a Wild, Wild West mentality where an 18-year-old can go into a gun store and get a gun and carry it on his or her hip, open or concealed, with no care for what the laws are.”

Goldberg was angered by the House GOP attack and has threatened to sue the caucus over it. He said it represents the kind of politics he wants to change.

“We need to get back to being respectful to each other and trying to find a way to improve Tennessee lives about the issues that really matter to them,” he said. “It’s calling out nonsense when it comes up in committees or on the floor. I'll call it out just from a standpoint of, ‘Hey, nobody's talking about this in my district.’”