Knox County Commission’s two at-large representatives deliberate and vote like the district representatives, but their perspectives are often different.

Kimberly Glenn has enjoyed a big lead in campaign contributions, a major factor in countywide races.

Instead of representing a defined geographic area consisting of around 57,000 residents (give or take a couple thousand), they represent the entire county — 526 square miles and 515,000 or so constituents. Instead of focusing on a single congested intersection or short section of a roadway in their district, for example, at-large commissioners need to be familiar with the challenges to the county’s entire road network.

At-Large Seat 10, currently occupied by mayoral candidate Larsen Jay, has attracted three Republicans to run in this year’s primary — Ronnie Rochelle, Justin Cofer and Kimberly Glenn.

Running a countywide campaign typically requires a robust fundraising effort to reach voters from Strawberry Plains to Farragut and from Heiskell to the Blount and Sevier county lines. Among this year’s GOP hopefuls, Glenn sprinted out to a commanding cash lead.

Glenn raised $24,750 during the first quarter of 2026 and spent $23,917; because she carried over a balance from 2025, she had $5,336 on hand on March 31. Cofer raised $7,153 during the same reporting period and had $4,855 left over after expenses. Rochelle has largely financed his own campaign, relying primarily on an $8,ooo loan.

We interviewed Cofer and Rochelle for this report but could not connect with Glenn. We used information from news reports, social media and her website to assemble her profile.

The primary winner will square off against unopposed Democrat Katina Sharp and independent Ronin Cunningham in the general election. We will publish their profiles as the general Election Day nears.

Justin Cofer

Every time Cofer knocks on a door, someone mentions development and its impact on Knox County services. That’s what inspired the political novice to run for office in the first place. 

“All of this excess development is going on, and there’s no infrastructure being built,” Cofer said.

“The county is going to have to come in after the fact and widen the roads, add more utilities, and all that cost is falling onto the taxpayer. Basically, we are subsidizing these developers, and I feel that’s wrong to ask the taxpayers to do that.

“Our roads, schools, emergency services … they’re stretched thin. Growth itself isn’t the problem, poor planning is.

“And that’s where, with my background, I think I can be a great asset.”

Cofer, 46, was a civil engineer in the Air Force and graduated at the top of his class from King University with a business administration degree. He lives in the Ball Camp area of West Knox County with his wife and two sons.

One of his solutions to ensure services meet demand: Audit the county and pour the savings into roads and other infrastructure.

“I want to do a complete external audit of our budget, $1.1 billion, a full forensic audit of where every dollar’s going,” he said.

“And if that money is not being directly spent on programs that impact the taxpayer in a positive way, we need to take and roll that back into our infrastructure, like our roads, law-enforcement programs, to avoid doing any tax increases.”

Many people simply can’t afford a tax increase, he said, and affordability is an issue he hears about, too.

“Five percent may not seem like a lot to some, but when you’ve got someone that’s on a fixed income, that can be the difference between paying your power bill (and) getting your groceries for the week.”

Cofer said he has encountered transplants to the area from California and New Jersey during his campaign rounds. They see reminders of the places they left.

“They’re very concerned because they’re seeing us follow that same path that their states followed to put them in this situation where they decided to move,” he said.

Still, Cofer maintains a “don’t hate the player” attitude toward Knox County builders and developers.

“I don’t fault developers because they’re only doing what they’ve been allowed to do. I know they won’t like my plans, but the truth is they’ve got to build to make money,” he said.

“So at some point they’re either going to have to not build and not make money in this area, or they’re going to have to work with the Commission and work with the infrastructure where they still will be able to profit.”

He acknowledges that his plan will likely not land well.

“I have no doubt they’re going to fight me tooth and nail on this, and I’m good with that,” he said. “I don’t have all these big groups supporting me. I don’t have developers giving me money.”

He describes his campaign and fundraising as “true grassroots style.”

Cofer makes it a point to bring up the Advance Knox planning process, which Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs’ administration has been crafting with a consultant and Knoxville-Knox County Planning staff. The last portion of the process, a Unified Development Ordinance, will ultimately require Commission approval. 

“It’s a 20-year plan, but it lacks a one-year solution for infrastructure,” he said. “It opens up more land for development, but it does not implement what I call a ‘growth pays for itself’ model, with developers covering that infrastructure.

“We’ve got to get a plan that prioritizes drainage, roads, schools, and all that. If we don’t do that soon, we’re just setting ourselves up for failure.”

“When I got looking into the (Advance Knox) plan, one thing that really amazed me is at no point had they consulted our leadership in our county government on how much it would actually cost for our law enforcement to be able to properly and adequately cover all these new developments,” he said. 

“Same for Knox County Schools,” he continued. “How much will we need to make sure our schools are where our kids aren’t 50 to a classroom?”

He’s the one who will ask those questions, he said, and he also wants to better empower the disenchanted and disenfranchised citizens of the county.

“People feel like they’re not being heard. They feel that they do not have a true voice in Knox County government,” Cofer said.

Ronnie Rochelle

Rochelle came up short in the 2018 GOP primary against Jay when he last ran for office.

“And now, eight years later, the seat’s open, and I’ve had a relapse, I suppose,” Rochelle said of his second quest for At-Large Seat 10.

He has a sense of déjà vu as the primary approaches for the open seat with new competition.

“It’s quite ironic that many of the issues I ran on eight years ago are, unfortunately, all worse,” he said. 

Those issues are mainly growth-related and are again top of mind for many people he encounters in the county. The growing Knoxville population and its continuing strain on public services is cited as the No. 1 issue shared by the electorate with candidates for all Commission seats.

“And I’m trying to stop that before we turn into Nashville and an extremely high property-tax increase,” he said.

Rochelle, 73, owned and operated Parkway Galleries on Bearden Hill and another furniture store for about 15 years.

“Recently they tore down my building that I got an industrial revenue bond for when I built it back in the 1980s and put up a yogurt store,” he said. “So it’s kind of like, wow, I worked hard 24-7, 365 days a year and apparently all I needed to do was sell yogurt.”

He has also been a certified financial planner for 35 years and a bookkeeper for 48 years. He found time to serve as chairman of the Knox County Parks and Recreation Department board and to serve on the Knox County Board of Zoning Appeals and the Farragut Municipal Planning Commission.

Rochelle lives near West Valley Middle School in West Knox County, a perpetually growing area that nurtures his musings on Nashville.

He sees parallels between Knoxville and its much larger sister to the west.

“If I’m not mistaken, over the last five years, they’ve increased the property-tax rate 60 percent,” he said. “We can’t do that here. But unfortunately, we may have to. So that’s what I’m trying to stop.

“Nashville’s had rapid growth, but instead of solving the problem as it happened, they just kept kicking it down the road and hoping somebody else would take care of it after they were in office,” Rochelle continued. 

“So it just kept on until, unfortunately, they couldn’t kick it down the road anymore, and they had to do something, and unfortunately, that’s the result.”

The Knox County population has increased by about 7 percent since 2020 and is now estimated at about 515,000.

Rochelle said debt management and a dedicated roads fund would be a good start to avoid drastic tax hikes to provide the services needed for the burgeoning population.

Knox County owes about $800 million in debt accumulated over the past 26 years, said Rochelle, a numbers man who has embraced AI to mine government data. He also gets his figures from the county Finance Department.

As for roads, he said, “We’ve gone from 121 miles’ paving in 2000 all the way down to where we’re averaging 40 miles every year. As a result of that, we have a backlog of a little over 3,400 miles. It’s a remarkable number because we only have 1,800 miles in Knox County.”

He said he’d create a restricted road fund and stop the practice of dumping road revenue and grants into the general fund or spending them elsewhere. That would speed road improvements and chip away at the backlog, he said.

Rochelle describes a “bond crisis” brewing as 20-year loans mature. He said the county has only paid on interest over the past two decades. “Some $30 million will be needed over the next four years to pay the obligations, and that can only be pulled from the fund balance — or transportation fund — at this point.” he said.

Rochelle said many county residents are unaware of the challenges. “You started your car, you went out and you had to dodge a few potholes or a bad road or something,” he said. “And you think, man, that road’s bad. But it’s not affecting your life dramatically. It’s affecting your quality of life some, but you don’t realize it.

“And one day, you’re going to wake up and the Commission is going to say, ‘Well, we’re going to have to raise property taxes (by) something like 60 percent.’”

Kimberly Glenn

Glenn has spent years making connections in her role as communications director for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.

Her responsibilities include media relations, getting information to the public and serving as the go-to source for information in the event of an emergency.

Glenn “has built strong working relationships across local and state government, law enforcement, and community organizations, helping to bridge the gap between public safety, policy, and the people they serve,” according to her campaign website. 

After serving in Sheriff Tom Spangler’s office over two terms, she wants to parlay those connections into the County Commission District 10 At-Large seat.

Glenn, 54, is the governmental-affairs liaison for the Sheriff’s Office and spearheaded fundraising efforts for what is now the Officer and Employee Assistance Fund. The fund helps officers who face illness, injury or financial problems. She is the fundraising liaison with Blue Line Tennessee Inc., which helps families of officers killed or injured in the line of duty.

On two occasions during her time at KCSO, Glenn became part of the story herself. 

In April 2019, she and her husband, who also worked at KCSO, intervened in a drunken brawl between two KCSO officers in the Old City. Glenn did not immediately report the incident to Spangler. She admitted her actions during the incident in a memo she sent to Spangler three months later and received a written reprimand. 

On the evening of Nov. 21, 2022, Glenn made a public post on her personal Facebook page reporting that three Sheriff’s deputies had been denied service at McAlister’s Deli at 2758 Schaad Road. That led to a flood of social-media anger against the restaurant. 

McAlister’s employee Aniya Thompson, then 15 years old, and several of her co-workers said that she merely turned the cash register over to another employee when the officers were ready to order and that they were not denied service.

Aniya Thompson is the younger sister of Anthony Thompson Jr., who had been killed by a Knoxville Police Department officer the previous year in a struggle in a bathroom at Austin-East High School. His death sparked community outrage, and the McAlister’s incident reopened wounds in the African-American community.

In addition to her job at KCSO, Glenn has also worked in the real-estate business for 22 years and has led two firms as a broker and principal broker. 

“(My) experience in the private sector as an entrepreneur has given (me) a strong understanding of growth, development, and the real-world challenges that families and small business owners face every day,” she said. Glenn, who lives in East Knox County, describes herself as a “Christian conservative Republican.”

Glenn, who has five grandchildren, noted that her family has, over generations, cultivated military and first-responder personnel who made service their professions. She wants to continue that family tradition.

She is engaged in numerous charitable causes, including animal welfare, Shop With a Cop and Care Cuts. Glenn serves on the board of directors of the Hope Well Foundation, which assists individuals with recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

She said this work illustrates her “commitment to second chances, recovery, and stronger, healthier communities, which also help reduce recidivism rates.”

Glenn said her connections have prepared her to work with both Knox County officials and the public to address countywide challenges.

She told the Concord Farragut Area Republican Club she would use her first months in office to analyze infrastructure needs and other spending priorities.

“You know our roads are in poor condition; you know our infrastructure is strained; you know we have an astronomical amount of growth,” Glenn said in remarks published by Farragut Press.

“For the first year, we will be working on this Commission’s budget and the mayor’s budget,” she said. “We’ll be working off someone else’s budget for a year, and that gives us time to do our due diligence.”