Knox County’s District 3 has become one of the most politically competitive areas of the county, presenting Democrats with an opportunity to flip a seat on County Commission. In a contest between two first-time candidates, Brandon Huckaby, a Democrat, is running against Republican Sheri Super.

The candidates agree on the importance of infrastructure upgrades but fall on opposite sides in the culture wars.

The district runs from Western Avenue to Pellissippi Parkway between Middlebrook and Ball Camp pikes, plus virtually all of West Knoxville south of Kingston Pike from Downtown West to Cedar Bluff. It includes Amherst, Dowell Springs, Suburban Hills, much of Walker Springs, and numerous subdivisions inside and outside of the Knoxville city limits.

Incumbent Republican Gina Oster won the seat in 2022 by a razor-thin margin — 87 votes out of 6,009 cast — over Democrat Stuart Hohl. That same year, Republican Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs carried the district’s precincts by a narrower margin than his overall performance. And in 2024, Democrat Patricia Fontenot-Ridley took the district’s school-board seat by five percentage points.

Super edged Oster by just 11 votes in the GOP primary in May, propelling her into the general election, where she will face Huckaby, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

The contest has the potential to become a culture-war battlefield. A mortgage banker, Huckaby is gay, married and active in the LGBTQ community; Super is a cultural conservative and a leader of Moms for Liberty, which fights against gender-identity materials and policies in the schools, and she has publicly declared her opposition to what she calls the “radical LGBTQ agenda.” 

There have been skirmishes already.

Conservative political consultant Erik Wiatr, who is working with Super’s campaign, posted a copy of a drag-show fundraiser flier to his Facebook page on June 5.

“Just weeks ago, Brandon Huckaby, the Democratic nominee for Knox County Commission District 3, held a ‘Drag Out the Vote’ drag show fundraiser for his campaign,” Wiatr wrote. “Now we’re told he’s not interested in culture war issues and only wants to talk about local government.

“He’s gone from drag to drainage issues. Give me a break!”

Huckaby’s response: “Erik, if your big ‘gotcha’ is that LGBTQ folks and allies helped raise money for an openly gay candidate, I’m not sure what scandal you think you found,” adding that he can support the LGBTQ community and address infrastructure at the same time. “That’s not a contradiction. That’s the job.” 

The candidates’ fundraising is running about even.  

Super won the GOP primary despite raising far less money than Oster. She entered the last leg of the general-election campaign with $2,229 in the bank and raised $24,085 from April 26 through June 30. After expenses, she had $10,054 available for the final five weeks until Election Day.

Super has Wiatr and his network of donors and campaign workers on her team. County Commissioner Andy Fox, businessman Roger Cunningham, developer Tim Graham, former state Rep. Bill Dunn and former school-board member Doug Harris are among her contributors.

Huckaby raised $25,638 during the same fundraising cycle and had $19,879 on hand after expenses for the final push. Democratic strategist Jack Vaughan is consulting his campaign. His donors include state Rep. Gloria Johnson, mayoral candidate Beau Hawk, Knox Community Planning Alliance founder Kevin Murphy, former County Commissioner Mark Harmon and state House candidate Bryan Goldberg. 

We talked to Huckaby for this article, but Super has not responded to interview requests and rarely speaks to the media. We used information from her website, Facebook page and news reports to assemble her profile, which has been updated since the primary.

Brandon Huckaby

Last year, frustrated with the faction of Republican commissioners who focused on forcing nonprofits to prove they weren’t assisting undocumented immigrants, Huckaby was helping Democrats look for a strong District 3 candidate. 

“We quickly realized that I wasn’t finding anything because I’m the candidate,” he said during a recent interview. “So then I ended up announcing that I was going to run.”

Huckaby said he wants to make sure commissioners stick to county business and stop playing culture-war games. “I jokingly said this at a forum the other day: I’d love to make government boring again,” he said.

Infrastructure, especially the road network, is the county’s No. 1 problem right now, Huckaby said, noting that many Republicans agree.

“That’s what people are talking about the most,” he said. “Even anti-development folks, they’re not really mad at the development; they’re mad at the traffic. Focusing all of our energy toward taking our road paving up is my priority.”

A project affecting District 3 that Huckaby would like to see completed is Schaad Road. Though the current work is outside the district, he said, it would pull traffic away from Middlebrook Pike and the Cedar Bluff area. Another project underway that he credits Oster for pushing is the flooding-mitigation effort in Cedar Bluff.

“We’re hearing from the Cedar Bluff community that they’re starting to see a lot more of the homeless community move into some of those greenways and parks as they’ve been pushed out of the downtown area and move west,” he said. “I’d love to work with the next sheriff to make sure we’re addressing it with empathy.”

Huckaby, who described himself as an “independent that is also the Democratic nominee,” said Republicans allege that all Democrats want to raise taxes, but he doesn’t think it’s time for a property-tax rate increase. He would prefer to increase sales-tax revenues by directing growth toward areas where infrastructure is in place.

“I am more pro commercial development than I am residential development,” he said.

“I do think that property taxes will eventually have to be increased. I don’t know if it’ll be next year … but I do think we’re going to come to a crunch point where the public’s going to say, ‘OK, schools have suffered enough. We have no change. We have no choice.’”

Huckaby, 29, was born in Jacksboro and moved with his mother and four younger siblings to Knox County during his junior year in high school. He participated in student government, and in JROTC at his previous high school in Campbell County. After graduating, he attended classes at Pellissippi State Community College but did not complete a degree.

Huckaby is the vice president of mortgage lending for the Knoxville office of Rate (formerly Guaranteed Rate Mortgage). He and his husband, Sky Woodard, live north of Middlebrook Pike at the edge of West Knoxville.

Huckaby is particularly proud of his work with nonprofits. He champions environmental stewardship and clean neighborhoods as president of Keep Knoxville Beautiful and chairs the Education Committee for the Farragut West Knox Chamber of Commerce. As chair of the Grant Committee for the Appalachian Equality Chorus, he supports LGBTQ arts and advocacy across the region.

Huckaby said some Super supporters have tried to turn his sexual orientation into a campaign issue, but it’s backfired. He said that whenever a Super ally posts a graphic online or a canvasser broaches the topic while knocking on doors (a “door-to-door smear campaign,” he called it), his donations go up. 

“It helps us every time,” he said.

Huckaby said that when he knocks on doors, he tells residents, “I’m not asking you to vote Democratic; I’m asking you to vote for a candidate that just wants to do good for our community. I don’t care about the culture wars.”

He continued: “I don’t have a political agenda. I just want to do the work for our people. That’s the big thing I’m trying to get across.”

Sheri Super

Super describes herself as a Christian conservative and a “lifelong advocate for family values, parental rights, and fiscal responsibility.”

While this is Super’s first run for office, she’s been active in civic life, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. She was a vocal opponent of mask mandates and the school system’s remote-education measures.

As a leader (a former chair, she’s currently vice chair) of Moms for Liberty-Knox County, she led the organization’s efforts to remove books and other materials they deemed offensive from school libraries, including those dealing with LGBTQ and gender-identity issues.

Super, 58, said she is running for the seat because “Knox County taxpayers deserve better” than what Oster and other elected officials have given them. 

In District 3, she’s an advocate for improved infrastructure and safe roads, and staunchly opposes high-density development.

“As a community leader, I’ve advocated for infrastructure that protects our families and supports daily life in West Knox,” she told KnoxTNToday. “I’ll push for targeted investments in road repairs and maintenance, ensuring that high-traffic areas like those in Amherst, Ball Camp, and Cedar Bluff are prioritized to reduce accidents and improve flow.”

Super said on her website that she’s “determined to safeguard West Knox neighborhoods such as Amherst, Ball Camp, and Cedar Bluff from reckless high-density development that threatens property values and quality of life.”

In response to a question submitted by the News Sentinel (she did not participate in an interview), Super wrote, “Residents are understandably upset with recent development policies, which are fundamentally changing the nature of the communities they have invested their life savings in.”

Other priorities Super identifies are public safety, strong schools and low taxes.

“I’ll promote economic growth through pro-business policies that attract jobs and investment to Knox County, fostering a thriving economy that naturally boosts revenue through expanded opportunities while keeping government limited and accountable,” she told KnoxTNToday.

Married and the mother of eight children, Super lives north of Cedar Bluff off Middlebrook Pike. She grew up in Naperville, Ill., and has lived in Knox County for more than 30 years.

Her involvement in her children’s schools sparked her interest in civic matters, which led to her involvement with Moms for Liberty, an influential conservative organization that opposes school curricula dealing with racism, LGBTQ rights and gender identity.

At a 2024 school-board meeting, she read a portion of a sex-education book available in some high-school libraries that discussed anal sex and hygiene. “Are we now educating children on how to disinfect butt plugs?” Super asked. “Is this where we are?”

During the primary, her website focused on national issues more than most other candidates for local office, particularly immigration. She said she would put “American citizens first” and wouldn’t fund “illegal immigrants” or a “radical LGBTQ agenda” with taxpayer dollars. Super also declares that she’s “Pro-Trump.”

Post-primary, the website has focused on local priorities — she would not vote to fund nonprofits for nonessential services and, like Republican county mayor candidate Betsy Henderson, pledged to never vote for a property-tax rate increase.

That doesn’t mean she has abandoned national issues in their entirety.

“Issues do not suddenly stop at the Knox County line,” she wrote to the News Sentinel. “Sometimes federal and state governments lack the capacity to address problems in a timely manner. These issues often have direct local consequences, so commissioners have a responsibility to act when they impact Knox County taxpayers and residents.”

Super said transparency and resident involvement are important, and if elected she would host regular town-hall meetings, create advisory committees for key issues and ensure open access to Commission meetings.

“I’ll amplify voices from all corners of District 3, fostering a government that truly listens and responds to taxpayers, not special interests,” she told KnoxTNToday.

CORRECTIONS: Huckaby's age and JROTC participation details have been corrected.