District 7 is the heart of North Knox County, encompassing Powell, Halls and Heiskell. Long a Republican stronghold, the district’s seat on Knox County Commission is open following Commissioner Rhonda Lee’s decision to run for General Sessions Judge.

Beeler is a Republican insider; Cooper is running against the status quo.

Barry Beeler, who is the Knox County Republican Party secretary, is running against Democrat William Cooper.

Beeler won the GOP primary with 56.3 percent of the vote over Buddy Burkhardt and Justin Mash. Cooper was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Beeler holds the fundraising edge — he had $3,151 on hand as of June 30 after spending heavily in the primary. Cooper is running a shoestring campaign and had only $6.38 left in his account with five weeks to go before Election Day.

Here’s a look at the two contenders. (Beeler’s profile has been updated since the primary.)

William Cooper

Cooper thinks it’s high time to declare a ceasefire in the culture wars. There are more important things to focus on at the local level.

He cites an awkward attempt by County Commissioner Andy Fox to introduce a resolution condemning Islam as purportedly incompatible with democracy.

“Everybody’s tired of county commissioners that are only talking about national issues. You know? I mean, some of these meetings, I’m like, ‘What are they talking about? What are you going to vote on? Why are you wasting time?’”

And he asks: Why are politicians broadcasting such disrespect for members of their constituencies or people who might think differently?

That’s not a winning ticket for political longevity, Cooper said, and he points to his grandfather as a positive example: He served 25 years on the Hawkins County Commission, no small feat for a Democrat in any era. Now the W.C. Cooper Amphitheater in Laurel Run Park in Church Hill stands partly in testament to his grandfather’s ability to navigate the deep-red county with goodwill and respect for the voters and, most importantly, get things done.

“When I left this state, when I was a young man, this was a purple state,” said Cooper, 52. “And people really spoke. Democrats and Republicans spoke to each other, and now they speak at each other.”

Cooper set out from Kingsport upon graduation from Dobyns-Bennett High School as the lead singer for an “industrial metal” band called Deist Requiem that toured with Alice Cooper and Gwar. He lived mainly in Virginia before returning to Tennessee and moving to Knoxville in 2021. He was already familiar with the city. Cooper (William, not Alice) spent a lot of time in Knoxville as a teen “because Knoxville was the big city, you know.” 

Cooper, who lives in Halls, is currently winding down a successful party-supply business and is focusing on screenwriting and acting when he’s not campaigning. (His music and film credits are under his stage names, Kyzer Cooper or William Kyzer Cooper.) One of his latest “acting” gigs was as an extra in a Christmas movie filmed for the Up Network called “The Best Thing About Christmas.” He has put one of his cinema projects on hold pending the outcome of the race.

Cooper said Beeler has not been particularly active on the campaign trail, perhaps because he thinks he’s a lock as the Republican nominee in a red district.

That would be a mistake, Cooper said. People are tired of the status quo, and party identity is no guarantee of success. 

“Everybody says, ‘You don’t have a chance in District 7. There hasn’t been a non-Republican break 30 percent in 40 years.’”

But he hears differently from people throughout the district when he knocks on their doors.

First thing they want to know: Is he a Democrat or Republican? He said he gets a more favorable response when he responds with the former.

“It’s not so much that maybe they’re Democrats. A lot of them are Republicans, but they’re going to vote Democrat because everybody’s tired of culture wars,” he said.

The main things on voters’ minds as he branches out across the district are infrastructure and education, he said. Some solutions he has toyed with include requiring developers to pay for sidewalks in front of new buildings and offering tax incentives to revive moribund shopping centers. He said school vouchers, vigorously supported by Knox County mayoral candidate Betsy Henderson, are increasingly disliked by the voting public.

“The voucher thing was not a success. It is not popular. That thing was dead on arrival,” Cooper said.

“I have a lot of ideas,” he said, “and when you’re running a small business and you’ve been as successful as I have for so long, you learn to do things by crunching numbers and finding there’s always a smarter way, a more efficient way, to do things.”

Barry Beeler

Beeler has lived a life of work and service, and now he wants to make it political.

This is his first run for elected office, but he’s no stranger to Knox County politics, given the fact that he’s halfway through his current two-year term as secretary for the Knox County Republican Party. 

He thinks his real-world work experience coupled with his ongoing community and church work make him a prime candidate for the 7th District Knox County Commission seat.

He said Lee and others in the party suggested that he pray about running for the soon-to-be-vacant seat.

“And so I prayed about it, talked to my wife, I talked to people at church, talked to people that are on the commission that are friends of mine, and just … God never said no.”

Beeler, 57, was born and raised in Knoxville and graduated from Bearden High School. He has lived in Powell since 2019. He’s a graduate of Tennessee Wesleyan University, where he played baseball, and holds a master’s in public health from the University of Tennessee.

His career as a safety and industrial-hygiene professional has spanned nearly three decades. He spent 18 years with the Tennessee Department of Labor in safety and compliance, and the rest of his career has been spent in Oak Ridge in some capacity. He currently works in health and safety at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

As North Knox County booms, he hears a familiar refrain on the campaign trail: People don’t think the county is adequately handling growth.

“They’re concerned about infrastructure. They’re concerned about high-density development — they want it or don’t want it,” Beeler said. “They’re concerned about the development and the aging infrastructure — and maybe the lack of infrastructure — to handle all the load of the new subdivisions.

He warns of continued “growing pains” like the tangled traffic at the Emory Road and I-75 interchange as reconstruction to a “diverging diamond” traffic pattern takes shape.

Beeler said the school system needs to anticipate growth when zoning students (the Powell Elementary School rezoning earlier this year was particularly contentious).

“You know, we’ve got to be able to handle the load and teach them in an environment where they can learn. (Residents are) concerned about that.” 

A property-tax increase to cover the infrastructure needs cited by his potential constituents would be a hard sell, both to him and for him.

“I think we need to do a dollar-for-value independent audit to see if we have any duplicative spending before I even think about raising taxes,” he said.

“I think, according to the Charter, we need to stick to good infrastructure, good security, good schools. That’s the main things I think county government needs to focus on.”

He said his qualifications for office include management, leadership and getting down to brass tacks. 

“I’ve been required to digest a lot of information and distill it down to the main topic. I’ve got a lot of experience in that,” Beeler said. “You’ve got to be able to distinguish signal from noise and you’ve got to be able to process it in a timely manner and do your research and be ready to make a vote.” 

He also cites as a qualification the service work he has undertaken with his wife, Staci, as a lay leader at Calvary Chapel of Knoxville. The couple’s contribution to GriefShare involves working with vulnerable people unspeakably sad and shocked as they navigated grief, he said. They were drawn to the ministry because his wife experienced a sudden, tragic loss herself.

“It’s really tough, but people come in and they’re devastated because nobody has a playbook on what to do when you lose a loved one. And sometimes they come in and just speak their name at introductions, but yet at the end of 13 weeks, they become part of our family. It’s kind of sweet.”