All seven Knox County state House seats are on the ballot this year — as they are every two years — along with two of the three state Senate districts that include parts of the county.

Two primaries feature establishment Republicans against candidates working with consultant Erik Wiatr.

Most of those will be contested in November, with Democratic candidates running in all of them and Republicans sitting out just two. The GOP did not recruit candidates to run in the Democratic-held 15th and 90th House districts. 

But there are only three primaries among all of those seats, two on the Republican side and one for Democrats. The Republican races in state Senate District 7 and House District 18 both offer variations on the ongoing factional struggles between the party’s longtime local establishment and its newer Trump-era wing.

In both cases, one candidate is working with conservative consultant Erik Wiatr and one has support from more traditional local Republicans. But the races are different because Wiatr is working with an incumbent in one and a repeat challenger in the other. (There is also an interesting third candidate in the District 18 race, who seems to be running partly out of a personal grievance.)

The Democratic race in House District 14, meanwhile, does not appear to be much of a real contest. Only one candidate is waging an active campaign, seeking to challenge the Republican incumbent in November.

State Senate District 7
Republican Primary
Candidates: Richard Briggs (incumbent), Kent Morrell

The 7th State Senate District is shaped like a buttonhook, taking in a portion of North Knox County and then cutting through parts of East Knoxville and downtown before sweeping to take in most of West Knox County. State Sen. Richard Briggs has represented the district since 2014.

This is a rematch from 2022, with Briggs seeking reelection and facing conservative challenger Kent Morrell in the primary. (You can read our coverage of the 2022 contest right here.) Four years ago, Briggs walked away with it, winning 66 percent of the votes in the primary. So this will be an interesting test of how much Knox County Republican voters have changed since then.

For one thing, Morrell is better known now than he was in 2022, when he popped up as a candidate running to Briggs’ right on most issues other than medical cannabis, which Morrell supports. (Like Briggs, he opposes full cannabis legalization.) Morrell got himself elected as a member of the state Republican Executive Committee, and he is part of the stable of candidates this year working with conservative consultant Wiatr.

Briggs, a retired heart surgeon, has angered cultural conservatives at times during his three terms in office. He has not been a supporter of school vouchers, and he has introduced bills to allow more medical exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. On the other hand, he has been one of the strongest voices in the Legislature for regulating and limiting the availability of hemp-derived THC, including the ban on THCA products that took effect July 1.

Briggs retains a huge incumbent advantage in campaign funding. As of the beginning of July, he had $662,436.76 on hand, compared with $19,157.01 for Morrell. Briggs’ donors include healthcare PACs (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Tennessee Hospital Association) as well as business groups like the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Tennessee Bankers Association.

Morrell’s only PAC support comes from the Wiatr-affiliated Knox Liberty Organization. His most high-profile donors are school board member and county mayor candidate Betsy Henderson and local restaurateur Randy Burleson. If he manages to beat a well-known, well-funded three-term incumbent, it will be a significant achievement for Wiatr’s efforts to turn the county party into a hard-line MAGA organization. 

The winner of the primary will face Democrat Bryan Langan in the Nov. 3 general election. Langan is also a repeat candidate — Briggs defeated him in 2022, winning 62 percent of the vote. 

State House District 18
Republican Primary
Candidates: Elaine Davis (incumbent), Brent Jones, Elliott Schuchardt

House District 18 was redrawn after the 2020 Census to make it more reliably Republican. It includes portions of northwest Knox County and West Knoxville, and reaches across the Tennessee River to take in much of rural South Knox County. Rep. Elaine Davis won the seat in 2022 and was reelected in 2024.

She’s seeking a third term, but she has two challengers in the Republican primary, both of them first-time candidates: Brent Jones, an Air Force veteran and federal prosecutor; and Elliott Schuchardt, a recently disbarred attorney.

Davis has an advantage in available funds. As of the beginning of July, she had $84,184.07 on hand in her campaign account. Almost all of her donations in the last reporting period came from PACs and other lawmakers outside of Knox County, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Tennessee Hospital Association, the pro-voucher group Tennesseans for Student Success, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton. 

Among the legislative achievements she touts are a change in state law that forced the City of Knoxville to hold district-only elections for City Council district representatives; a reduction in regulations for food trucks; and a law requiring local government meetings to include time for public comment. Davis is also a client of Wiatr, who managed her winning campaigns in 2022 and 2024. 

Her most formidable primary opponent appears to be Jones, who grew up in Macon County in Middle Tennessee (where his father is the three-term county mayor); graduated from the University of Tennessee; earned a law degree, and joined the Air Force JAG corps. After 11 years of active duty, he came back to Tennessee as a federal prosecutor working on drug cases. He is also still in the Air Force Reserve.

He appears to be trying to differentiate himself from Davis less in policy than in bearing. He calls himself “a serious conservative,” implying that Davis is some other kind. And he has the backing of much of the traditional Republican establishment, including members of the Haslam and Clayton families, Raja Jubran, Wes Stowers, and Janet Testerman (who lost to Davis in the 2022 Republican primary). 

Jones actually outraised Davis in campaign contributions for the most recent reporting period, collecting $58,950 to the incumbent’s $38,636.36. He had $45,252.04 on hand at the beginning of July.

Then there’s Schuchardt, whose campaign seems to be partly motivated by a quest for redress from the state judicial system. He was disbarred by the state over ethics complaints about his handling of divorce and family-law cases, including letting a client live at his house and then suing to evict her while he was still representing her. The state Supreme Court upheld his disbarment earlier this year. Among the legislators he reached out to for help was Davis, who is vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

According to his campaign website, Schuchardt “asked Davis to enforce the rules of ethics in Tennessee, in the Tennessee court system. As of this date — to Schuchardt’s knowledge — Davis has not done so.”

So now he’s running against her in the primary, on a platform that includes “Judicial Ethics” as one of its planks. He is self-funding his campaign and had donated $5,650.03 to it through the end of June. (Schuchardt has also written a book called America’s Achilles Heel, warning of the U.S. dollar’s decline as the global reserve currency.)

The winner of the primary will face Democrat Bryan Goldberg, who also ran in 2024. He won just over 46 percent of the vote against Davis that year.

State House District 14
Democratic Primary
Candidates: Lindsay Young Honaker, Shivam R. Zaveri

House District 14 is not generally friendly territory for Democrats. The district covers a stretch of West Knox County that includes Choto and Farragut. Incumbent Republican Rep. Jason Zachary has held the seat since 2015 and has been reelected easily five times.

Still, two candidates have put themselves forward for the Democratic nomination in the district — although only one is running an active campaign.

Lindsay Young Honaker is a Farragut native and a graduate of Farragut High School and Maryville College, where she earned a degree in political science. She works in the corporate office of Cellular Sales.

In her campaign, she is emphasizing support for public schools, opposition to school vouchers, the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a more compassionate approach to immigration, and other core Democratic issues.

Zaveri, a hotel director with degrees in science and technology policy, does not appear to have a campaign website or any online presence.

Honaker had $7,424 on hand at the start of July. Her donors include Amanda Collins, who was the Democratic nominee for District 14 in 2022 and 2024. Zaveri has reported raising and spending no money.

Zachary has no primary opponent, so he will face whoever the Democratic nominee is in November.