CORRECTION: This article has been updated to reflect that Tennesseans for Student Success does not advocate for or against school vouchers.

For the second election cycle in a row, the local legislative race attracting the most attention and funding is in District 18, where Republican state Rep. Elaine Davis is again facing Democratic candidate Bryan Goldberg.

Goldberg has raised more in campaign contributions this year than Davis.

Davis, who is seeking a third term, is a conservative who reliably votes with the House Republican supermajority. She has supported Gov. Bill Lee’s school-voucher program and earlier this year voted to approve new congressional maps that chopped up Memphis’ Black majority among whiter, Republican-leaning districts.

Goldberg, like other Democrats across Tennessee this year, is running on a platform highlighting ways he says the governing party is failing the state, particularly in affordability, public education and healthcare.

The oddly shaped 18th District takes in the westernmost chunk of South Knox County on both sides of Alcoa Highway and then jumps the Tennessee River to encompass Sequoyah Hills and Rocky Hill before curling around to Cedar Bluff and a portion of northwest Knoxville. 

Davis was first elected in 2022 after winning a bruising Republican primary against former Knoxville City Council member Janet Testerman. She beat Democrat Greg Kaplan in 2022 and then Goldberg in 2024, each time winning about 54 percent of the vote in the general election. That’s the narrowest margin of any of Knox County’s Republican House members, which makes the district a logical target for Democrats even if the gap still appears large.

Davis, who works with conservative campaign consultant Erik Wiatr, is not especially popular with some of the deep-pocketed establishment Republicans in the West Knoxville portion of the district. Members of the Haslam family and other familiar GOP names supported Testerman in 2022, and this year they backed another primary challenge, from attorney Brent Jones. But Davis easily fended him off, winning 63 percent of the primary vote in August.

A University of Tennessee graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminal justice, Davis has sponsored some notable bills during her two terms in office. She was behind legislation in 2023 that forced a change in Knoxville City Council district elections so that only voters in each district can vote for their representative. This year, she got a bill passed requiring local-government bodies to set aside time for public forum at each meeting. 

In her reelection bid, she is emphasizing “fiscal discipline,” ending sales taxes on all groceries, and the need for more funding for roads and infrastructure. (It’s also worth noting that a few weeks from the start of early voting, her campaign website appears to be a work in progress, with text and links still missing.)

Goldberg, also a UT grad, captained the Vols’ swim team and swam for the U.S. National Team, winning a gold medal in the Pan American Games. He works in insurance restoration, serves on the board of the East Tennessee Foundation and is a former president of the Knoxville Jewish Alliance.

In his campaign this year, Goldberg says he is running “to represent our entire community,” with a platform geared toward economic and family issues: child tax credits for middle- and working-class families, eliminating sales tax on groceries, making it easier to build more housing, opposing school vouchers, expanding Medicaid to cover more working families, and restoring women’s reproductive rights.

Goldberg criticized President Donald Trump ahead of his visit to Knoxville last weekend, saying in a video, “I really don’t like that he’s coming here. Because for me, too much of what I’ve seen from his leadership — the division, the rhetoric, the constant need to be in the center of attention — runs directly against what Tennessee taught me. I didn’t just go to UT, y’all know I swam for Tennessee. Wearing that Power T taught me to give everything I had for something bigger than myself.” 

Davis entered 2026 with a little over $18,000 in her campaign account, and she has added another $83,000 since — much of it donated by political action committees, including the Build TN Housing PAC, the Tennessee Bankers Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Tennesseans for Student Success (a pro-charter school group). She had $67,398.33 on hand at the end of July.

Goldberg has actually outraised Davis, taking in $117,607.52 through the end of July from hundreds of small donors in Knoxville and through donor networks across the country. He had $93,505.97 on hand — a more than $25,000 advantage over Davis. Whether he can translate that into enough electoral support to make a difference obviously remains to be seen.

In 2024, the margin between the two candidates was about 2,600 votes. 

You can read more about both candidates in our 2024 profile of the same race.