The few registered voters who cast ballots Thursday shaped some hard-fought races. Some crowded contests also helped define the results of Blount County’s most recent elections.
The elections represented the second of three races set for 2024 in Blount County. Like the county’s first election of the year, held in March, fewer than one in five registered voters — about 16.6% of over 97,000 people — selected candidates vying for offices ranging from the U.S. Senate to the city of Townsend’s board of commissioners.
Turnout for Thursday’s races declined from March, when nearly 18,000 voters cast ballots in a general election in Rockford and primaries for city and county offices and the U.S. presidency.
But officials with the Blount County Election Commission are planning for a dramatic change in turnout in the last election of the year, to be held Nov. 5. The county’s administrator of elections, Moe Click, said in a Friday, Aug. 2, phone interview, “It’s certainly going to ramp up.” Voting levels on Nov. 5, during the federal and state general elections, could be several times greater than in August, he commented.
Results
Education policy and urban growth are just a few of the topics Thursday’s results could affect.
According to an early results report, just over 220 votes separated the winner of the Republican primary for state House District 20, Tom Stinnett, from third-place finisher Jason Emert. The race was characterized by historic highs campaign spending and major differences on state education policy.
Stinnett, a current Blount County commissioner, took a vote earlier this year urging Gov. Bill Lee against changes that would move public money into private schools in an expanded voucher system. A retired Maryville City Schools teacher, Stinnett has said he would need to see a specific proposal expanding vouchers before weighing in definitively.
Nick Bright, also a District 20 candidate and county commissioner, likewise said that he’d have to review any new voucher proposal before staking out a position. He came in second to Stinnett Thursday, netting 2,213 votes.
Emert, a Maryville attorney and outspoken proponent of voucher expansion, received 2,130 votes. He had been endorsed by Lee, and PACs in favor of his candidacy and school vouchers spent over $600,000 in the House campaign, supporting him and condemning his two opponents.
Vouchers were a topic of conversation in another GOP primary for state office. Blount County Circuit Court Clerk Tom Hatcher’s candidacy for state Senate District 2 found favor among pro-voucher PACs as well. Hatcher disavowed their efforts in attacking one of his opponents and pledged to “protect” public schools. He won the right to represent the Republican Party in a three-way, four-county race with a commanding majority, taking in over 9,000 votes in Blount County.
At the county level, conservative Christian pastors John Lowe and Chris Pass Sr. defeated Democrats Don Jones and Rob Spirko in races for the county board of education. Lowe took 1,303 votes to Jones’ 604, while Pass dispatched Spirko with 2,005 votes to Spirko’s 500.
Republican Assessor of Property Todd Orr won more votes than any other county-level candidate, keeping his seat against Democratic challenger Melissa McCrossen with 12,201 votes to her 3,405.
A contest between Democrats hoping to challenge state Rep. Jerome Moon, R-Maryville, for House District 8 left county Democratic Party Chair Sue DuBois the victor, gaining 1,022 votes to Mac Pickle’s 276.
A five-person race in Townsend for two seats on the city commission kept incumbent Commissioner Becky Headrick in her current spot and put former Townsend Mayor Pat Jenkins back on the board. Both have expressed concerns over certain commercial developments and growth trends in the city, according to former reporting by The Daily Times.
A few sets of races — primaries for Maryville and Alcoa school boards, along with Friendsville’s board of commissioners — passed without contests.
Three months to go
With results tallied, officials in charge of running the next set of elections in the county are back to preparing for another contest: Nov. 5, when voters will select the next president, one of Tennessee’s two U.S. senators and candidates for state office, among others.
It will be a hectic three months, Click told the newspaper Friday. In the coming weeks, there will be an audit of the August races, re-scanning some ballots, per Tennessee rules, and the election commission will meet to certify the Aug. 1 results.
The audit will be new for Click, but “it’s not something that worries us at all.” Every county is doing something similar, he said.
But there is some uncertainty with the months ahead, he noted.
“Who knows what’s going to come down the pike,” he said. Yet higher turnout in November is a significant likelihood, he said. Compared to August, “We may see four times as many voters turn up.”
Tennessee residents can register to vote in upcoming elections at their county’s election offices and online at https://ovr.govote.tn.gov/.
Local News
