Six months of hard work paid off last night when Mark Harmon defeated incumbent David Collins for County Commission in Knox County Tennessee.

The main themes of Mark's campaign were:
1) Improving the Commission's relationship with the School Board and therefore improving the schools in the district.
2) Sensible restrictions on sprawl in the more rural parts of Knox County.
3) Watchdogging our dishonest Sheriff and his spending.

A few weeks later, another theme appeared:

4) Term-limits

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Term-limits in Knox County were passed overwhelmingly in 1994. For various reasons, they were assumed to be unconstitutional and never enforced. A decision by the state Supreme Court suddenly brought them back into play and Mark's opponent was suddenly term-limited.

This is where it gets really interesting.

After the primary, Mark's opponent and four other County Commissioners, in an effort to avoid term-limits, filed a lawsuit to invalidate the entire County Charter (think of it as our county's constitution). The judge sided with the plaintiffs, tossed out our Charter and once again invalidated term-limits.

Mark's strategy was simple... meet more voters. While Mark's opponent was busy using the courts to stay in office, Mark was out on the streets knocking on doors. He got yard signs in the yards of homeowners, not on public property. Every expected voter got at least two pieces of campaign material in the mail. We robo-called every expected voter four times. He went to meetings for every neighborhood association or community group he could find. He visited every senior center in the district. We placed ads in three newspapers and ran commercials on two radio stations.

He also ended up knocking on the door of almost every registered voter (non-Republican with a consistent voting history) in his district.

Along the way he picked up the endorsement of Democracy for Tennessee. The funds provided by DFT (and later by DFA) went a long way in the final days of the race. They allowed us to buy more ads and provide our election day workers with better materials.

The result:
Mark Harmon: 1,882 (54.24%)
David Collins: 1,588 (45.76%)

Mark will be sworn in on Friday, September 1.

Mark with Campaign Manager (and Democracy for Knoxville Chair) Paul Witt.