🗑️ THE DUMP — AUGUST 7, 2026: ELECTION HANGOVER EDITION

YOUR LOOK AT THE WEIRD AND WILD WILLIAMSON ELECTIONS

Good morning, friends. We’re running a little low to the ground today — stayed up pretty late last night, so forgive the slight delay.

A bit of a program change today. The big news this week happened last night, and after everything we’ve written, watched, counted and argued about for the past few months, there’s really no point pretending we came here this morning to talk about anything else.

So today, it’s election results, top to bottom.
Let’s dump it out.

👑 THE CORONATIONS

Let’s clear the table of the races that were decided somewhere around the time the qualifying deadline passed.

County Mayor: Andy Marshall (R) walks in with 30,471 votes — call it 70 percent — over independent B.K. Muvvala’s 12,707. No suspense here. There never really was.

And then the row of offices that drew exactly one name apiece: Trustee Karen Paris, Sheriff Jeff Hughes, County Clerk Jeff Whidby, Circuit Court Clerk Debbie McMillan Barrett, Juvenile Court Clerk Margaret Gurley Mahew, Register of Deeds Sherry Anderson. Each of them “won” the way you win a footrace you’re running by yourself. But still, congratulations all around.

Every appellate judge on the retention ballot was retained, comfortably, in the neighborhood of 79 percent — a stirring vote of confidence from people who, moments earlier, had no idea these judges existed.

Now the fights.

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🥀 BLACKBURN’S NO BED OF ROSES

It’s official: Marsha Blackburn is the Republican nominee for governor. In November, she draws Democrat Jerri Green, the first woman her party has ever nominated for the job.

That’s the statewide story, and across Tennessee, Blackburn ran away with it.

Except here. Williamson wasn’t feeling it:

• Blackburn — 14,727 (45.08%)

• Rose — 11,586 (35.46%)

• Fritts — 6,208 (19.00%)

Rose beat his statewide number here. Fritts came in under his. Williamson, in other words, was considerably less sold on Blackburn than the rest of the state. We’ve been seeing a lot of that lately. Remember it when we get further down the ballot.

On the Democratic side there was no drama. Green took 78 percent of 14,320 Democratic ballots cast in Williamson. Hold onto that 14,320. We’ll want it later.

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
Add it up. Rose and Fritts combined for 17,794 votes. Blackburn got 14,727. In Williamson County, more Republicans voted for somebody else than voted for the eventual nominee.

And that’s where Fritts mattered. Rose was the original grassroots alternative to Blackburn, until Fritts arrived in his cavalry hat fracturing that vote. Usually the spoiler doesn’t win, but he always decides who does.

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🪨 OGLES ON THE ROCKS

Start with the Fifth, because you don’t see this every day.

• Charlie Hatcher — 10,145 (54.66%)

• Andy Ogles — 8,369 (45.09%)

A sitting congressman lost his own primary. And he lost Williamson right along with it, by nearly ten points. Hatcher didn’t just take the district. He took our county outright.

Now, a small point of interest. You’ll recall the districts got redrawn not long ago. And the new Fifth that came back from the mapmakers had a good deal less country road in it than the old one. Funny thing about Andy Ogles: shave off some of the rural, and the shine comes right off. Turns out the act plays better on a gravel driveway than it does in a subdivision.

Was that the idea? Couldn’t tell you. But if, say, a person in Washington had grown a touch weary of the boots-and-suit routine — well, a redraw is a quiet way to send a fella home. Simply, move the fence posts and let the voters do it for you.

And home he went.

So the seat the national Democrats have been circling as a possible flip now carries a Republican nominee they weren’t expecting, with Columbia mayor Chaz Molder — 52 percent of the county’s Democratic vote — waiting on him in November.

Now to the Ninth. Or the sliver of it they drew into our county.

• Brent Taylor — 6,031 (47.94%)

• Todd Warner — 3,622 (28.79%)

• Jeremy Thompson — 1,498

• Charlotte Bergmann — 1,350

Brent Taylor won it hands down. That’s the easy part.

The fun part is second place. Todd Warner — the fella who spent this whole cycle running for Congress and for his statehouse seat at the same time, apparently figuring there was no reason to choose just one. A distant second here.

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
You’ll recall Warner recently compared his quarry to his own anatomy, assuring folks he had the stones for the job. The voters of the Ninth counted them. Came up short. Have another Sun Drop, Todd.

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🃏 KNOW WHEN TO FOLD ‘EM

House District 65 got more pixels than any other race this cycle. So no sense gilding it. Let the exhibit speak:

• Lee Reeves — 5,523 (54.30%)

• Michelle Foreman — 4,615 (45.37%)

A margin of 908 votes. Reeves is renominated and faces Democrat Julian Herbert Pierre-Griffin — who ran unopposed for the honor — in November.

No need for the blow-by-blow again: the sanction, the disclosures, the numbers that never quite reconciled. If you missed it, read at your leisure. But last night 5,523 of your neighbors read it for you, and turned in a review. Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.

One observation: Down the final stretch, the Foreman campaign went dark — all-in negative. Cards has a word for that — a tell. When a player shoves the whole stack across the line on the river, everybody at the table already knows what’s in the hand. Nothing. Folks paying attention saw it coming a mile off.

Elsewhere in the delegation, Todd Warner kept his day job — House District 92, Warner 2,125 (64.45%) over Vincent Cuevas at 1,156. And in the races that never got the memo that primaries are meant to be contests, Jack Johnson (Senate 27), Gino Bulso (House 61), and Jake McCalmon (House 63) all glided to renomination with no one on the other side of the table. (Coronations, part two.)

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. Foreman knew neither. Now she knows both.

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🎯 SHOT THEMSELVES IN THE BALLOT

Here’s where conservatives get to breathe. Republicans took both seats in eleven of the county’s twelve commission districts. A clean, red, thoroughly predictable sweep.

Eleven of twelve.

And then there’s District 10 — much of Franklin proper, the beating heart of the county seat. Four names on the ballot, and here’s how they finished:

• Bill Petty (R) — 1,738 (26.34%)

• Jody L. Todd (D) — 1,725 (26.14%)

• David Steele (D) — 1,566 (23.73%)

• Cheryl Brown (R) — 1,551 (23.50%)

Todd, a Democrat, finished second and took the seat — thirteen votes behind Petty, and clear of the field. The second Republican, Cheryl Brown, rounded out the four. Behind Todd. Behind the other Democrat, too.

Add up each party’s pair. Republicans, Petty and Brown: 3,289. Democrats, Todd and Steele: 3,291. In the reddest county in Tennessee, District 10 is now a coin flip.

Set that beside the 14,320 Democratic primary ballots flagged up top, and go ahead and try to argue the ground isn’t moving under the courthouse. Thirteen votes, by the way. If anybody’s ever told you a vote doesn’t matter in this county, clip that number and mail it to them.

So what happened? A lot of votes were never cast. This race left 1,695 votes on the table — better than one in five available in District 10, blank second bubbles. Single-shot voters, marking their guy and skipping the rest.

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
This district has done it before. Last cycle, the same crowd ran a write-in play in the school board primary, peeled just enough off the Republican on the line, and handed Eric Welch four more years. Different mechanism this time — no third-party spoiler, just a county seat splitting down the middle — but the same result: the grassroots got exactly the candidate it came for, and abandoned the other R on the ballot.

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🍎 SCHOOL BOARD: SAME DISTRICT, SAME HEADLINE

Most of the board races went about how you’d pencil them in.

Randy Allen (R) took District 2 with 68 percent. Traci Anderson (R) and Jessica Lucyshyn (R) drew nobody at all in 4 and 12 — coronations, the education edition. Over in District 6, Kimberly Calcote (R) held off independent Kristi Bidinger, 52 to 48. In District 8, Donna Clements (R) edged independent Cory Martin by about the same hair.

The favorites held.

And then there’s District 10.

• Jennifer Parker Konyn (D) — 2,169 (55.49%)

• Elliott Franklin (R) — 1,735 (44.38%)

Eleven points — an outright win for a Democrat on the Williamson County school board. District 10 went blue last night.

Now, a race like this usually comes with an excuse baked in. Not this one. There’s no running mate to strand, no second bubble to leave blank. Just a straight choice between a Republican and a Democrat — and the Republican lost it by 434 votes.

It didn’t help that the Republican was Elliott Franklin, current Williamson County Republican Party Second Vice Chair and former Moms for Liberty blogger who’d spent years in the “grassroots” trenches.

The opposition’s battle cry? He’d reposted Andrew Tate on X — quietly un-reposting it only once Tate caught expanded rape and trafficking charges. He followed Nick Fuentes, the fellow who calls Hitler “a great man” and mocks rape accusers, and kept right on following him. He replied “Truth!” to a Monty Fritts governor post — the same Fritts campaign that ran videos starring a volunteer who’d called Hitler “great” too.

For weeks, folks asked him to explain. For weeks, he said nothing. When Franklin finally surfaced, the whole defense came down to one line: following an account isn’t the same as endorsing it.

District 10 weighed that defense and declined it.

Back to the numbers, Konyn pulled 2,169, while Franklin pulled 1,735 — three votes off what the strongest Republican on the commission ballot pulled in the very same district, on the very same night.

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
Whatever ceiling the Republican brand had in District 10 last night, it was nailed down right about there. Different race, different candidate, same electorate, and almost exactly the same number.

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⚖️ AND FOR DESSERT: THE STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Saved for last, on purpose.

• Mary Kate Brown — 14,355 (61.78%)

• Cyndi Miller (incumbent) — 8,786 (37.81%)

Eight years on the committee, and the voters gave Cyndi Miller the kind of send-off usually reserved for a subscription she forgot to cancel.

It wasn’t for lack of help. WCRP Chairman Steve Hickey filmed a warning about all the money pouring into these races, staring down the barrel of a $12,460 tsunami like a man watching a garden hose and yelling for sandbags. Then the county GOP waited until the night before the vote and emailed the whole list a rave review of one candidate — a bylaw-proof valentine, slid under the door at an hour when the recipient’s opponent was already asleep.

Miller read her own glowing testimonial. The district read it too. One of them was moved.

Meanwhile, on the same ballot, committeeman Steve Allbrooks kept his seat with 62 percent and didn’t need a single valentine to do it. Won by twenty-four, while Miller lost by twenty-four. The same voters gave one incumbent a raise and Miller a box for her desk things. Turnout that can aim.

District 28 was the actual squeaker: Chris Morris 1,245, Dennis Driggers 1,160 — eighty-five votes, the closest thing to drama all night, and it’ll get less ink than a bake sale. Ardmore, Alabama sends its regards. Angie McClanahan ran unopposed and won the way you win when your SEC pals remove your opponent from the ballot. (Yes, that happened.)

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WW BOTTOM LINE:
They put every thumb they had on the scale, in broad daylight, for a week. Didn’t move it an ounce.

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🧭 FINAL FLUSH: EYES OFF THE ROAD

Friends, that was a night.

Winners and losers all the way down the ballot. But pull back far enough and only one loss really matters, and it doesn’t belong to any candidate.

It belongs to the Williamson County Republican Party.

Decades since a Democrat won office in this county. Last night, two of them — in the same district. That is not what an accident looks like. That is what it looks like when eyes go off the road, and the car finds the ditch.

Somebody was driving. His name is Steve Hickey.

Watch where the party put its muscle this cycle. Not across the field, shoring up Republicans generally. On favorites — county lists, county assets, the chairman’s own camera time, all steered toward a chosen few. Then watch the chosen few. Elliott Franklin, a sitting vice chair of the party — beaten. Cyndi Miller, eight years an incumbent — buried by twenty-four. Andy Ogles — gone. When the candidates you put your shoulder behind are the ones getting thrown out, that’s your own voters reviewing management.

And for the Republicans the party didn’t anoint? The WCRP sat on its rumored pile of cash and stayed in its chair.

Credit where it’s due — the WCRP tents were at every location and ran like a clock. But nobody walks into the booth on Election Day still shopping. A tent doesn’t fix what’s wrong here, and what’s wrong here sits at the top.

This is the bill for poor leadership: a county sliding backward, bylaws read whichever way suits the morning, and a closed shop that calls itself grassroots while spending its energy protecting its own incumbents — which is about as far from grassroots as a thing can get.

If Hickey and the officers around him — Diane Chenard, Elliott Franklin, Tim Raynaud, Brandon Bell, Leigh Ann Cates — had the integrity this moment asks for, they’d hand over the keys and let someone else drive. This one is theirs.

And the part they’d rather you not notice: Courtney Laginess and Peg Raciti both walked out of the WCRP in just the last few weeks. When people inside your own organization start heading for the door, maybe it’s worth asking who’s running the place.

So let’s be clear: WCRP leadership, you need to resign. Immediately.

Williamson County deserves better than what it’s getting.

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In the books we go! Thanks for sticking around. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled snark next week.

Have a great weekend. Stay wrong.