City And State Election Outcomes – Voters Say Yes To Amending State Constitution

The Newport City Council will look pretty familiar when they meet in December. Four of the five members are returning, with the exception of Mike Profitt who did not run for re-election. Former Newport mayor Connie Ball was the top vote getter and will serve as Vice-Mayor. Ball was appointed to the city council to serve out the term of council member Bobby Knight who died during his term.

Louanna Ottinger was the second highest vote getter so she returns to the council as well. Two other familar faces returning are Mike Hansel and Steve Smith. The new face on the council will be Randy Ragan who finished second to Connie Ball in early voting.

Roland Dykes will serve a second term as mayor after running unopposed.

Jeremy Faison will return for a 7th term in the Tennessee State house as he ran unopposed in the election. He received 95% of the vote to go along with 5% write-in votes.

Steve Sutherland will also return for another term in the state senate defeating challenger Sara Thompson…82% to 17%

In the governor’s race, it was not close as Bill Lee had 3 votes to 1 for Dr. Jason Martin. Lee becomes the latest incumbent governor to be re-elected. The last time a sitting governor was ousted after one term was back in 1938.

Diana Harshbarger wins her second term in the US House. She deafeated democrat Cameron Parsons 78% to 19%.

There were four amendments to the states constitution on the ballot as well. The first writes Tennessee’s Right To Work Law into the state’s constitution…another amendment removes the ban on allowing members of the clergy to run for political office. All four amendments garnered more than a million yes votes and according to the Secretary of State’s office that is likely enough to secure passage under the state’s two-part process for amending the state Constitution. An amendment in Tennessee only passes if it gets more yes votes than no votes and if the total number of yes votes constitutes a majority — 50% plus 1 — of the vote total in the gubernatorial election. As of late last night, about 1.7 million votes had been cast in the governor’s race, meaning the amendments need more than 867,000 votes for passage. That looks likely to happen.