Former Tennessee State Representative Joe Carr is the Republican nominee for mayor of Rutherford County.
In the May 3 primary, Carr received 6,862 votes, while Rhonda Allen came in second, receiving 6,239 votes.
The incumbent mayor, Bill Ketron, came in third and received 4,487 votes. Aaron Coffee came in a distant third place with 593 votes.
The Tennessee Star previously reported that Ketron suffered from campaign finance controversies. State auditors had previously found that there were hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from multiple campaign accounts belonging to him. In order to address the issues, he paid $135,000 for the campaign law violations. Additionally, the outgoing mayor’s daughter, Kelsey Ketron, served as campaign treasurer during a period when funds were unaccounted for.
During a previous appearance on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, Carr said, “You know the effectiveness of going door to door, Michael, firsthand. And there is nothing a candidate or its campaign can do that can secure victory better than going door to door. And we literally knocked on thousands of doors.”
Carr added, “Those doors were targeted, likely GOP voters, because, of course, you can go to the Rutherford County Election Commission and get the database and screen that for primary voters. And that’s exactly what we did. We had a very targeted list, and that’s just the canvassing we did door-to-door. We did events, we went to places.”
Carr went on to tell Leahy that he expected to need 9,000 to 10,000 votes in order to win. Carr wound up with nearly 7,000.
In that interview, Carr also said that the two main issues in the race were the “ethical and moral conduct on the part of our elected officials, number one. And number two is the Middle Point Landfill.”
No candidate qualified to run in the Democrat primary for mayor, although there were 247 write-in votes cast.
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Aaron Gulbransen is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]. Follow Aaron on GETTR, Twitter, and Parler.
Photo “Joe Carr” by Joe Carr. Background Photo “Rutherford County Courthouse” by Ichabod. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Americans, we can rest more easily now with the knowledge that Joe Carr is on his way back in office.
Congratulations Joe! Keep your word and manage fiscally conservative! RINO Bill Hagerty endorsed your opponent! RINO Hagerty needs to be primaried! Maybe the TN Star will hold him accountable about his trades while being the senate! He bought $56,000 in stock and sold 4,000,00”! Hagerty please share a stock pick with us good ole Tennesseans!
Nancy, I share your enthusiasm for Joe Carr and you seem like a fellow solid conservative so it saddens me to see you call Bill Hagerty a “RINO” (i.e. someone whose advocacy/voting record substantially deviates from the platform of the Republican Party). As I write Bill Hagerty is carrying a Heritage and American Conservative Union score of 92%! That makes Bill not only not a RINO, but rather he is a conservative allstar up for Rookie of the Year honors for this session of congress.
Hagerty was wrong in going with the establishment candidate and not endorsing Joe. Nobody is perfect. However, as conservatives we should be the last people in the world to hold it against someone for being rich or trading stock. Tell you what, you want some stock tips? Citigroup, Ethan Allen, FedEx, Starbuck and Nexstar. There! Now please support Bill Hagerty.
Nancy, please forgive but my reply to you was incomplete. It just this minute dawned on me as to why Bill Hagerty gave his support to an opponent of Joe Carr. CARR WAS AN OSTENTATIOS SUPPORTER AND FUNDRAISER FOR MANNY SETHI when Sethi ran against Bill in the 2020 Republican primary. Hagerty won by about 12% – he should have let bygones be bygones rather than have the embarrassment of supporting a losing candidate against a fellow strong conservative like Joe. Oh well, Hagerty may be a sore winner, but he’s still no RINO.