According to Tennessee Code Title 2. Elections S 2-13-208: Municipal elections shall not require candidates to be nominated by political parties, unless the municipality’s charter specifically permits partisan elections. That means neither the Democrats nor the Republicans nominate candidates for City Council or County Commission seats, or the mayor. Hamilton County has nine municipalities. In Collegedale’s case, both political parties have respected this nonpartisan structure for over 58 years, but that will change in 2026.
My family has lived in Collegedale since the 1950s. My mother helped the original mayor of Collegedale, Fred Fuller, and several others found the little Adventist enclave in 1968. Back then, Collegedale was largely centered on Southern Missionary College and had only 1,000 residents, McKee Foods was small and just one of many regional sellers of snack cakes.
Fast forward to 2026: Quaint little Collegedale has over 11,000 residents, is no longer majority Adventist, and McKee Foods’ products are sold in all 50 states, with annual sales exceeding $2 billion.
Alas, with growth, our little town seems to have become a target for management by the local Republican Party, or at least by one Republican county commissioner. I asked some of Collegedale’s true old-timers if they ever remembered either political party getting involved in our elections in this manner, and no one could recall anything like this.
I remember standing at the back of a crowded room when a previous Hamilton County Republican chair remonstrated on the need to “vote red, right down to the dog catcher,” insisting that every elected official in Tennessee needed to be a Republican. Since that stormy evening, the Tennessee legislature passed the bill allowing for partisan school board elections in 2021, and Gov. Bill Lee signed it into law. I knew Bill Lee before he became governor and had, and still have, a great amount of respect for the gentleman, but if he was going to veto a bill, in hindsight, I wish he had vetoed that one.
Why? Because introducing partisan litmus tests for school boards has not seemed to improve the quality of many Tennessee school boards. How exactly do one’s national political feelings or beliefs affect teacher salaries, local school policies or other important local matters of policy? The answer is that by and large, folks’ political affiliation simply doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. What should matter is whether people are committed to ensuring our children get a quality education. In education, as in municipal government, the answers are very seldom found in either Republican or Democratic dogmas.
In Collegedale, we have had many commissioners and mayors who have been Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and up until two years ago, no one seemed to care what folks were. Our voters elected a very quiet older gentleman almost 20 years ago who turned out to be a proponent of legalized marijuana. That was a surprise, but he was great about voting for more greenways, and he was only one vote out of five on marijuana legalization. Two years ago, one candidate was running to and fro saying that another candidate “was a closet Democrat” because his opponent’s signs had blue on them, and at that point I noticed the cancer of partisanship and factionalism eating into our community.
Municipal elections in Tennessee have been the last strongholds where good, decent, kindly people — men and women who simply want to do what is best for their community without partisan loyalty tests — can run to better the communities they live in. These elections need to be about sidewalks, parks, local police policies and municipal property taxes, decisions that make for a better quality of life, not about ticking one more box for either political party.
I will always feel that Tennessee made a critical error in passing that bill in 2021, and I feel it is a profound error in judgment for either party to interfere in any municipal election in Tennessee. Our cities deserve good, honest citizens to be elected officials who are not beholden to either political party.
David Barto is a Hamilton County native and director of a nonprofit, gardener and amateur historian. Reach him at David.Barto@Collegedale Foundation.
