Just in case anyone in East Tennessee might have forgotten-and judging by the turnout levels in the first round of voting, a whole lot of people in Knoxville either forgot or just didn't care-the City of Knoxville will elect a mayor tomorrow from the two candidates remaining after the first round of voting. Those candidates are former Knox County Commissioner and Community Development Director Madeleine Rogero, and businessman and software developer Mark Padgett. Both people have names that are synonymous with East Tennessee politics, Rogero because she ran for Mayor before and was defeated by Bill Haslam, who later hired her. Mark Padgett is the son of former Knox County Clerk William Mike Padgett, who was the elected Knox County Clerk for 23 years and may have been one of the most popular Democrats ever to serve in county government in Knox County in the modern era. If Padgett is elected, he would be the third generation of his family to serve either in Knoxville City or Knox County politics (his grandfather was a former Knoxville City Councilman).
The campaign for Mayor of Knoxville is officially non-partisan, but tends to be such that we know what parties the contenders belong to, that reality is never hidden very well from the people. In this race, both of the remaining two are Democrats, and both have some real deficiencies in their political approach. One has a history of socialist radicalism (Rogero), while the other is a greenhorn (Padgett)-yes, he comes from a political family, and yes, he has done political work through his software company, but in a scenario reminiscent of Mike McWherter (who we pointed out in this space was not his father Governor Ned Ray), Padgett is attempting to get the big office without having held another first.
Nonetheless, if this writer still lived in the City of Knoxville and had a vote tomorrow, he would cast his vote for Mark Padgett. Padgett might come from a political family, but he knows his city and his community, and his heart and mind is one with the people he seeks to govern, because he is more like them than is his opponent. Furthermore, he knows how to grow a private sector business, and knows how to nurture a private-public partnership. Most important of all, his opponent's liberalism and supposed concern for working class people strikes this writer as being what the British Foreign Minister William Hague once called "champaign socialism"-that is to say, we hear much talk about social concern from Ms. Rogero, but the callouses of real-life experience with the working people of East Tennessee seem absent from her hands, but not necessary from those of her opponent, who built a business with a borrowed computer.
Mark Padgett is far from a perfect candidate, and it is true that the odds of a victory for Mr. Padgett tomorrow are very long indeed. If Padgett wins, it will be the biggest political upset (as Frank Cagle pointed out) in Knox area politics since Randy Tyree defeated Kyle Testerman in the 1975 Mayoral runoff election. He is, however, by far the best of the two remaining candidates. We might not agree with his family politics at our house, but it can't be argued that the Padgett family has a love and a passion for Knoxville and Knox County that can scarcely be equalled. People in Knoxville have two choices in for Mayor tomorrow-one of those choices might not make the city into a total wreck, but the other one almost certainly will not, and that person would be Mark Padgett.
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