Following the money in Knoxville

The Metro Pulse continues its series on campaign donations coming out of Knoxville.

Tennessee ranks 19th in campaign contributions overall—between North Carolina at 18th and Minnesota at 20th—with $18,084,741 so far.

Out of that, $2,877,028 has come from the Knoxville metropolitan area, the third-ranked metro area in both population and contributions in the state after Nashville ($8,129,919) and Memphis ($2,963,000).

Contributions from within Knox County itself made up $2,117,656 of the region’s total. Of that, 83 percent, or about $1.5 million, has gone to Republican candidates, making it the most staunchly Republican of Tennessee’s three large urban counties.