District 20 House GOP primary

The Knoxville News Sentinel profiles the candidates running in the Republican primary for House district 20, three of whom have ties to the Blount County Commission. None of them wants tax increases and they all are against wasteful spending. Either they didn't say exactly where the waste is or their comments didn't make it into the piece.

Steve Hargis, who seems to have the most politically helpful connections (farming, Blount County Commision, and volunteer fire fighters) is running against Governor Bredesen:

Hargis says he is "not pleased with the way the governor is handling the budget" and with cuts to it. He says he intends to be "aggressive against taxes and also wasteful spending," which he said is "running wild.

"The economy is growing slower than the state budget," he said. "It's gotten out out of hand."

Maybe Hargis is objecting to the particular cuts the Governor made or maybe he's saying they weren't deep enough. It's not clear.

In 2006, the Governor won Blount County with 23,433 votes to Jim Bryson's 11,701.

If you don't want to attack your fellow Republicans in a primary and you don't want to run on President Bush's economic record, maybe all you can do is run against the Governor. But trying to label him a big spender and anti-growth is pretty counterintuitive.