Boyd brings campaign to Courthouse
Gubernatorial candidate to visit state’s 95 counties in 18 months
Touring the Anderson County Courthouse Monday, from left, Randy Boyd, Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank, and Anderson County Circuit Court Clerk William Jones. Boyd, the former Tennnessee Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner, is runner for governor.
Knoxville businessman Randy Boyd, 57, says his initiation into public service a few years ago — working first as a special adviser to education, and then as a job recruiter under Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam — sparked in him a passion for public service.
It is this continuing interest in service, he says, that led to his decision to run for Tennessee Governor in 2018 on the Republican ticket.
“Public service is a good way to give back to the community. I want to keep helping citizens by continuing to recruit more jobs into the state,” Boyd said, during a campaign tour in Clinton on Friday, Mar. 31.
Boyd, former Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, stopped in Clinton on Friday afternoon to meet with local elected officials, educators, law enforcement officials, and citizens in his bid for the Republican nomination for governor.
He is running as a successor to incumbent Governor Bill Haslam, whose term in office ends in 2019.
Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank led Boyd on a tour of the Anderson County Courthouse as part of his campaign’s goal to visit all 95 Tennessee counties in the 18 months leading up to the election.
Throughout the tour Friday, Boyd reiterated to officials what the major focus areas are of his campaign: Investing in education and providing high quality jobs.
“I’m a businessman, not a career politician,” Boyd told officials.
Boyd is founder of Radio Systems Corp, a company he started about 26 years ago. Boyd’s company manufactures more than 4,600 pet products worldwide for brands like Invisible Fence, SportDog and PetSafe, and employees more than 700 people worldwide, with 400 based in Knoxville.
If elected governor, he said his goals are to continue investing in education, to make Tennessee the number one state in the Southeast for high quality jobs, and to eliminate the state’s distressed counties by 2025.
There are currently 17 counties in Tennessee considered “distressed,” with household incomes that fall in the bottom 10 percent of the nation. Distressed counties are counties with high rates of poverty, unemployment and low income.
“We’ve got a lot of neighbors, our rural neighbors, who are struggling, and we’re leaving a lot of people behind,” Boyd said.
“We need to help them. We need to expand opportunities for all Tennesseans, whether they live in rural or urban communities.”
In 2013, he began working as a top adviser to Haslam for higher education and was credited with helping to found the “Drive to 55” initiative, a program focused on increasing the number of Tennesseans with post-secondary education.
The goal of the Drive to 55 program is to have 55 percent of the state’s population obtain post-secondary education — associate’s degree or higher from a college or school of technology — by 2025.
Boyd was instrumental in “Tennessee Promise,” a product of the Drive to 55 initiative, that provides state lottery funded scholarships to Tennessee high school graduates attending two-year community colleges.
Under his leadership as Economic and Community Development Commissioner, he helped recruit some 50,000 jobs to the state last year, Boyd told officials.
In February this year, Boyd stepped down from his post as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, stating he wanted to return to work in the private sector.
Earlier this month he announced — and made official — his gubernatorial candidacy.
Since launching his campaign, he has visited several counties in Tennessee: Loudon, Greene, Rutherford, Bradley, Williamson, Knox, Davidson, Obion, Hamblen, Crockett, Madison, Sullivan, and Hamilton counties to name a few.
Mayor Frank stated Friday during Boyd’s visit that she endorses Boyd for governor.