Five candidates have qualified so far to run for Norris council in November
The City Council’s monthly meetings are held in the Norris Community Building on Chestnut Drive. All five City Council seats are up for election this year, on Nov. 5. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
But two other potential candidates have picked up nominating petitions for the council election, and the deadline for filing their petitions is not until noon, Aug. 15, according to the Anderson County Election Commission website (acelection.com).
Candidates who have already submitted their petitions and qualified to run are Mayor Chris Mitchell, who filed his petition on Monday; and three other incumbents: Bill Grieve, who filed July 15; Loretta Ann Painter, who was the first to file, June 26; and Charles P. “Chuck” Nicholson, who filed July 1.
Among the incumbents, the only one who has not yet filed his qualifying petition is William “Will” Grinder, who picked up his petition on July 3.
The only candidate other than a current council member to file his qualifying petition is Ron Hill, who submitted the petition on July 2. Hill has served on the council before, however.
Another potential candidate, James Lee Ragsdale, picked up a nominating petition from the county Election Commission on June 17, but he had not filed the completed petition as of Monday.
In Norris, the mayor is chosen every two years by a majority vote of the new City Council when it meets for the first time, in December following the November election. The mayor’s position is never on the city’s ballot for voters to choose.
Mitchell is in his seventh two-year term as a council member and mayor, serving nearly 14 years.
Grieve has served nearly five terms on the council, and has also served as vice mayor,
Painter has also been on the council for nearly five terms, having been first elected 10 years ago at the same time as Grieve.
Grinder is serving his second two-year term on the council, and is a relative newcomer to Norris, moving there in 2018 from Rocky Top. He was first elected to the council in November 2020.
Hill was appointed by the council to serve the remainder of an unexpired term in 2017, and ran successfully for a full two-year term in 2018. But he came in sixth place for the five council seats in the 2020 election, in which he was replaced by Jill Holland, who was running for the first time.
Ironically, Holland resigned from her council seat in September 2021, after serving only 10 months.