Rush Bricken will be returning to the Tennessee House of Representative for his second term, while Paul Sherrell took a giant step toward his third term Thursday night.
Bricken easily won in Warren County, beating challenger Ronnie E. Holden nearly 2-to-1 in his bid to retain the seat in the 47th District Tennessee House.
In Warren County, Bricken gained 876 votes to Holden’s 442 votes. That margin held true for the entire district, which also includes Coffee County as Bricken’s winning total was roughly 67% to 33%.
Since Bricken does not face opposition in November, he has won his second term.
“I’ve learned you always have to go out and represent your district the best way you can,” said Bricken. “You can’t always please everyone in a political world, but you do the best that you can.”
Like the rest of the country, Bricken said Tennessee is grappling with how best to handle COVID-19, which is impacting all walks of life.
“COVID is the biggest issue. It drowns out everything else,” said Bricken. “It affects education, it affects business, and most of all it affects if people are healthy. We don’t know yet what the long-term repercussions of this will be for businesses, especially in big cities. I think we’re seeing in education it’s shifting our children from the classroom to electronic learning. I think COVID is the No. 1 thing on everyone’s mind.”
Paul Sherrell took a big step toward re-election by beating Jerry Lowery and Bobby Robinson in the 43rd District Republican Primary. He still faces opposition from independent Luke Cameron in the General Election in November.
In Warren County, Sherrell received 1,305 votes, while Lowery received 622 and Robinson received 381. For the entire 43rd District, which includes Warren, White and Grundy counties, Sherrell claimed about 47% of the vote to Lowery’s 26% and Robinson’s 25%.
“I pray I do what I need to do to best represent the people of the 43rd District,” said Sherrell. “This was a great hurdle to clear but I still have another race in November. We have to go back to Nashville and get back to work next week. There are some bills we’re looking to pass and we have to be there Monday at 4 p.m.”
