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Voters have spoken- Sherrell holds off challengers
Paul Sherrell
State Rep. Paul Sherrell

State Representative Paul Sherrell will be returning to his seat in the state capital.

Sherrell held off a pair of challengers Thursday, winning the Republican primary for the Tennessee House of Representatives’ 43rd District, defeating McMinnville’s Tim Lewis and White County commissioner Robert McCormick.

While Sherrell once again won in Warren County, with 1,938 votes as opposed to McCormick’s 1,028, he didn’t fare as well in his home county, as 1,627 White County voters chose McCormick while 1,123 voted for the incumbent.

When the two counties were tallied together, however, Sherrell prevailed with a total of 3,061 votes.

McCormick tallied 2,655, while Lewis finished with 456, including 334 in Warren County.

“I want to thank the good Lord, and it sounds like Warren County has been really good to me again,” Sherrell said. “They were two years ago, and they are again. I hope and pray that I’ll represent Warren County in a good way. I’ve tried to do that.”

The primary calls the race for the 43rd District, as no Democratic candidate qualified for their party’s primary. Sherrell said now that the campaign is over, he intends to focus on supporting law enforcement once he returns to Nashville.

“We’ve got to work on trying to help our local city and county police departments,” he said. “We’ve got to see if we can get their pay up more than what it is. We need to take care of our local law enforcement, because we’re losing good officers to the state.”

Several other national and state office primaries were also on Thursday’s ballot in contested races. In the Republican race for the U.S. House of Representatives’ fourth district seat, incumbent Scott DesJarlais handily defeated McMinnville’s Thomas E. Davis 2084-883, while Joshua James received 154 votes.

Marsha Blackburn won the Republican U.S. Senate primary with 88 percent of local votes, while Gloria Johnson won on the Democrat side with 68 percent. Lore Bergman was local voters’ choice in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House 6th District seat, winning with only four of the seven votes cast in that race. All other primary candidates were running unopposed.