Absher gave money to the Republican Party and to Jason Emert. He also gave money to Cheri Siler. He mainly seems to be about nightlife downtown. It is not clear why he is running against Saunders or what he would do differently.

Never heard of the other guy.

Saunders has done a fine job and is a reliable progressive vote on most issues.

Absher posts online that he is "socially liberal and fiscally conservative";
That was enough to send me running.

Absher weighed in on the sign ordinance debate by stating his opposition to "big government regulation getting in the way of business," or something to that effect.

Those are the only policy statements I could, besides his current role in an organization representing business interests.

Did Mr. Williams drop out? I thought there were three candidates for Seat C, along with incumbent Mr. Saunders.

Knoxgal - I may have missed it when you reached out to me. Was it under a different name or format? My apologies. I sent you a message, let me know which day is a good day to meet up.

My campaign has three components, commerce, community, and culture. I am passionate about helping small and local businesses succeed. They are the backbones of our community. Having done events and raised money for so many charities, we often looked towards the small businesses for donations of services or product, or for monetary sponsorships. My goal is to help them, since they have given to and helped our communities so much. When the sign ordinance debate was in progress, it was mentioned that a business could only use 10% of their window space to advertise. For a local business, some have been in business for years, they put their children through school and college, gave their employees the opportunities to provide for their families, or maybe it is a new business or entrepreneur that had a dream and raised the money for a business through Kickstarter/Crowdfunding, borrowed money from family and friends, and/or maxed out their credit cards to make their business vision a reality. A city should always be a help not a hindrance towards local businesses, by limiting window space advertising to 10% that could reduce the revenue amount for a business. Less revenue, less taxes paid into the city; larger revenue, more taxes paid into the city, increase the option for the business to hire more Knoxvillians and help keep Knoxvillians employed. Thankfully, that part of the new sign ordinance was removed, but it should not have even been considered. Dealing with small and local businesses on a daily basis, I hear the frustrations some businesses encounter.
Updated and streamlined processes could get businesses operating faster and save them money, which anyone who has started a business or if you know someone that started a business, will tell you that sometimes funds are limited and every cent counts.

Knoxville needs to invest in its most valuable resource, the people. We are an entrepreneur town, and the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center is a great resource that we are lucky to have I want to make sure that we continue to propel Knoxville forward as an entrepreneur town. We need to make sure we are focusing on our entrepreneur talent and cultivating them and getting them ingrained into Knoxville. We do not want that talent to leave us and go to Chattanooga, Nashville, Asheville or friendlier entrepreneur town. When entrepreneurs succeed in a city, they tend to invite others to join them. With others visiting our city, staying at our hotels, eating at our restaurants, and shopping in our stores that is more revenue for local businesses and more tax money for the city.

The city has done a great job with downtown, but we also have communities in North, South, East, and West. By focusing on increasing commerce and increased revenues so the amount of taxes paid to the city is greater, that could be more money the city has to help community projects and increase culture awareness.

Some people have asked why I want to take this one and deal with the hard work that is involved. My answer is simple, I am not afraid of hard work. I started working when I was little picking tomatoes in in a tomato field, had a full-time job each summer growing up, and worked two to three jobs while in college, so hard work is nothing I shy away from. I believe that if you want something, you never wait around for someone to give it to you, you go out and work for it, and not just work for it, you work hard for it.

Thank you for reading and have a great week!

He has attended more community meetings in the last two weeks that I have been to. The East Knox Community Meeting, The West Knox Republican Club meeting where he and Paul Bonovich attended. The Center City Conservatives Republican Meeting and he attends council meetings.