Moore County, Tennessee Re-Elects its Independent Sheriff

Posted on by August 8, 2026

Tennessee held general elections for county office on August 6.  In Moore County, incumbent sheriff Justin Tyler Hatfield, an independent candidate, defeated his only opponent, the Republican nominee William Raline.  The vote was 1,570 to 417.

The ballot listed Hatfield on the top line.  The Republican Party had complained that Raline should have been listed first, but the complaint was filed so close to the election, nothing was done about it.  Tennessee law says independent candidates should be listed underneath the nominees of political parties.

Back in February 2026, Hatfield had been disqualified because he had submitted his declaration of candidacy late, but he sued and won on the basis that the elections office had given him the wrong information about the deadline.  That lawsuit was Hatfield v Sanders, Chancery Court, Moore County, case 3322.

Comments

Moore County, Tennessee Re-Elects its Independent Sheriff — 14 Comments

  2. Tennessee has a moronic system where primaries for statewide office and congress are on the same ballot as local general elections which are somewhat partisan. Voters can choose which party primary to vote in, but all voters can go down the ballot and vote in local elections where some of the candidates have partisan label.

    The Tennessee Republican Party requires Republican candidates to be “bona fide” Republicans, who have voted in three of the last four Republican primaries. They used to have a system where a “bona fide” Republican could vouch for another person, “Well, Bubba Sue is a bona fide Republican,” but that practice has ended and now a party committee may grant waivers.

    Moore County had never had a primary for local offices until this year in which 120 persons voted. This is an editorial from the local newspaper.

    https://mcobserver.news/opinion/party-politics-comes-to-town/

    It says that the Republican candidate was not involved in the lawsuit.

  3. I suspect the reason why Hatfield was listed first, despite what the law about ballot order said, was because he was the incumbent for that office, and that may have further confused the local election office. The legislators who wrote up that law probably didn’t consider that possibility (“Independents/third parties never win”… bah). But judging from the vote total, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much in this case if the law had actually been followed; quite a lopsided victory.

  10. @AZ,

    Moore County is quite near to Pulaski, Tennessee. You will recall a certain event that happened at the law office of one Thomas Jones. Any relation?

  11. @Joshua H,

    I did some looking at other local elections in the area and it was quite common to have mostly independents with a scattering of Republicans. There is at least some possibility that the Republican candidate was asked Republican or Democrat when he filed and he said Republican. This triggered a primary. There was a not insignificant* number of write-ins for sheriff in the primary.

    *considering very few voted in the primary (under 3% of county voters).

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