Ask, and you'll get a straight answer

Claiborne County Mayor. The election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

Three of them. A county budget planned in decades rather than one fiscal year at a time. A county government that costs taxpayers less. And straight answers for everybody, so the county stops pulling in different directions.

His stated goal number one is uniting Claiborne County while moving it forward.

He has served 12 years as First District County Commissioner, including as Chairman of the Finance Committee.

In that time he pushed the county toward long-range budget planning. He has also championed keeping farmland taxes low.

He has run a century farm since 2009, when he took it over after his uncle passed away. The first years he worked it alone, mending fence, clearing fields, growing the herd.

He also owns and operates Whitt's Place, which began as meat sold from a cooler in the barn and now runs out of the renovated farmhouse. It sells beef Whitt raises himself alongside cattle from five local sister farms, all of it finished on the farm, plus locally raised pork, chicken, lamb, bison, and a range of other local products.

He is a lifelong Claiborne Countian and a University of Tennessee graduate in Agricultural Economics.

He has voted no on the county's annual budget three years running — 2024, 2025, and 2026 — each time on the record wanting a multi-year plan instead of a fresh fight every spring.

At the May 2025 commission meeting he asked the Budget Committee directly whether it had ever looked at a five, eight, or ten-year plan. The committee's own chairman answered that it hadn't, because “there are so many things that are unknown year to year.”

• Commission approves budget, 4-cent property tax increase — Claiborne Progress, Aug 28, 2024
• Commission approves budget with 3% raise for county employees — Claiborne Progress, May 27, 2025
• $1 raise approved for county employees — Claiborne Progress, Jul 8, 2026

He voted to eliminate two different county wheel taxes outright — the Highway Department's in 2022 and the jail-bond tax in 2024 — rather than let them continue by default.

In a 2023 budget meeting, without even sitting on the Budget Committee, he pushed from the floor to sweep routinely unspent line-item funds into the county's general fund instead of leaving them idle: “I know it's not a lot, but we're choking on pennies.”

• Wheel tax lives to see another day — Claiborne Progress, Dec 20, 2022
• Claiborne budget back to square one – with a caveat — Claiborne Progress, May 24, 2023
• Resolution to remove $25 wheel tax for jail bond passes first reading — Claiborne Progress, Oct 28, 2024

In January 2026 he brought a resolution to add a sign-up and podium for public comment at commission meetings, so any resident could speak without first getting a commissioner to add them to the agenda. After residents objected to the time limits he'd proposed, he agreed to drop them.

In 2022, as a member of the Planning Commission, a resident asked him to look into a crypto-mining setup built in the county without going through the planning process first. He put it on the agenda and said the operator was in violation for building before coming before the planners.

• County planners to investigate 'low profile' crypto mining set-up — Claiborne Progress, Jan 19, 2022
• Shuford shares plan for public comments — Claiborne Progress, Jan 26, 2026

Early voting runs October 14 through 29 at the Claiborne County Election Commission office.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026, when polls are open county-wide at your assigned precinct.

Call or text him at 423-526-7777 and he's happy to come to you.

Porch Sittin' with Whitt and Coffee with the Candidate wrapped up on Friday, October 9. Early voting runs October 14 – 29, and Whitt needs to be there.

Because Claiborne County has spent too long pulling in different directions, and we lose every time we do it. My first goal is uniting this county while we move it forward, not one against the other.

I've spent 12 years on the Commission watching what works and what doesn't. I think I can do some good in the mayor's office, and I'd rather try than sit at the co-op complaining about it.

Farmers don't plant for one year's yield, and a county shouldn't budget for one either. As Chairman of the Finance Committee I pushed us toward long-range planning, so a lean year doesn't turn into an emergency.

I want that thinking to be how we do business every year, not something we reach for when we're already in trouble.

I have not voted for a property tax increase in 12 years.

I've championed keeping farmland taxes low, and I'll keep doing it. I make payroll at Whitt's Place and I work a century farm. I know every dollar the county spends came off somebody's table first.

I'm not going to make you a promise on a website that I can't keep in a budget meeting. What I'll tell you is how I'll approach it: plan long, spend tight, and show my work.

As partners, not as somebody they have to go around. The mayor's office doesn't run the schools or the Road Department, and it shouldn't pretend to, but it can be the place where all of us sit down at the same table.

That means the Commission, our four cities, the school system, the Road Department, and businesses large and small. One county, working the same ground.

Because I'm one of you, and because property taxes aren't an abstraction when the bill comes on ground you're trying to keep in the family. I've championed keeping farmland taxes low and I understand exactly what that means at the kitchen table.

I'd also say this: farming teaches you to plan past this season. That's the same thing I want out of a county budget.

Call or text Whitt at 423-526-7777, or email the campaign, and we'll get one to you.

The mayor doesn't run the Road Department and I won't pretend otherwise. What the mayor can do is help develop a county budget that adequately funds the county's overall needs, roads included, so there's a real plan to work from, not one redone every time money gets tight.

I make payroll every week, so I'll say this plainly: I'd rather grow 10 businesses that stay here than land one that leaves in five years. Most of the jobs in this county come from people who already live here deciding to take a risk.

The county's job is to be easy to work with and honest about what it can offer, and to work with our four cities instead of competing against them for the same handful of prospects.

The school board runs the schools, not the mayor. But the county funds a good deal of what they do, and that funding ought to be predictable, so they can hire and plan instead of guessing every spring.

Beyond the money, the mayor can make sure the school system is at the table when the county is making decisions that affect it. I'd rather sit down with them than talk about them.

Anybody who tells you there's an easy answer here is selling something. This has cost families in this county, and it will take more than one office to turn around.

What the mayor controls is the budget and the table. That means our deputies and first responders knowing what they can count on year to year, and the sheriff's office, the schools, and the people doing recovery work staying in the same conversation instead of working around each other.

It's hard to run a farm, run a business, or do a kid's homework on a connection that drops. This isn't a luxury anymore and we shouldn't talk about it like one.

The county doesn't lay the line itself, but it can make sure we're organized and at the table when providers and grant money come around, and that the parts of this county that always get skipped don't get skipped one more time.

Two things keep a young family here: work worth staying for and a place worth staying in. You don't get either one by accident.

I've got a grandson who'll be the sixth generation on our farm. I'd like him to have the choice to stay, and I'd like that to be true for everybody's grandkids, not just mine.

I'm for growth. What I'm against is being the last to know about it.

Development that gets sprung on people breeds exactly the kind of division I'm running to fix. Tell folks what's coming, tell them early, answer their questions honestly, and most of the time you'll find this county is a lot more reasonable than it gets credit for.