Terry Frank

Current office and 2026 campaign

Terry Frank is the Republican Anderson County Mayor, a position she has held since 2012 ¹². She won a fourth term in the May 5, 2026 Republican primary, defeating District 3 County Commissioner Joshua Anderson 4,822 votes (56%) to 3,786 votes (44%) ³. No Democratic or independent candidate qualified to oppose her, so the primary win effectively secured the office through the August 6, 2026 county general election ³¹.

Background and education

Frank grew up in Oliver Springs in Anderson County and graduated from Anderson County High School ⁴. She attended the University of the South at Sewanee before earning a Bachelor of Arts in political science, with a minor in philosophy, from Middle Tennessee State University, per her campaign biography ⁴.

Career

Before taking office, Frank worked as a conservative talk-radio host, blogger and columnist, and held officer positions — chairman, vice chairman, secretary and treasurer — in the Anderson County Republican Party ⁵. She and her husband, Lee, owned and operated Nature's Marketplace, a natural-foods store in Oak Ridge, for nearly 20 years before she took office ⁴.

Office history

Frank was first elected Anderson County Mayor in 2012 and has been reelected since, most recently in 2026, per her campaign biography and county and news records ⁴¹³. As mayor she has focused on education, youth development, jobs and economic development, and has also worked on veterans' issues, senior services, animal welfare, and opioid-addiction response, per her campaign biography ⁴.

Documented disputes and controversies

In 2013, Anderson County Commissioner Chuck Fritts accused Frank of improperly double-billing travel expenses; Frank denied the allegation at a press conference, saying "there is one accusation that will never stick, and that is that I would abuse your tax dollars for my own personal enrichment" ⁵. Separately in 2013, then-Sheriff Paul White accused Frank of using a lawsuit settlement agreement to "settle scores" with the county law director and a commissioner, after Frank asserted she could unilaterally block new sheriff's department hiring despite a commission-approved budget ⁶.

Beginning in 2017, multiple current and former county employees accused Circuit Court Clerk William Jones — a separately elected official, not a mayoral appointee — of sexual harassment, including inappropriate touching, comments and messages ⁷⁸. Frank sought to hire independent counsel to review how the county's human-resources office had handled the complaints; the County Commission voted 15-1 to reject that request, while separately voting unanimously on February 20, 2018 to censure Jones and call for his resignation, which he refused ⁷⁹. Civil litigation that followed reportedly included trial testimony in which Frank and former county Human Resources Director Russell Bearden gave conflicting accounts of when Frank learned of the harassment complaints and how her office responded ⁷.

Business interests and wealth source

Frank and her husband owned and operated Nature's Marketplace, a natural-foods retailer in Oak Ridge, for close to two decades before she became mayor ⁴.

Family

Frank and her husband, Lee, live in Clinton and have three sons: Atticus (and his wife, Rachel), Davis, and Avery, per her campaign biography ⁴.

Sources