BILL SHARP

Current office and 2026 campaign

Bill Sharp is a Republican candidate for Cannon County Sheriff on the August 6, 2026 county general election ballot ¹. He is running for the seat being vacated by Sheriff Darrell Young, who announced in mid-2025 that he would not seek another term after 15 years in office ². As of a January 2026 local candidate tracker, Sharp's qualifying petition had been submitted and returned and he was awaiting law-enforcement certification (POST); his opponent on the August ballot is Chris Brown ¹. Announcing his candidacy in September 2025, Sharp said his decision followed "a lot of prayer and consultation with family" and described "a deep commitment to public safety and a focus on community relations, transparency, training, being proactive, and effective partnership with county officials" ³.

Career

Sharp has spent 29 years in law enforcement with agencies in Rutherford and Cannon counties, and has worked with state and national agencies "on several occasions," according to his campaign's candidacy announcement ³. By 2012 he was a detective lieutenant co-leading the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit; that year the unit's reinvestigation of the 1986 death of Deborah Sherfield Bess, initially ruled a suicide, led to a first-degree murder indictment against her husband. The Cannon Courier identified Sharp at the time as a Cannon County resident ⁴. By January 2015 he held the rank of Major and headed the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigation Division, which also oversees the narcotics and school-resource-officer divisions ⁵.

Documented disputes and controversies

In April 2015, the Murfreesboro Post reported that Sharp had used his Rutherford County Sheriff's Office email account for about 18 months to help operate a private training company, Sharp Training and Consulting ("SharpTAC"), which he founded in 2013 and which charged $350 per student for criminal-investigation seminars held at county facilities ⁶. Records obtained by the paper showed the sheriff's office itself paid SharpTAC $1,625 for a 2014 training event and the Smyrna Police Department paid $1,300; a Woodbury police chief's email to Sharp referenced paying "on the down low" for training slots ⁶. The sheriff's office acknowledged Sharp used department email and equipment but said he conducted the business during lunch hours and provided free training slots to county officers in exchange, and did not consider the arrangement a violation of standard operating procedure ⁶. As of the article's publication, the office said it was "looking into" the matter, and Sharp remained a detective on the Cold Case Unit ⁶.

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