Mark White (Tennessee politician)

Hoyt White, usually known as Mark White (born March 11, 1950, Union City, Tennessee) is a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. He represents House District 83, which includes Germantown, Bartlett, Cordova and portions of East Memphis.

White was formerly second vice-chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. He was the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress in Tennessee's 9th congressional district in the 2006 election. White's opponents in the general election were Democrat Steve Cohen and independent Jake Ford. It was White's first bid for elected office.

Many pundits believed that White faced nearly impossible odds in November. The 9th is a heavily Democratic, majority-African-American district which has been in Democratic hands since 1975; the Republicans have not made a truly serious bid for the seat since 1978. In addition, the 9th's incumbent congressman, Harold Ford, Jr., was running for the Senate, and popular Governor Phil Bredesen was running for a second term. For much of the campaign, it seemed the real race was between Cohen and Ford. However, the 9th is so heavily Democratic that White would have faced very long odds even in a two-man race against Cohen.

Despite being the highest-profile Republican to run in the 9th in almost 30 years, White was badly outspent, raising just over $227,000. In November, White placed third with 18 percent of the vote, well behind Cohen (60 percent) and Ford (22 percent). This was by far the worst showing for a Republican in the district since the 1950s.

He supported Rick Perry for Republican primary of the 2012 presidential election.^[1]

District 83

In July 2009, Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley resigned his 31st District seat due to an extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern. Brian Kelsey, the then-Representative from Tennessee's 83rd State House District, resigned his post in September 2009 to run for the seat. A special election was triggered, with the primary to occur on December 1, the same day as the election to fill the Senate seat. Mark White won the primary in a three-candidate field, and went on to face Democrat Guthrie Castle and Independent John Andreucetti in the General Election on January 12, 2010. The final results had White leading by a very comfortable margin in the extremely low turnout election. , White was elected to a full term in the seat later in 2010.

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