CLINTON—Anderson County Sheriff Paul White and his challenger, Anthony Lay, have had a feud over the food served at the Anderson County Detention Facility in Clinton.

The feud started with a June 26 press release by Lay, a Republican challenging White, a Democrat, in the August 7 election. Lay said the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department appears to be operating a bakery, and he has suggested inmates are eating cookies and cobbler, and pies and pudding.

If elected, Lay said, he would “cut the fiscal fat from the sheriff’s jail budget by cutting out the pie.”

“Jail will be a jail, not a hotel or bakery,” said Lay, a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper.

A few days later, White responded in a statement that said “inaccurate and misleading information” was being circulated in the campaign for sheriff.

“The jail does not operate a ‘bakery,’” said White, who is running for his third four-year term as sheriff.

The jail menus are “quite conservative,” White said, and the average meal costs $1.10. [Read more…]