Politics

Amy Lynn Holt plans to challenge Edney

By Bill Moss, Published: June 10, 2021

Amy Lynn Holt, the immediate past chair of the Henderson County School Board, plans to announce a run for the Board of Commissioners in two weeks.

“Ms. Holt loves Henderson County and is proud to be a member of this community and will make an announcement to this community on June 23,” Colby Coren, a former School Board member and friend of Holt’s said. “I believe Amy has the business background and has the comm connections and community outreach” to appeal to voters. “She is involved in not just one but multiple nonprofits in our community and looks for ways to help not only the schools but our community as well.”
Holt, whom Coren said was on vacation, did not immediately return the Lightning’s request for an interview. Her prospective campaign has already developed a campaign logo and registered a website, Holtforhendersoncounty.org, though the website has not gone live.
Holt would be running for the District 1 seat currently held by five-term incumbent Michael Edney, an attorney who served on the board from 1988 to 1996 and has been serving since 2010.
“That’s nice,” Edney, 60, said when Wednesday night. “Not made up my mind (about running for re-election. It’s very early in a local race to be making that call. Probably will but it’s too early to say. This is not a congressional race, it’s a county commission race. It’s too early to talk about this stuff.”
Asked whether he thought Holt, a Republican, could defeat Edney in a primary election next March, Coren said, “I believe that Amy has the strengths that people of Henderson County would get behind.”
First elected to the School Board in 2010, Holt was re-elected in 2014 and 2018 and served as chair from 2016 until 2020. Holt was the leader along with Blair Craven in the effort to reject a plan to build an all-new Hendersonville High School that would have abandoned the original Erle Stillwell-designed core classroom building and auditorium and was among the leaders who pushed after the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting that killed 17 people in 2018 for SROs in every school and increased mental health support. She is co-owner and chief financial officer of the family-owned HVAC business, Champion Comfort Experts.