Sheila Keckler Butt (born November 20, 1951) is an American politician from Columbia, Tennessee, currently serving as the Mayor of Maury County. Butt is the former Republican Majority Floor Leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives and she formerly represented House District 64, encompassing the cities of Columbia, Mount Pleasant, and Spring Hill in parts of Maury County, Tennessee. She retired from the House in 2018, and she was replaced by Republican Scott Cepicky in the subsequent election. On August 4, 2022, Butt was elected Maury County Mayor, succeeding incumbent Andy Ogles, who instead ran for an open U.S. House of Representatives seat. Butt was sworn in as county mayor on August 30.
Biography
Early life
Butt was born on November 20, 1951 in Rockford, Illinois. Butt's father was a shoe salesman and later a car salesman, while her mother was described by Butt as a "domestic engineer". In the Keckler home that she shared with her parents and four siblings, Butt described her family that she grew up with as having "strong faith," but that her family never participated in organized religion. Butt was also both a high school cheerleader and a high school newspaper editor.
Butt also says in her book, Everyday Princess: Daughter of the King, that while she never drank alcohol or used drugs growing up, she did "date plenty of boys". Those boys drew Butt to Tennessee Technological University where she said boys outnumbered girls 7-to-1. According to Butt, Tennessee Tech was fun, except for that frat party where she said a man pulled his pants down and danced behind her. "Needless to say, I decided that night that I would not be dancing at parties anymore," Butt wrote. Butt wasn't always a Christian and did not make that decision until she was 20 years old, according to her book Everyday Princess: Daughter of the King.
Butt later received a Bachelor of Science cum laude in English with a History minor from East Tennessee State University and is also a 1980 Women's Certificate Program graduate of the Bear Valley School of Biblical Studies.
Career
Butt was a co-founder and managing editor of S&S Bovine Images and also co-founder and managing editor of Tennessee Cattle Business, the official publication of the TN Cattlemen's Association --- two companies focused on marketing and promoting the Tennessee cattle industry --- and she has served as a lecturer at Freed-Hardeman University and was a managing partner of MacInk Printers, Inc.
Tennessee General Assembly
Butt served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives until 2018. She sponsored HJR 199, a resolution to federal government to follow Tennessee model of a balanced budget, and co-sponsored HB0007 for Voter Identification.
Butt, who currently holds no elected political office or has expressed any interest in seeking an elected political position since 2018, controls her own political action committee that was started up for the 2014 elections in Tennessee, the Sheila's Liberty PAC of Columbia, Tennessee. According to Tennessee Online Campaign Finance database, the Sheila's Liberty PAC Treasurer is Jacob Love of Heritage Bank & Trust in Columbia, Tennessee.
NAAWP Twitter post
In her book Everyday Princess: Daughter of the King, Butt posed the following leading questions pertaining to biracial dating toward the young female readers on her book:
...Will dating someone of another race be helpful or beneficial? Understanding that you will eventually marry someone that you date, will you be just as happy for your children to grow up biracial? I have seen instances when a young lady started dating someone of another race, and there were those of her own race who were not interested in dating her after that.
In a 2015 tweet critical of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Butt called for the creation of both a Council on Christian Relations and an NAAWP organization in the United States, presumably the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a white nationalist organization that was formed in opposition to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which itself was earlier formed during 1909.
Butt was reportedly commenting on an open letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations urging potential Republican presidential candidates to reject Islamophobia and reach out to American Muslim voters. CAIR representatives stated the reference to "NAAWP" is an apparent racist twist to the name of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP.