The Smoky Mountain News is hosting a forum for the three candidates running for Haywood County Sheriff in 2026. 

Sheriff Bill Wilke was first elected to the office in November 2022 and will run as an incumbent. Challenging Wilke in the primary is fellow Republican Mark Mease, who served under former Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher, and Waynesville Police Department Detective Tyler Howell, a Democrat who is running unopposed in the primary. 

Candidates will offer opening and closing statements, in addition to answering a series of questions, which will not be provided ahead of time. Candidates will also have chances to provide rebuttals.

The forum, moderated by SMN News Editor Kyle Perrotti, will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 7 at Haywood County's historic courthouse. It is open to the public and will also be streamed on the SMN Facebook page.

To the Editor:

My wife and I are part-time residents of Western North Carolina, and regardless of where we are we rely on The Smoky Mountain News to keep up with what is happening locally. We make a (very) nominal monthly contribution to the newspaper, recognizing that it is the best source of local and hyper-local news in the region.

In the wake of two devastating floods just three years apart, Western North Carolina’s resiliency didn’t come from government agencies. While FEMA and state emergency teams provided vital aid, three regional nonprofits — Dogwood Health Trust, Mountain Projects and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina — stepped beyond their missions to fill critical gaps. 

To the Editor:

I have been a weekly reader of The Smoky Mountain News since its inception in 1999. I am proud of (Publisher/Editor) Scott McLeod. He welcomes dialogue. He presents opinions that most Americans can accept (most of the time). 

A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 57% who say they do so often.….

Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently. In 2024, just 26% of U.S. adults say they often or sometimes get news in print, the lowest number our surveys have recorded. 
— Pew Research Center 

A judge has ordered Shining Rock Classical Academy to turn over public records at the center of a civil bench trial heard in Haywood County Superior Court over a month ago.

My office is cool and our building on Montgomery Street in Waynesville is quiet. Almost everyone who works at The Smoky Mountain News has gone home for a few minutes to tend to kids, dogs, wives and husbands as it’s one hour before the annual first Friday in June birthday bash celebrating another year of putting out this weekly print newspaper (and now a seven-day-per-week news website).  

To the Editor:

Acknowledging the fact that, yes, all Americans have a right to have and express an opinion, and that the press has a prerogative to print those (as well as its own) opinions, I feel compelled to take exception to The Smoky Mountain News providing an admitted participant of Jan. 6 (a man tried, convicted, sentenced and then wrongly pardoned by the very person who incited the riot) a platform from which to proliferate the blatant untruth that the 2020 election was stolen (“Jan.6 participant speaks,” SMN April 2). 

The staff of the Smoky Mountain News won 20 combined advertising and editorial awards, including a combined 13 first-place honors, at the 2024 North Carolina Press Association annual awards banquet. Awards were won in Division C, the largest division for nondaily publications. 

To the Editor:

There have been several interesting letters to the editor in The Sylva Herald and the Smoky Mountain News over the past few weeks. I agreed with some of their lines of thoughts and ideas; with others I did not agree. But they were all trying to express their ideas, and I will give them that.