I lived in nearby Bristol for a couple of years, and even though Johnson City is largely Conservative, there is a sizable liberal minority there, mostly transplanted gays who moved there during the AIDs epidemic to get treatment from East Tennessee State University, whose College of Medicine was one of the big eastern AIDs research centers in the mid-1990s.
Sad to say that Johnson City for many years was listed as one of the top 10 places for the people of alternative lifestyle according to the magazines that cater to them. It all had to do with our university and the library on campus.