January 29, 2007
Tennessee Gets Less Wilder
The New York Times account of the recent ouster of Democrat John S. Wilder, the powerful Tennessee Senate Speaker who was nation’s longest serving state legislative leader, should serve as a reminder that the best legislative leadership skullduggery is often found not in Congress, but in the nation’s statehouses.
In the end, Wilder, who served as Speaker since 1971, was done in by one of his Democratic colleagues, who cast her vote for GOP Senator Ron Ramsey. Ramsey is the first Republican in 140 years to lead the Senate, a position that in Tennessee also makes him the lieutenant governor.
The Times sees the 85-year-old Wilder’s downfall as a historic shift in power, another sign of rising Republican strength in Southern state politics. That’s true, of course, but Wilder would be more accurately described as a casualty of modern legislative politics, where there’s no longer a place for consensus-minded pols like him.
“Governor Wilder”, as he is referred to in Nashville, has a long history of bipartisan dealmaking. Some of it furthered his own political interests, but no one denies that he was fixated on the idea of legislative comity. Wilder went so far as to name some Republicans as committee chairmen while they were in the minority. The respect was mutual: When the GOP captured a one-vote Senate majority in 1995, the party voted to keep him in his position. Around that time, the legislature passed a resolution naming a new state golf course after Wilder, leading capitol insiders to joke that that one of the course rules would be to require bipartisan foursomes.
Three members of Tennessee’s U.S. House delegation – Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Steve Cohen and Lincoln Davis – served with Wilder before they arrived in Washington; Wilder was also Lamar Alexander’s lieutenant governor, two decades before Alexander was elected to the U.S. Senate. [CHARLES MAHTESIAN]
Posted at 03:50 PM
Comments
Post a comment
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
