NASHVILLE, TN – The State Executive Committee of the Tennessee Republican Party elected a new party chairman Saturday, selecting Chris Devaney, U.S. Sen. Bob Corkers state director and a former executive director for the Tennessee Republican Party.

Devaney becomes chairman immediately, replacing outgoing Chairman Robin Smith, who served as the party chairman for 22 months and led the party to a historic victory in the November 2008 elections.

The election of 2010 is the most important for our state in generations, Devaney said, and we will be focused on building our majority in the General Assembly and electing a Republican governor.

In the worst political climate for Republicans in decades – in a year that would see Republicans lose the White House, lose both houses of Congress, lose 100 state legislative seats across the country, and lose the majority in three state legislatures to the Democrats – Chairman Smith lead the Tennessee Republican Party to winning a majority in both houses of the state legislature for the first time since the elections of 1868.

In remarks to the committee before the vote, Smith stressed that there is work left to be done keeping the Republican majority in the legislature, and electing a Republican governor in 2010 – and that the party must never stray from its principles.

“I love working with the grass roots,” said Smith, pledging to remain a Republican activist even after she leaves the chairmanship.

The Republican victories of 2008 ushered in a new era in Tennessee governance. Not only do Republicans have a majority in the state House and state Senate, for the first time the party also holds the state’s three constitutional officer seats and have a majority on all 95 county election commissions and the State Election Commission.

NASHVILLE, TN – The Republican Party will have the majority of seats on the State Election Commission, as required by state law, under legislation passed today by the state House, overcoming efforts by Democrats to hang on to control of the Commission despite the clear intention of state law.

State law currently requires that the party holding the majority of seats in the legislature also have a majority of seats on the State Election Commission, but Democrats sought to use a technicality to avoid changing the membership of the commission for two years. However, today, the House passed legislation that means the make-up of the commission will honor the choice voters made in November to give Republicans the majority.

“Six months ago, the people of Tennessee voted for a Republican majority, giving Republicans a majority on the State Election Commission and all 95 county election commissions under state law, and today, after five months of trying to hang on to what voters had taken away from them, Democrats finally gave in to the will of the people. As I prepare to hand the reigns of our party over to a new chairman, it is gratifying to finally see this manifestation of Tennesseans’ faith in the Republican Party,” said Chairman Robin Smith.

NASHVILLE, TN – A resolution expressing the state Senate’s opposition to the possible use of any public or private prison, jail or detention facility in Tennessee to house terrorists transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is moving toward passage in the state Senate.

The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, passed the Senate Finance, Ways & Means committee on a unanimous 11-0 vote.

“Barack Obama made a rash promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay at the end of the year even though he had no plan for what to do with the hundreds of terrorists held there,” said Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party. “Sen. Tracy’s resolution is just part of the growing opposition across the country to moving these dangerous terrorists into American communities.

“Barack Obama’s order to close Gitmo was pure political posturing, a payoff to his friends on the extreme anti-war Left,” Hobbs said, “but Americans know that America will not be made safer by moving hundreds of terrorists onto American soil.”

About Sen. Jim Tracy
Sen. Jim Tracy represents Senate District 16, which includes Bedford and Moore Counties and part of Rutherford County. An insurance agent, Tracy was elected in 2008 to his second four-year term in the state Senate. He chairs the Senate Transportation Committee and is a member of the Senate Education Committee, the Senate State & Local Government Committee, the Long Term Care Advisory Council, the Commission on Aging and Disabilities, and the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.

Senate Joint Resolution 0381: http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=SJR0381

Sen. Tracy’s website: http://www.capitol.tn.gov/senate/members/S16.html
Sen. Tracy’s email address: sen.jim.tracy@capitol.tn.gov