GOP makes clean sweep of constitutional offices

Republican majority replaces treasurer, comptroller and secretary of state in offices long under Democratic control [Updated 11:37 a.m. with final results]

Email | Print By Ken Whitehouse

[Corrected article; see below.]

Tennessee's General Assembly, in a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, voted this morning on the three financial and administrative posts that are subject to election under the state's constitution.

With a new Republican majority in both houses, the lawmakers swept Democrats out of all three jobs.

In the first of the votes, Tennessee Regulatory Authority Chairman and former House Republican leader Tre Hargett won the office of secretary of state. The vote among House members was 51-47, with new Speaker Kent Williams (R-Elizabethton) voting in favor of Hargett. The lone Democrat to cast a ballot for Hargett was Dennis Ferguson of Roane County.

Hargett replaces Riley Darnell, a former Senate majority leader, who has been secretary of state since 1993. The position had been in Democratic hands since at least the Second World War.

The legislators then voted in Waller Lansden attorney Justin Wilson, who was a member of former Governor Don Sundquist's administration, to serve as comptroller. Wilson won by a House vote of 50-48 and an overall tally of 69-62, both strictly along party lines. He becomes only the third person to hold the post in the past half-century, after Democrats John Morgan, who had been in office since 1999, and his predecessor William Snodgrass, who held the post from 1955 until 1999.

In its last election, the General Assembly chose Memphis lawyer David Lillard to become state treasurer. Incumbent Dale Sims had been treasurer since 2003, and the office had been under Democratic control for more than four decades. 

House members voted 50-48 in Lillard's favor, and the total vote was 69-62, again along party lines.

Note: A previous version of this article had the prior holders of the treasurer's and comptroller's offices reversed. I made the mistake while editing the article. — Tom Wood