The state senate re-elected Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey Tuesday as Tennessee’s 33 senators met at noon on the first organizational day of the 108th General Assembly. This will be Mr. Ramsey’s fourth two-year term as Tennessee’s lieutenant governor and speaker of the senate.
“I want to thank you once again for placing your trust in me,” Mr. Ramsey told senators and onlookers after being elected. “It has been the honor of my life to serve as lieutenant governor and speaker of the senate.
“I have often said it matters who governs,” he said. “I look forward to proving that statement true once again as we continue to answer November’s resounding call for less spending, more jobs and smaller government.
“I especially look forward to continuing this legislature’s commitment to efficiency. Our last two legislative sessions were the first to end ‘on time’ in well over a decade. We plan to continue that tradition. The days of legislative sessions dragging into May and beyond are over.
“As our federal government teeters on the edge of a fiscal cliff, Tennessee’s feet stand planted firmly on sound fiscal principles. Tennessee is oasis of fiscal sanity in nation overwhelmed with debt. As long as I am speaker, I will fight to ensure Tennessee remains a beacon to the nation.”
Tennessee’s conservative leader, Lt. Governor Ramsey is the first GOP Senate speaker in Tennessee in 140 years and the first from Sullivan County in over 100 years. In the 2008 elections, he led Tennessee’s republicans to a gain of three senate seats and a solid five-seat majority. Under Mr. Ramsey’s leadership in 2010, republicans both increased their majority in the senate and elected a republican speaker of the house of representatives for the first time since 1969.
In 2012, the Ramsey Senate achieved an unprecedented 26 to 7 supermajority, a feat unmatched by either party in modern Tennessee history. Mr. Ramsey, currently serving his third term as speaker, became the longest-serving republican senate speaker in Tennessee history in 2009.