8
Tennessee Farm Bureau News - May 2012
www.tnfarmbureau.org
Meet your Lawmakers: Profiles from Capitol Hill
lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey
Speaker of the House Beth Harwell
A lifetime resident of East Tennessee, Ron Ramsey has represented Johnson and Sullivan counties in the state senate since 1996. Before he was elected to the senate, he was a state representative for four years. Throughout his service, he has championed small business issues and sought to make government more efficient. Lt. Gov. Ramsey is not only the first Republican lieutenant governor in over 140 years; he is also the longest-serving Republican to hold that position in the state’s history. Ramsey is married to Sindy and they have three daughters and one grandson. He has been an auctioneer since 1985 and in 1990, he began Ron Ramsey and Associates, a real estate auction firm. Lt. Gov. Ramsey is active in many organizations, including his church.
Born and raised near Philadelphia in Pottstown, Penn., Beth Harwell moved to Nashville to attend David Lipscomb University. She received her B.A. from Lipscomb and later her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. “I just fell in love with Nashville and the South,” she said, “and decided this was going to be home.” She married businessman Sam Harwell and they have three children – Allie, Sam, and Tucker. Prior to her service in the General Assembly, Harwell was an assistant professor of political science at Belmont University. She has been involved in the Nashville area as a member of many organizations and has served on numerous boards. In 1988, she was elected to represent the 56th district in the House of Representatives. Throughout her 22 years as a House member, she championed issues such as limited government, welfare reform, education and victims’ rights. She was also the House Republican Caucus Whip and chairwoman of the House Commerce Committee. In January 2011, her colleagues in the House elected her Tennessee’s 81st Speaker of the House - the first female Speaker in Tennessee’s history.
Tell our members about your early life, career and family. I grew up on a farm in northeast Tennessee, a small farm, 115 acres. We didn’t specialize in anything. We had about a dozen dairy cattle, about a dozen beef cattle, we usually put out a couple of acres of tobacco, and we raised chickens and hogs every year and killed those in the fall. I may actually be part of the last generation that’s done that. Everybody back then had a little dairy, just a small dairy, to keep cash flow going. So I grew up literally milking every day from the time I was about in the 5th grade until I was 17 years old when we got out of the dairy business. I still farm a little bit. I have 15 registered Angus cattle that I do as a hobby basically. I’ve always wanted to be selfemployed so I went to college at East Tennessee State University and majored in building construction technology. Two years after I graduated and worked in an apprenticeship, I started my own surveying business when I was 25 years old. I started my own real estate and auction business when I was 30 years old and I still own and operate that today. That’s what I still do every day. It’s a very family oriented business. My wife runs the business, one of my daughters works for me, my brother works for me, and we have auctions just about every
Saturday. As legislators, we are part time legislators. We don’t make enough down here to make a living, and so when we go back home on the weekends, I have auctions. I think it keeps me in touch with people. I’ve got three daughters that of course are all married now. I’ve got a grandson that’s 10 months old and hopefully I’ll have more soon. Life’s good. Even though there’s not a bill regarding Career and Technical Education this session, we’ve seen the issue come up. Talk about your position on CTE and its future. That’s one area of our education process, especially K through 12, which undoubtedly has done a great job over the years through the FFA and all of the other organizations. Senator Tracy and I just made sure that this stays on the front burner. We want to make sure that these unbelievably good programs that we have across the state can continue because a lot of these students will end up going on to college but some of them won’t. We need to understand that college isn’t for everybody and that these career and technical education programs can be just as important as a 2 year degree or 4 year degree and so we need to make sure that it receives the proper attention. What’s the most challenging thing you’ve experienced since you’ve been lieutenant governor and what’s been the most rewarding? Let’s go with the most rewarding first: the fact that I believe we are making a difference. We realize the state employees work for the taxpayers, not the other way around. I think that we’re making some true reforms and it is very rewarding. I guess usually the most challenging are the mundane issues that I have to deal with that most of the general public doesn’t realize. That’s just not my cup of tea. I’m a big picture kind of guy that wants to set the course for the state of Tennessee and improve the state of Tennessee. Read more of this interview at: www.tnfarmbureau.org/content/ meet-lt-governor-ron-ramsey
How did you become interested in running for the legislature? Well, I actually got interested in politics way back when I was actually a freshman in college and went home to live for the summer in Pennsylvania. My grandmom became ill, and she became bedridden, and she lived with us. We had a nurse that stayed with us, and when the nurse took her hour-long lunch break, it was my responsibility to sit beside grandma. For that hour, we watched TV, and there was nothing on TV that year but Watergate. I just fell in love with the way Howard Baker spoke because he had a Southern accent, and she fell in love with Sam Ervin, the senator from the Carolina states. I remember saying to grandmom, I said, “Grandmom, I’m going to meet those two people.” It just so happened, I came down here when I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt, Senator Ervin came and spoke at Vanderbilt, and afterwards I talked to him a little bit. When he left, he was such a fine gentleman, he actu-
ally wrote back to the school, and it said, “To Beth in care of the Political Science Department at Vanderbilt University.” He had forgotten my last name, but it was a little note for my grandmom. So, in fact I met him, and then I’ve gotten involved in Republican politics and I’ve actually met Senator Baker many times, so it came true. I just love the legislative process. I decided I didn’t have any desire to be an attorney, and I really wanted to teach government and politics. So I received my Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and taught for about four years full time and that’s when I ran for this office, and lost, and came back to run again. Explain your position on the inheritance tax. I’ve actually introduced a reduction or elimination of the inheritance tax almost every year that I’ve served in the General Assembly and it’s so rewarding now that we were able with the new administration to properly fund the reduction of the death tax with the whole idea of phasing it out over the next five years. What that will allow us to do is preserve those family farms that oftentimes have to be sold upon the owner’s death in order to pay the taxes. Now, that’s a disgrace. We need to allow these family farms to stay in the family and we’ll be able to do that by eliminating the death tax. What would you say to Farm Bureau members who want to be involved in the legislative process and get to know their lawmaker? Nothing matters more than hearing from your own constituent. Really, because we’re a part time legislator, we can’t be experts in every area. We rely on people in the industry to tell us what’s good for them. Having each individual farmer out there having a relationship with a legislator is a great thing. Build that relationship where you don’t have to ask for anything, where there’s nothing going wrong. So then when you need a legislator for something, you’ve built that ongoing relationship with them. And the Farm Bureau is very good at doing that. Read more of this interview at: www.tnfarmbureau.org/harwell
by Laura Vaught, Tennessee Farm Bureau Public Affairs Intern – Laura grew up on a dairy farm in Lascassas and is the daughter of Rutherford County Farm Bureau members Mike and Lynn Vaught. She has a B.S. degree in agriculture with a concentration in animal science from Tennessee Tech University and recently graduated with her M.S. in agricultural communications from Texas Tech University.