Oak Ridge Republican Randy McNally is a man of few words.
That may be why few Tennesseans have heard about him before this week, when he was elected speaker of the state Senate.
McNally has nearly 40 years of experience, yet an earlier episode in his life still defines his career. People refer to it as the time Randy McNally wore a wire. Operation Rocky Top became one of the biggest corruption scandals in the legislature’s history.
Investigators knew something illegal was going on, but they needed help.
“They asked me if I’d be willing to work with them as a cooperating witness,” he recalled in an interview this week in his Senate office. “And I said yes, thinking it would be, you know, a couple of days or something like that.”
He wound up wearing the wire almost daily for three years, starting in 1986.
Criminal syndicates had corrupted the secretary of state, regulators and several lawmakers, mainly to protect organizations that ran supposedly charitable bingo games.
McNally says he was contacted by a fraternal organization in his district running legal bingo games. It complained that another nearby outfit was breaking state laws governing hours of operation and prize amounts.
McNally, who was a member of the state House of Representatives at the time, asked regulators to look into it. A few weeks later, the fraternal organization updated him on the result: Every bingo game in the area had been inspected except the one that was breaking the law.
That prompted McNally to ask regulators more questions.
“It was information that they probably didn’t want out.”
One day, a bingo lobbyist handed McNally an envelope. He suspected it contained a bribe, and so called the FBI. They drove him to a McDonald’s on Broadway, where an agent put on gloves. Inside the envelope were three $100 bills.
McNally says his first reaction was to wonder why the attempted payoff was so little.
“You know, I was a little bit — thought I had been underpaid, or whatever.”
It was a test. Once the gambling interests were convinced McNally could be bought off, the amounts increased. A lobbyist offered him $10,000 from a would-be track operator.
“He said the guy was willing to pay him 20 (thousand dollars) and would split it right down the middle. Of course, he lied because it was 25 (thousand), and he ended up with 15 (thousand) and me with 10 (thousand).”
McNally was turning over the cash to investigators. All the while, he had a recording device strapped to his thigh, a wire running up his chest and microphones behind his shirt.
He could turn the device on and off through his pants pocket. Investigators had him record lobbyists, but not other lawmakers. McNally says he is grateful.
“That would’ve been a little difficult, I think, for me to do. … In my mind it could look political.”
But the evidence McNally collected against the lobbyists was enough to convince them to cooperate with investigators.
Fifty people were convicted in the scandal, including House Democratic Leader Tommy Burnett. It would be his second prison sentence. Only a few years earlier, he’d won back his seat while still behind bars.
Another Democratic lawmaker, Knoxville Rep. Ted Ray Miller, committed suicide. So did Secretary of State Gentry Crowell.
“It’s a tough thing, you know, even though what you’re doing’s right, it’s not pleasant. … But it’s kind of like taking out the garbage. It has to be done.”
The scandal aided Republicans in their rise to controlling a majority in the Tennessee General Assembly. GOP lawmakers promised to clean up corruption at the state Capitol.
They still tell the story of how their longest-serving member helped stop a criminal enterprise, as a reminder to lawmakers to resist temptation.
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