Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney is stepping down, just three months after he was re-elected.
Devaney, who has led the GOP since 2009, is joining the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti, a Chattanooga nonprofit focused on fighting hunger in that country. Devaney says he began to consider a career change after going on a tour in January with the group’s founder, cardiologist Mitchell Mutter.
“That’s really when it started to coalesce, where I really saw all the great things this organization was doing on the ground in the country, and I just felt like it was a calling and I needed to be a part of it.”
Republican leaders plan to choose Devaney’s successor April 11. Already, state Rep. Ryan Haynes of Knoxville has declared he will run for the position. Former state Rep. Joe Carr, who Devaney defeated in December, has not decided whether to try a second time.
“I was surprised he ran for a fourth term, but I’m not surprised he’s leaving,” said Carr. “Helping the widows and the orphans is certainly a higher calling, and politics can be fatiguing.”
Devaney’s six years makes him one of the longest-serving chairmen in the Tennessee Republican Party’s history.
His tenure coincided with the party’s rise to statewide dominance. Since 2009, Republicans have taken the governor’s office and nine of the state’s 11 seats in Congress, while also building supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.
Devaney also launched efforts to try to capture offices in urban districts where the Republican Party has not been competitive historically and build the party’s outreach efforts to minority and young voters.
“There’s still challenges with the party, and I hope the next chairman will continue to do what we’ve started, and that is trying to building the party, trying to make sure that we get more Latinos (and) Asian-Americans into the Republican Party, because Nashville is a melting pot,” he said. “We’ve still got a lot of legislative seats to win.”
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