Move To Elect State Attorney General Hits Snag In Senate

A proposed amendment to the state constitution stumbled in the Tennessee Senate Monday night as several lawyers said they didn’t like the idea of an elected attorney general.

The constitutional amendment would have voters elect the Tennessee Attorney General. Currently the state Supreme Court hires the state’s top lawyer.

Republican Dewayne Bunch of Cleveland says that made sense when the justices themselves were elected. But now they are appointed by the governor. Without elected judges, Bunch says the attorney general isn’t accountable.

“That has been taken from us. The citizens now have no accountability for the Supreme Court, and thus there is no accountability for the attorney general.”

But another Republican Senator, Doug Overbey of Maryville, joined a handful of Democrats to oppose the amendment.

“We may be the only state in the Union that does it this way. We may be the only state in the Union that does it right.”

Overbey says the idea of an attorney general raising campaign funds and canvassing the state for votes “concerns” him. Overbey says he’d rather the Attorney General concentrate on the job.

With a mini-rebellion stirring against the measure and two Republican senators absent, Mount Juliet Republican Mae Beavers called time out and put off her proposal to Thursday.

Constitutional amendments must pass two successive state legislatures, and then be approved by a popular referendum on a gubernatorial ballot. So this proposed amendment couldn’t go on the ballot until November 2014.

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The measure is Senate Joint Resolution 698 Beavers. (Immediately after Monday’s action on the resolution, the state’s data base showed the measure had “Passed 3rd reading, as amended.” That is incorrect. The bill was deferred before being brought to a third reading vote.)

Beavers makes the argument that Tennessee is odd-man-out in its method of choosing an Attorny General.

“Currently, Tennessee is the only state utilizing the Supreme Court, an appointed body themselves, to appoint the attorney general. Forty-three of the fifty states select their attorney generals through popular election.”

But Nashville’s Doug Henry argues that when attorneys general are elected, the office becomes just a stepping stone for other statewide office – governor or U.S. senator.

“You don’t want that lawyer picked out by a popularity contest, ….some guy running for something else, all these people wind up running for something else. This is not a career move for them, to get elected attorney general.”

Henry rallied opposing statements from Overbey and from Democratic Senator Roy Herron. Other Democrats were counting noses and had reached 11 votes against the resolution when Beavers postponed the vote.

The election of the attorney general has been a Republican priority since Tennessee became a predominantly Republican state in the last twenty years of the twentieth century. (Before that, Democrats occasionally batted around the idea of an elected attorney general as a statewide race.)

But Maryville’s Doug Overbey, himself a lawyer, says the pressures of having to raise money and run for re-election aren’t conducive to the best practice of law.

“I get concerned about how they would do their job while running for re-election. There are people in this chamber that know, campaigning across 95 counties is a time-consuming proposition. I for one want the attorney general, the chief lawyer of the state, doing his or her job.”