State representative Joe Carr addressing Republican Party executive committee during a chairman election on Saturday. Carr was challenging sitting chairman Chris Devaney. Credit: Bobby Allyn/WPLN
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney handily held off the tea party challenger over the weekend, giving Devaney a fourth term at the helm of the state’s GOP.
Devaney’s opponent was state representative Joe Carr, who notched 41 percent of the Republican vote against Lamar Alexander during the August primary. On Saturday, Carr painted the state’s Republican party as a fractured body in need of repair.
“We find ourselves as a crossroads,” Carr said to the committee. “There is division within our party. For us to ignore it, or deny it, doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it still exists. And that division needs unity.”
Committee members didn’t buy it, however. They voted 47-17 to keep Devaney.
After the election in which 64 members cast anonymous ballots on pieces of paper, Devaney said one of his goals will be to push some of the few Democratic strongholds in Tennessee, like Nashville, to the right.
“People can win as a Republican in Davidson County,” he said. “Beth Harwell has won. Lamar Alexander, Bill Haslam have won before. It’s not out of question. It’s just that we have to continue to build here in Davidson County.”
After the vote, tea party candidate Joe Carr bolted from the state capitol. When a reporter tried to wave him down as he was exiting the parking lot, he drove on.
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