Lamar Alexander, former governor of Tennessee and U.S. Education secretary, was elected to the Senate in 2002 and re-elected in 2008. Alexander hails from a prominent Scots-Irish family that dates to the 18th century. He grew up Maryville, in East Tennessee between Knoxville and the Smoky Mountains, the son of a principal and a teacher. He started piano lessons at age 4 and still plays. Like former President Bill Clinton, he participated in Boys State, the high school summer leadership program run by the American Legion. He went to school at Vanderbilt University, where in the early 1960s he wrote editorials for the school newspaper The Vanderbilt Hustler urging integration. He went on to get a law degree from New York University, and then clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1966, he wrote to Republican Howard Baker, volunteering to work in Baker’s Senate campaign against Democrat Frank Clement. Instead, Baker gave him a job on his Washington staff. In 1969, on Baker’s recommendation, Alexander got a job working for President Richard Nixon’s congressional liaison, Bryce Harlow. On a trip back to Tennessee in 1970, he met Memphis dentist Winfield Dunn, who was running for governor, and Alexander agreed to manage his campaign. Dunn became the first Republican elected governor in 50 years. Tennessee governors were limited to one four-year term in those days, and Alexander decided that next time, he would be the candidate. So in 1974, at age 34, he ran for governor. He ran a conventional campaign and in that Watergate year, he lost 55%-44% to Democratic Rep. Ray Blanton. Read More

Lamar Alexander, former governor of Tennessee and U.S. Education secretary, was elected to the Senate in 2002 and re-elected in 2008. Alexander hails from a prominent Scots-Irish family that dates to the 18th century. He grew up Maryville, in East Tennessee between Knoxville and the Smoky Mountains, the son of a principal and a teacher. He started piano lessons at age 4 and still plays. Like former President Bill Clinton, he participated in Boys State, the high school summer leadership program run by the American Legion. He went to school at Vanderbilt University, where in the early 1960s he wrote editorials for the school newspaper The Vanderbilt Hustler urging integration. He went on to get a law degree from New York University, and then clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1966, he wrote to Republican Howard Baker, volunteering to work in Baker’s Senate campaign against Democrat Frank Clement. Instead, Baker gave him a job on his Washington staff. In 1969, on Baker’s recommendation, Alexander got a job working for President Richard Nixon’s congressional liaison, Bryce Harlow. On a trip back to Tennessee in 1970, he met Memphis dentist Winfield Dunn, who was running for governor, and Alexander agreed to manage his campaign. Dunn became the first Republican elected governor in 50 years. Tennessee governors were limited to one four-year term in those days, and Alexander decided that next time, he would be the candidate. So in 1974, at age 34, he ran for governor. He ran a conventional campaign and in that Watergate year, he lost 55%-44% to Democratic Rep. Ray Blanton.

He ran again in 1978, this time with a more colorful campaign strategy: Wearing a red plaid shirt, Alexander walked 1,000 miles across Tennessee. He faced Blanton—Tennessee had changed its law by then to allow two consecutive terms—and won 56%-44%. After the election, Blanton started issuing many pardons of criminals, who, it turned out, were paying him bribes. The U.S. attorney urged that Alexander be sworn in three days early, and Democratic legislative leaders and the state’s chief justice agreed. In a hurried ceremony, Alexander took the oath and announced that he was naming Fred Thompson, famous for his work as Baker’s chief counsel in the Senate Watergate hearings, as special prosecutor. In office, Alexander attended a White House meeting where President Jimmy Carter urged governors to get Japanese auto manufacturers to build cars in the United States; he responded by flying to Japan and persuading Nissan to build its first American plant in Rutherford County. He also persuaded General Motors to build its innovative Saturn plant in Williamson County. The plants became the sparkplugs of rapid growth in the counties around Nashville. Alexander was re-elected 60%-40% in 1982. After leaving office he spent six months living in Australia, writing a book called Six Months Off. In 1988, he became president of the University of Tennessee and in 1991, he was appointed George H.W. Bush’s Education secretary. In these years, he also reaped big profits from small investments: An option to buy The Knoxville Journal was sold to Gannett and yielded $620,000; an option given for his consultant work at Whittle Communications earned him $330,000; he also started a company called Corporate Child Care.

The year 1994 turned out to be a good one for Tennessee Republicans. Thompson and Bill Frist were elected to the Senate and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Alexander was after a bigger prize: the White House. His 1996 campaign was keyed to the mood of 1994: He campaigned as an outsider, wore his red plaid shirt and called, as Baker often had, for citizen-politicians. Of members of Congress, he said, “Cut their pay and bring them home!” But he also had a sophisticated message, calling for a more decentralized government. He had a superb fundraising organization that made Nashville one of the leading Republican money sources in the nation. He hired top-notch political consultants and good organizers in Iowa and New Hampshire. Alexander finished third in the Iowa caucuses, behind Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan and ahead of Steve Forbes. New Hampshire was his best chance for a breakthrough. Five days before the primary, Dole ran ads attacking Alexander, a shrewd strategy. Buchanan was likely to do well in New Hampshire, but probably could never be nominated. The candidate who finished second in New Hampshire would likely be his chief rival and easily win the nomination. So it turned out. Buchanan won with 27% of the vote; Dole got 26% and the Republican nomination; Alexander, in third place with 23%, dropped by the wayside.

In 1999, Alexander started running for president again. But the plaid shirt and the 1994-style themes failed to resonate. George W. Bush, with his celebrity and his fundraising, dominated the race, and Forbes’ extensive campaigning in Iowa left little room for Alexander. His fundraising faltered and after his disappointing sixth-place finish in the August 1999 straw poll, he dropped out and endorsed Bush. He was later interviewed by Dick Cheney as a possible vice presidential nominee, but the job went to Cheney. Critical of the frontloaded presidential primary calendar, Alexander in 2007 was a chief co-sponsor of legislation to implement a system of rotating regional primaries.

In March 2002, less than a month before the filing deadline, Thompson announced that he would not seek re-election to the Senate. He gave Alexander a heads-up on his decision, allowing Alexander to get his campaign underway shortly after the announcement. He started with 93% name recognition and 66% of voters had favorable feelings toward him. Republican Rep. Ed Bryant of suburban Memphis also got into the race, even though some Republicans tried to talk him out of it. He claimed to be the real conservative in the race. On talk radio shows, Alexander ran a series of “plain talk” ads taking conservative stands on taxes, charter schools and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Bryant’s ads urged, “Don’t be plaid. Be solid for Bryant.” And he emphasized that Alexander increased the sales and gasoline taxes as governor. But Alexander won 54%-43%.

In the general election, his opponent was Democratic Rep. Bob Clement, of Nashville, the center of the state’s largest media market. Clement had a relatively moderate voting record, having supported the Bush tax cuts and the 2002 Iraq war resolution. Clement depicted Alexander as a political insider who became wealthy through political connections. Alexander charged that Clement, while public service commissioner in the 1970s, served on the board of one of the banks of Jake Butcher, whose banks imploded in scandal in the 1980s. Clement at first denied that he’d served on the board, and then said it was just an advisory board a decade before the scandal. Alexander prevailed 54%-44%. He won 63% in his native (and ancestrally Republican) East Tennessee, which cast nearly 40% of the vote. Clement carried Nashville’s Davidson County and rural counties in Middle Tennessee, but Alexander carried the fast-growing ring of suburban counties around Nashville and held Clement to 53% in Middle Tennessee. In West Tennessee, Alexander made some inroads among Memphis blacks and carried the rural counties.

Alexander, who ran for governor at 34, became a senator at 62. On his office wall, he mounted not the usual array of framed photographs but a 27-foot authentic barn wall, with 40 antique items (a guitar made of matchsticks, a banjo made from a fruitcake tin) on loan from The Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tenn.

On the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, he worked on successful bills to help states ensure special education teachers meet federal standards, to give parents more choice in special education services, and to create summer academies for teachers and students to study American history. Another Alexander proposal was legislation creating $4,000 scholarships for private schools for students in failing public schools. As a former secretary of Education, Alexander opposed greater involvement by the federal government in federal student loans, comparing it to the “European-Soviet higher education model.” But he has often found himself in agreement with Obama administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and in January 2011, urged a bipartisan update of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. On a key labor issue for their state, Alexander and fellow Tennessee Republican Bob Corker held up the Federal Aviation Administration authorization in spring 2010 over their opposition to a House provision increasing the power of labor unions to organize Memphis-based FedEx.

From his seat on the committee overseeing energy and public works programs, Alexander sometimes parts with his party on the environment. He joined Delaware Democrat Tom Carper’s bill to limit emissions of carbon dioxide as well as other pollutants, and to create a system of emissions trading, both of which the Bush White House opposed. Air pollution had been high in Knoxville and threatening the tourism industry in the Great Smoky Mountains area. To counter the effects of a federal court ruling, he also pushed to restrict emissions from coal-fired power plants. For his ongoing support of the Great Smoky Mountains and its environmental quality, researchers in 2007 named a newly discovered bug in the park after Alexander, calling it the Cosberalla lamaralexandrei. Its checkerboard markings reminded them of Alexander’s trademark red and black flannel shirts. Later, Alexander in 2009 actively opposed the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill to create a system of emissions trading, though it was similar to the one he had supported with Carper.

In the deliberations on the energy bill in 2005, Alexander proposed an amendment to give local governments a veto over wind power projects and to require environmental impact statements of such projects in offshore areas and within 20 miles of scenic areas and military bases. And he won passage of an amendment providing a 30% solar investment tax credit for homeowners. Alexander has continued to champion alternative energy, and even purchased a Toyota Prius with a special battery making the vehicle entirely electric. In 2009, he co-sponsored a bill to ban mountaintop mining, common in West Virginia and Kentucky, but not Tennessee. The same year, he called for 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, and conversion of half the country’s automobiles to electric power.

Alexander bucked his own party on an Environmental Protection Agency smog rule in 2011. When the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, aimed at limiting pollution from power plants, was implemented by the Obama Administration, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. offered an amendment in November 2011 to block the regulation. Alexander was one of six Republicans to cross party lines and oppose Paul’s measure. “There’s a lot I admire about our neighbors in Kentucky, including their two distinguished United States senators, but I don’t want their dirty air blowing into Tennessee,” Alexander said on the Senate floor.

In 2007, Alexander formed a Bipartisan Members Group with independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. On the Iraq war, he and Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar urged President Bush to set goals for troop withdrawals, and pushed for troops to transition into training Iraqi forces to defend themselves. He angered both sides in the debate because he didn’t fit neatly into either camp. He told The New York Times, “We just can’t keep shouting at one another. I think it is inexcusable for United States senators to be lecturing Baghdad about being in a political stalemate, yet we can’t come up with a consensus ourselves.” In the debate over the February 2008 economic stimulus bill, when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to force Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid to accept a simple tax rebate bill, Alexander promoted the idea that the plan should be bipartisan while also trying to hold together a diverse party. “We have 49 senators with very different points of view,” Alexander told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “My job is not to make us all sing the same note. It’s to make us sing at least in some harmony.”

He sounded bipartisan notes on other issues as well. He voted for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, in August 2009, but voted against his other nominee to the high court, Elena Kagan, in August 2010. He cited Kagan’s action as Harvard Law School dean barring military recruiters from the school. Alexander was the only member of the Republican leadership to favor a bill setting up a bipartisan fiscal commission in 2010. Also that year, his endorsement of the New START treaty insured there would be sufficient Republican votes to pass it.

However, Alexander continued to oppose comprehensive immigration reform. In the past, Alexander had supported measures to designate English as the national language, and in 2008, he introduced a bill to protect employers from language-based anti-discrimination lawsuits. He also opposed the Democrats’ health care overhaul, telling the Tennessee Tribune that it was “arrogant in its dumping of 15 million low-income Americans into a medical ghetto called Medicaid that none of us or any of our families would ever want to be a part of for our health care.”

At the start of the 112th Congress in 2011, Alexander worked with Democrats for modest changes in the rules governing filibusters and anonymous holds on legislation. He also supported the ban on earmarked spending, but said there should be an exception for emergencies, like the 2010 floods in Tennessee.

Alexander helped craft legislation in 2011 to enable states to make online retailers collect sales taxes from consumers. Previous attempts to implement Internet sales taxes have failed to get traction and have been opposed by online retailers such as eBay. The issue had been especially divisive in Tennessee, where Amazon.com began building build physical distribution centers in the state but would not collect sales taxes (the company eventually agreed to begin collecting the taxes in 2014, assuming the law is not changed before then). Alexander had bipartisan support for his bill, joining forces with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Alexander also was a co-sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill opposed by much of Silicon Valley. But the bill had support from Alexander’s constituents in Nashville, where country music artists and songwriters have been concerned about Internet piracy. When public opposition to the bill grew, with an Internet “black out” day sponsored by Wikipedia and Google, Alexander and Corker conceded that SOPA had little chance of passage in early 2012.

When Senate Republican Leader Frist decided to retire in 2005, GOP Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was poised to replace him as leader. Alexander courted votes to take McConnell’s spot as whip. But after the 2006 election, former majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi got into the contest. Although Alexander claimed he had sufficient votes to win, Lott prevailed 25-24. “Senators, like most Americans, like a comeback. Trent proved he is a better vote counter,” Alexander said. When Lott resigned from the Senate in December 2007, GOP Conference Chairman Jon Kyl was elected whip and Alexander ran for conference chairman. North Carolina's Richard Burr also ran, and pulled support from younger conservatives. Yet Alexander won 31-16. When Kyl announced in 2011 that he would retire in 2012, Alexander again expressed interest in the whip’s job. But John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota also declared their interest, and the three agreed to put the contest on hold until summer 2012.

In September 2011, Alexander announced that he would resign his position as Senate Republican Conference chairman in the next Congress. The move baffled much of Washington, a town where people rarely relinquish power voluntarily. Alexander said he was sometimes uncomfortable playing the role of GOP strategist. “Stepping down from the Republican leadership will liberate me to spend more time working for results on issues that I care most about,” he said in the Senate chamber. However, he insisted that he was still a “very Republican Republican.”

Alexander’s path to re-election in 2008 was relatively easy. After more prominent Tennessee Democrats passed on the race, former state Democratic Chairman Robert Tuke got his party’s nod, but raised only $700,000 compared to Alexander’s $8.3 million. Alexander won 65%-32%, carrying 94 of 95 counties, including Memphis’s black-majority Shelby County. It was the highest percentage for a Tennessee Republican senator ever and slightly higher than Frist’s in 2000.