In January 2027, the Tennessee Senate will select its Speaker—the official we commonly call the Lieutenant Governor. Tennesseans should pay considerably more attention to that decision than they ordinarily do, because the office combines an unusual concentration of legislative, political, and potentially executive power.
Tennessee voters do not elect a Lieutenant Governor in a statewide election. The 33 members of the Senate elect one of their own members as Speaker, and by statute that Speaker holds the title of Lieutenant Governor. Each senator has, of course, been elected by the voters of his or her Senate district. But no Tennessee voter casts a statewide ballot selecting that individual to serve as Lieutenant Governor. The Senate makes that decision for the State.
That distinction becomes especially important because the Lieutenant Governor is not merely the presiding officer of the Senate. The office stands immediately in the line of succession to the governorship. Article III, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution provides that if a Governor dies, resigns, or is removed from office, the powers and duties of the Governor devolve upon the Speaker of the Senate. Tennessee’s own Blue Book describes the Lieutenant Governor as standing in “immediate succession to the governorship.” In other words, a person selected as Lieutenant Governor by 33 senators can, upon a vacancy in the Governor’s office, assume the powers and duties of Governor without a new statewide election selecting that person as either Lieutenant Governor or Governor.
That alone should cause Tennesseans to take the selection seriously. The person chosen by the Senate is not merely being entrusted with parliamentary duties. That person is also being placed one constitutional event away from exercising the executive authority of the Governor of Tennessee. Character, judgment, fidelity to constitutional limits, independence from special interests, and an understanding of public stewardship therefore matter every bit as much as political philosophy.
The office also carries a degree of power within the legislative process that goes far beyond simply recognizing senators, ruling on parliamentary questions, or maintaining order on the Senate floor. Under the Senate’s rules, the Speaker appoints the members of the standing, special, and select committees and appoints the chair and two vice chairs of each standing legislative committee. The Speaker is also an ex-officio member of every standing legislative committee and may cast the deciding vote in a committee tie.
Those appointment powers have enormous practical significance because the committee system is the gateway to the Senate floor. Committee chairs, in consultation with their vice chairs, set the calendars determining when legislation will receive committee hearings. A bill ordinarily cannot be reported out of a standing committee without receiving the affirmative votes required by the Senate rules. Thus, the person who selects the committee members and selects the committee leadership exercises extraordinary influence over the institutional machinery through which legislation must travel.
It would be technically incorrect to say that the Lieutenant Governor possesses an absolute legal veto over every bill. The Senate’s rules contain checks, including a procedure allowing a constitutional majority of the Senate to recall a measure that has remained in committee for seven legislative days. But focusing only on that formal limitation misses the practical reality. When one official chooses the membership and leadership of the committees through which legislation must pass, that official possesses a disproportionate ability to shape what survives the legislative process, what receives meaningful consideration, what is amended, and ultimately what reaches the Senate floor for public debate and a recorded vote.
There is another dimension of the office that deserves public attention: political money. A Speaker or other political leader may be associated with a political action committee or similar political organization capable of raising and deploying substantial sums during election cycles. Tennessee allows corporations to make contributions to PACs, and the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance states that there is no dollar limit on the amount an individual or an entity – including businesses or out of state special interests – may contribute to a PAC. PACs are required to disclose their financial activity, and Tennessee also imposes important restrictions during legislative sessions, including restrictions involving fundraising and contributions from employers of lobbyists.
The political leverage created by such a vehicle can nevertheless be substantial. A PAC can contribute to candidates within the applicable limits and can make unlimited independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates so long as those expenditures are genuinely independent and are not coordinated with the candidate or campaign. Moreover, Tennessee law now provides special treatment for PACs actually controlled by political parties or legislative caucuses; as of May 9, 2025, qualifying political-party and caucus PACs are not subject to the ordinary candidate-contribution limits that apply to other PACs. A PAC merely associated with a Speaker or caucus does not automatically receive that treatment but the broader point remains: political leadership can be accompanied by a substantial fundraising and electoral apparatus capable of affecting which candidates receive financial support and which candidates face funded opposition.
That creates an important public-policy concern. The Lieutenant Governor can have substantial influence over a senator’s committee assignments and over who chairs the committees through which that senator’s legislation must pass. At the same time, political organizations aligned with legislative leadership can raise significant money and participate in elections. Those powers are governed by separate legal rules, and the existence of both does not itself establish improper conduct. But their concentration makes the character and institutional philosophy of the person occupying the office exceptionally important.
The question in 2027 should therefore not simply be which candidate for Lieutenant Governor is most effective at advancing a partisan agenda. Nor should the principal test be who can raise the most money, reward the most allies, punish the most opponents, or exercise the greatest control over the legislative process. Those may be measures of political power. They are not measures of constitutional stewardship.
The more important questions are whether the next Lieutenant Governor understands that governmental authority belongs ultimately to the people; whether constitutional limitations will be respected even when they frustrate a desired political result; whether individual rights will be protected even when their exercise is unpopular with the majority; whether senators and citizens with disfavored views will receive a meaningful opportunity to be heard; and whether the committee system will function as a legitimate legislative process rather than merely as an instrument for determining in advance which ideas are permitted to reach the Senate floor.
Those questions matter because the Lieutenant Governor’s authority operates at several levels simultaneously. The office helps determine the institutional composition of the Senate’s committees, materially influences the legislative gateway through which public policy must pass, carries substantial political influence during election cycles, and stands first in succession to the governorship. Few positions in Tennessee government combine those forms of power in a single individual.
The selection of Tennessee’s next Lieutenant Governor therefore should not be treated as an internal political transaction of interest only to the members of the Senate. The consequences belong to the public. Tennesseans have a legitimate interest in knowing who seeks the position, what those individuals believe the constitutional limits of governmental power to be, how they intend to exercise control over the committee system, how political fundraising will intersect with their leadership, and whether they view the office as a source of personal political power or as a public trust.
The standard should be commensurate with the authority being entrusted: constitutional limits before political expediency, individual rights before factional advantage, independence before special-interest influence, open legislative deliberation before institutional control, and public stewardship before personal political power.
The next Lieutenant Governor will not be elected statewide by the people. But the power entrusted to that person will profoundly affect the people. That is precisely why the people should be paying attention.
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