Only five months after being re-elected to a fifth term as Hamilton County mayor, Claude Ramsey will give up the county’s top elected post and head to Nashville to become the state’s deputy governor.
But a few days before taking one of the top spots in Gov. Bill Haslam’s new administration, Ramsey will take a kind of victory lap at the Detroit auto show. The 67-year-old Republican says he wants to represent Hamilton County one last time on Jan. 10, when Volkswagen unveils the new midsize sedan it will make in Chattanooga.
“I told the governor-elect, it’s one of the things I really want to do before I leave Hamilton County government,” Ramsey said Friday in announcing his career change.
The Volkswagen event will be a fitting capstone for Ramsey, who spent most of his 16 years as county mayor working to acquire the former Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant and develop it into an industrial park and then recruiting an auto company to the site.
Despite the military, political and economic challenges of the decades-long effort, Ramsey persevered. Volkswagen picked Chattanooga two years ago to build its $1 billion assembly plant — the biggest such investment in Chattanooga history.