Tennessee House Speaker Beth HarwellTennessee’s Republican Senate and House speakers insist things are now fine between the pair, really they are, despite the end of this year’s rollicking legislative session in which each leader saw his or her top priorities dashed in the other’s chamber during the final days.
“There’s zero problem between me and Beth,” Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, told reporters Thursday after he and House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, were seen at the State Building Commission’s meeting.
Said Harwell to reporters: “You saw us. We’re good. We’re good to go.”
Among other things, a group of majority House Republicans joined with Democrats to torpedo Ramsey’s bill redrawing judicial districts on the last day.
GOP members used the occasion to rail that Ramsey set too fast a pace in the session. Earlier, a campaign finance bill favored by the speaker, which among other things would have allowed party caucuses to collect more PAC money, got 48 votes — two short of what was needed. Harwell didn’t vote at all on it.