NASHVILLE (AP) - State Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey has a way of turning spectacular failures into soaring victories.
The latest example is Ramsey's recent attempt to defeat Democratic state Supreme Court justices in last month's retention elections as a way to install a Republican attorney general. The ouster effort was solidly defeated at the polls, but the court this week still decided to replace incumbent Attorney General Bob Cooper, a Democrat, with Republican Herbert Slatery.
The justices did not take questions from reporters Monday about why they decided against reappointing Cooper. Whatever the reason, Ramsey got what he wanted.
"He somehow always seems to win, even when he's losing," said Will Pinkston, who was an aide to former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen. "It's really just a function of being willing to roll the dice and take risks. The Democrats could learn a thing or two from him."
Previously, Ramsey's 2010 tea party -styled bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination ended with a distant third-place finish to former Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, who went on to win the general by a record margin for a non-incumbent.
But as Haslam worked his way into office, it was still Ramsey who grabbed control of the agenda from his perch in the Senate, rejecting the new governor's first choice to become the chief executive's legislative lobbyist and rebuffing entreaties from the new administration to lay off of controversial legislative initiatives like curtailing collective bargaining rights for teachers.
Back in 2004, soon after Republicans gained a Senate majority, Ramsey's bid to become Senate speaker was defeated by Democrat John Wilder when two Republicans defected to vote for the longtime Democratic incumbent to remain in charge of the upper chamber.
However, Ramsey, a Blountville auctioneer, used that defeat to rally the GOP caucus and raise money for another go at the top leadership post in 2007. This time, he added an insurance policy by secretly persuading then-Sen. Rosalind Kurita, a Democrat, to cast her vote for him, and he became the first Republican Senate speaker since Reconstruction.
Last month Ramsey surprised political observers - and several contributors to his political action committee - when pre-primary campaign finance reports showed he had dumped $425,000 from his PAC into the effort to oust the justices. He has declined to say how much more money he spent following that last reporting period.
The campaign sought to paint Justices Gary Wade, Connie Clark and Sharon Lee as soft on crime and in favor of President Barack Obama's health care plan because of the attorney general's refusal to join a multistate lawsuit seeking to block the law. Tennessee is the only state in the country where the Supreme Court appoints the attorney general.
The Democratic justices and their supporters fought back against Ramsey's c laims and raised more than $1 million in support of their retention bids, which they won resoundingly
But those victories weren't enough to ensure Cooper another term, as the justices on Monday announced Slatery, Haslam's top legal counsel, as his successor. That appointment may have been a nod toward the governor's more moderate wing of the party over Ramsey's, but it still fulfils the speaker's stated desire for a Republican attorney general.
Haslam, who remained neutral during the judicial retention fight, declined Tuesday to speculate whether Slatery would have been selected without Ramsey's high-profile campaign.
"The five Supreme Court justices obviously had a decision to make, and according to Chief Justice Lee they unanimously voted for Herbert," he said. "I think it's a good pick for the state."
Ramsey said Tuesday that he met with Justices Wade and Lee after the Aug. 7 election to try to sooth any remaining hard feelings.
"I told them, they won, I lost, and that I hoped they would still be willing to reflect what I think are the values of the state of Tennessee and have a more conservative AG," he said. "Probably if they had had to make this appointment the week after the election, it might have ended a little differently."