Sen. Paul Bailey sits down with Jim Henry. Throughout his career, Jim Henry has worn many hats, including a Vietnam veteran, a state representative, a cabinet member, a Deputy Governor, a candidate for governor, a city councilman, a city mayor, and, now, the state director for U.S. Senator Bill Haggerty. 

Guest:

• Jim Henry, state director for U.S. Senator Bill Haggerty

Transcript:

Announcer: For the politics of Nashville, to the history of the Upper Cumberland, this is the Backroads and Backstories podcast with Senator Paul Bailey.

 

Sen. Bailey: Welcome back to the podcast. This is your host, Senator Paul Bailey. We’re with Backroads and Backstories and we welcome our guest today, Mr. Jim Henry, who is currently the state director for U.S. Senator Bill Haggerty. Welcome in, Jim.

 

Mr. Henry: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, we’ve gone several months now trying to get you on the podcast, and I’m certainly excited to have you here today. You have a tremendous amount of knowledge about the state of Tennessee. You’ve served in many capacities: you’ve been a state representative, you’ve been a cabinet member, you’ve been a Deputy Governor, you’ve been a candidate for governor, and now you’re the state director for Senator Bill Haggerty. Is there anything I’ve missed?

 

Mr. Henry: Well, I was mayor, and I was city councilman for nine years, so, before I got here.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, wow. Then I did miss something, then.

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah. So, I’ve been in local government, which I thought was a very good beginning for me to serve in state government.

 

Sen. Bailey: And in what city was that?

 

Mr. Henry: City of Kingston.

 

Sen. Bailey: Kingston.

 

Mr. Henry: I started out as a city councilman and ran for mayor two years later and got elected and served seven years.

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay. And that’s in Roane County?

 

Mr. Henry: Yes.

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay. Well, that’s very good. So, did you grow up in Roane County?

 

Mr. Henry: I grew up in Madisonville, Tennessee.

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay.

 

Mr. Henry: And moved over—

 

Sen. Bailey: Monroe County?

 

Mr. Henry: Monroe County. Moved over to Kingston, when I was 14 years old. And my family had been in Madisonville for over 100 years. So, pretty close, but 35 miles between the two, but it’s a different world.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right. And so, again, you’ve been very active in state government, holding many positions, but you also have—or had—a real estate business?

 

Mr. Henry: I have the real estate business. I had one for 50 years, last year.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, wow. Well, congratulations on that.

 

Mr. Henry: Thank you. And I’ve been very lucky to have a good managing broker named Kathy May-Martin. And Kathy and I’ve been pretty much partners; she does the work and I split the money.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: So, [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: That’s a good partnership.

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah, that’s a good partnership. But I’m beginning to look at the time that I’ll be getting out of it. So, I’m very anxious for her to take over on a full time basis, and she’ll be very good at it.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, good. And then you’re also a farmer?

 

Mr. Henry: I’m a farmer. I’ve—didn’t grow up on a farm but spent a lot of time around a farm and wanted to farm. And finally found the right one. I bought three trying to find one, and finally found the right one.

 

It was in a good location to where I could drive into the city if I wanted to, and I had about 80 acres and got cattle and I’ve really enjoyed that. It’s the one thing I’ve done really in my career that I know exactly where I stand.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: When you go out and mow a field, [unintelligible 00:03:14] a field, then you know the mistakes you’ve made, you know how much you’ve missed, what kind of job you’ve done. You never know that in politics because [laugh] at the end of the day, you wonder whether you’ve made any progress a lot of times or not.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right. So, you moved from mayor—city councilman to mayor, and then I’m assuming you were a state representative?

 

Mr. Henry: I was a state representative for the 32nd district, which covered Rome, Morgan, Campbell, parts of Anderson County and parts of Scott County.

 

Sen. Bailey: You know, one thing that I missed is you were also state chairman of the Republican Party.

 

Mr. Henry: I was, in 1984 to 1988, probably the longest serving Chairman, except for Scott Golden, and I think he’s been there, or going to be there longer than me.

 

Sen. Bailey: Wow. Yeah. So, you’ve held many capacities. And also, while you were state representative, I believe you were the Minority Leader?

 

Mr. Henry: Republican leader, yeah. I like to say that.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, I agree with that. So, you were the Republican leader during your time.

 

Mr. Henry: It was an important time to be a Republican leader because Alexander was governor and I wouldn’t so much interested in it when McWherter took over, and so I didn’t serve. I resigned and became party chairman at that time. I’d been party chairman for a couple of years, but decided to spend my time there trying to build a majority. But Governor McWherter, you know the opposition party in many times, becomes the opposing party for everything. I had no desire to do that. McWherter’d worked with us pretty hard, and he even ran mostly on Alexander’s agenda. And so I wanted to be helpful if I could, oppose them when we were philosophically opposed. So.

 

Sen. Bailey: And of course, he was Speaker of the House at the same time you were serving in the House.

 

Mr. Henry: Exactly. Exactly.

 

Sen. Bailey: So, you had a lot of interaction with the Speaker McWherter at the time because of your role as being Republican leader. So, it’s a different time than it is today, isn’t it?

 

Mr. Henry: It was a different time. I think we were a better loyal opposition [laugh] in the House as far as he probably gave us—over a period of years, I think he mellowed some. When he started out, he was pretty difficult to deal with. And in the end, when Alexander came along, I never will forget what he said on the day of the swearing in; the press asked him, said, “I mean, Mr. Speaker, what are you going to do with this new young governor?”

 

And he said, “I’m going to do the best I can to make him the best governor that we’ve ever had.” And that kind of set the tone. So, almost on all issues, Alexander passed, he was a part of it. Didn’t always vote for it, but he saw that if all the Republicans voted, he’d give us enough votes to pass it, to get to 50.

 

Sen. Bailey: And going to challenge him this question. So, McWherter was what I would consider a fiscal conservative, and probably a social conservative, too. So, what was the difference between him being a Democrat at the time and you being a Republican? Where was the divide at that time, from you being the Republican leader and he, being Speaker of the House, and then ultimately becoming governor? Because you were still serving as a representative whenever he was governor—

 

Mr. Henry: Yes.

 

Sen. Bailey: —and so, again, you think back to the days of McWherter—and I’ve said this many times—I put up yard signs for Ned Ray McWherter—and I had a gentleman that was very close to him in the Upper Cumberland, and so he furnished a vehicle and gas, and so my job was to go throughout the Upper Cumberland putting up signs for Ned Ray McWherter at the time. But he was considered a conservative governor. So again, I’m just challenging you to remember back, what were the differences then, as far as being a Republican and a Democrat?

 

Mr. Henry: The lucky thing is that the agenda then was roads, it was education, it was conservation, it was building more infrastructure, and we all agreed on those things. The things we opposed were mandated benefits, unionization in whatever form of state: employees, unemployment insurance, things like that were what we really were opposed to. There weren’t many social issues, which I think was good. You know, when you look back and look at West Tennessee Democrats during that time, they were, in many cases, as conservative or even more so than East Tennessee Republicans.

 

And I always like to say that the reason that East Tennessee was a little bit more to the middle of the right was because we had run state gover—I mean we had run government. We’d had control of cities, we had control. And you have to build water plants, and sewer plants, and industrial parks, and water line, and run school systems. And if you do that, it takes money. And to me, the most conservative thing you can do is propose things and pay for it.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right.

 

Mr. Henry: And, you know, that’s been a problem with the federal government is proposing things and wondering where the money is going to come from. And so, it’s the big difference I saw between Republicans and Democrats. If Alexander was probably considered a little moderate for the Republicans, but you got to understand that if we build a road program, we pay for it. If we build a school system, we pay for it. We improve parks, we pay for it. I mean, it’s Tennessee. It’s not just the Republicans, but that’s the way it is. And that’s much better than the federal government.

 

Sen. Bailey: And so, Alexander sworn in about three days before he was supposed to be because Blanton was peddling pardons. And so that ultimately was a new day for Tennessee. And with Alexander becoming governor, Ned Ray McWherter being Speaker of the House, and then having good support system like yourself in the legislature, they were able to reach across the aisle to one another and do the things that you’ve just described, and that was to begin to improve our roads in the state of Tennessee. But not only that—but that was when our, I’m going to say our manufacturing renovation took place in Tennessee. And so I think that you, as well as those that served with you, and Lamar Alexander deserve a lot of credit because that was the revitalization of when Tennessee started coming forward. Would you agree with that?

 

Mr. Henry: Yes, I do. And Alexander was absolutely instrumental in bringing in the first Japanese company here. And I remember that he spent a lot of time with General Motors when they decided to come here. Here’s Nissan, the biggest investment the Japanese had made in the United States being located in Murfreesboro, and 34 miles west of that was the GM plant that was the largest investment they’d made outside of the area up there.

 

And so it was really a place where we were going to compete head-to-head with the Japanese. Didn’t work out too well with the product that was made, but Alexander was a great big part of that. Now, one of the things that happened that most people don’t remember, but when Alexander went down to cut the ribbon for Nissan, there was problems with the crowd—

 

Sen. Bailey: Really?

 

Mr. Henry: —because of the railroad industry, and the unions were definitely set against it. So, they threw things—

 

Sen. Bailey: Really?

 

Mr. Henry: —at the president of Nissan. They sure did. And Alexander stepped in front and shielded the president. So, he never forgot that. And—

 

Sen. Bailey: Well now, that is something that I’d never heard before. That’s very interesting.

 

Mr. Henry: That’s a story that a lot of people know, but some people were there. We were in session and Alexander made it a point to create a really strong relationships between the Japanese and Tennessee. And I don’t know if you remember this, but the president of Nissan was born in a mountainous area just like East Tennessee.

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay.

 

Mr. Henry: And so he would come there to Blackberry Farms, and Alexander wrote a book about similarities between his people and our people. And of course, it was a great recruiting tool to use. And he spent an enormous amount of time—I mean, if you think about the Japanese investment, and when we were recruiting Toyota, they had Tellico and Maryville Really cited as one of the locations they were describing. And General Motors and Nissan had already located here, and so they decided to go to Kentucky.

 

And I think, really, they wanted to do it because they had two more senators in Kentucky and getting too much located in Tennessee might not have been politically astute for them. But anyway, they came to Alexander and they told him, they said, “Well, we’re not coming, but we’re going to give you a little plant.” And it’s called Nippon Denso and Nippon Denso was not a very large plant. I think today it has 5000 employees.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, wow. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: So, it’s bigger than the—but that’s a parts place. And, you know, the parts are what makes the automobile industry so attractive to states. And one of the things General Motors told us was, “You got all these interstates in Tennessee. Connect them. Build limited access highways. Be able to move your products around.” And when we ran a full page ad in the New York Times, and it had a big picture of the United States, and—a lit picture—of all the lights that were on at night, and if you looked right in the middle of it, there’s Tennessee.

 

Sen. Bailey: Tennessee.

 

Mr. Henry: It’s within a half day’s travel for 60% of the population in the United States, probably more than that, now. But moving a product is about 22% of what it costs to build an automobile. So, if you can get them back and forth and move them to different areas, it’s a real recruiting tool. So, the interstates we built was really to try to move people around.

 

The other big thing that we wanted to do, we looked around in the road project. Can you see that Nashville’s growing, Knoxville’s growing, Chattanooga’s growing, but we really didn’t want to change the face of Tennessee. I mean, what we wanted to do was build roads to where people could live in Cookeville and drive to Nashville, and wasn’t unbelievable to do that. Or to live north of Nashville and be able to drive in, or not have to change the population of these counties in order to recruit industry. So, that’s the reason that a lot of those roads were built. And if you go around—and I had an opportunity to do that last year during the COVID—it’s unbelievable the road system we’ve got in this state.

 

Sen. Bailey: It is.

 

Mr. Henry: It’s just absolutely no other state has that. It’s all paid for and there’s no maintenance money [unintelligible 00:14:50]. As conservative as you can get.

 

Sen. Bailey: And that’s exactly what I was going to touch on is there’s no debt—

 

Mr. Henry: No debt.

 

Sen. Bailey: —on those roads. We paid for those roads, and many times constituents will ask me, “Well, we need to build a third lane going up Monterey Mountain.”

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah.

 

Sen. Bailey: And I totally understand. That comes with about a $300 million price tag, and so, we’ve been trying to get some backlog construction projects completed because of the IMPROVE Act, which that was during your time in Governor Haslam’s—

 

Mr. Henry: Right.

 

Sen. Bailey: —administration, which I was chairing the Transportation Committee in the Senate, which that bill moved through. But nevertheless, that’s something grand about this state. And if I’m not mistaken—we mentioned this earlier—but that goes back to both Lamar Alexander and Ned Ray McWherter saying, “We’re going to do this, but we’re not going to borrow the money to do all these road projects.”

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah. And there was a lot of discussion about toll roads, and this the way Ohio is doing it; they’ve got a toll road. We just weren’t going to do it that way. And so the first program that Alexander came out with, he connected all the interstates.

 

Now, it took years to do that. People don’t understand; you start a road, and it might not be completed for 10 years, and you do something every year. So, even today, we’re seeing the completion of some of those roads that were on the map because it just takes a long time by the time you engineer, time you purchase right-of-way, deal with homeowners. It’s a very difficult job, but you got to be committed over a long period of time. And I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been successful. We’ve kind of been dealing from a moderately conservative government now for a long time, even with Democrats.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right. And let me just say this, again, back to touch in about Lamar Alexander, his vision of getting the auto industry. I was just at Governor Bill Lee’s economic conference that’s being held in downtown Nashville. General Motors has again made the largest investment in their company’s history, right here in Tennessee.

 

They are going to be investing $4.3 billion into their Spring Hill facility, adding additions onto it. And a lot of that’s because of what they’re calling the EV’s or the electric vehicles. It’s just unbelievable the vision that took place, again, with Lamar Alexander and you being there with him, and then seeing the fruition that—who would have ever thought General Motors coming out of Detroit, would be now investing more money than the company’s ever invested in a single place.

 

Mr. Henry: It’s unbelievable.

 

Sen. Bailey: And it’s here in Tennessee.

 

Mr. Henry: That’s a great announcement. I hope that it brings all the electric automobiles here. It’s—I think they’ve had all good experiences here. There’s no income tax here.

 

There’s a low cost of living compared to most other places. We have a lot of people moving into the state from various parts of the country. And it’s all about location, it’s all about low cost overhead, no taxes—much. I mean, we have enough taxes, trust me, but I mean, it’s all about paying for it as you go.

 

Sen. Bailey: Which is the—which position that you’ve hailed: state representative, you’ve been a commissioner, Deputy Governor, candidate for governor, now state director for Bill Haggerty—and let me just say, I know that this is the current position that you’re in; I don’t think anyone would hold it against you, especially the senator, but what’s been the most rewarding position out of all of those that…

 

Mr. Henry: Probably being the first commissioner of Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. And I had a son that was involved with that, and had pushed for a long time to make it its own department where it could sit at the cabinet table, argue for the right dollars. And once you find out about disabilities is that it’s a leadership thing. Leadership has to take control of it.

 

You’re not ever going to see people march on Capitol Hill to do things for people with disabilities. There are just not that many, the citizens that have disabilities. But it’s one of the key things that government ought to be around for. Is helping people that can’t help themselves. And many of their parents don’t have the resources to help them.

 

So, it’s a really good thing, and I was so delighted. I had just—a personal story—just gone through my stem cell transplant. I had cancer, I had it 2002 and then it came back in 2010, and I had stem cell transplant. And I had just gone through that, considering retiring from my company, and Governor Haslam called me and wanted to see me. And so he—I found out through the grapevine he was going to offer me that commissioner’s job.

 

And so I didn’t have a hair on my head; you could squeeze your nose and it would stay squeezed. I looked terrible; I’d lost a lot of weight. Went into the office and he was totally surprised to see me looking like that. But he offered me the job and I was totally surprised, too, because I took it.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: And started meeting that night with the staff. And we settled a lawsuit that had been going for a long time, and that was one of the great accomplishments, with Debbie Payne. She was my assistant, so I felt very comfortable with her taking it when I moved over to DCS. But we settled two lawsuits with those two agencies that were costing the folks that were involved with children’s services and people with disabilities, hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

People don’t—you know, it’s something again, that doesn’t get much press or publicity, but if you’re a leader in the General Assembly, if you’re the governor, you have got to take an interest in that or things just don’t happen. And I was so proud when we were called Washington to be recognized. Both of those departments were accredited while I was commissioner, and both of them were recognized nationally. DCS is number one and certainly DIDD is one of the top in the country. And, you know, if you’re in that shape, people recognize you, it’s very difficult to continue to carry on a lawsuit.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: So, those lawsuits got settled and the complainants were tickled at where we were, and we were providing great services and Tennessee continues to do that.

 

Sen. Bailey: And so you move from commissioner of DCS then to deputy governor.

 

Mr. Henry: Yes.

 

Sen. Bailey: And so that was the second term—

 

Mr. Henry: Right.

 

Sen. Bailey: —Governor Haslam. Tell us about a day in the life of being a deputy governor.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, there’s a lot of walk-in business. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: A—you know, I had a door between me and the governor; we’d talk about a lot of issues. One thing about Governor Haslam that I always admired was he never got his advice from any one person, and he talked to a lot of people, and he called people to talk to him. People that were interested in one thing might not be interested in another. And then when he would make a decision or get close to one, he would always see if it worked financially.

 

And that’s exactly what you got to do. And you can have a dream, but if you can’t pay for it you can’t make it work. So, he was a wide-ranging ideas guy; solid Christian man. You would admire that there was never any hint of any impropriety that I think most Tennesseeans recognized. He was a very good governor.

 

Sen. Bailey: In some ways, I guess a lot of ideas pass through your office before going on into the governor’s office.

 

Mr. Henry: I had a little thing on my desk. You’ve heard of the ‘Drive to 75’?

 

Sen. Bailey: Mm-hm. Yes.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, that was a Drive to 55, I think. 55% of the students educated to at least to second two-your college. Well, I had it on my desk when I went up there. I put this sign up that said ‘Drive to 75’.

 

And nobody knew what that was, and I never did say anything. So, at the end of it when I went in there, Governor Haslam’s approval rating was 61 or 62%. And so, right before I left, we did a count and did a survey, and it was 72. So, we almost made it. We didn’t get 75%, which would have been very unusual for somebody that served eight years.

 

But that’s how many good decisions that he made and how people reflected his leadership, I think. And so that’s where we were headed, trying to make it not just popular, but good movies for Tennessee.

 

Sen. Bailey: And at the time that he became governor—and of course, you were in the cabinet—but it was a tough time for Tennessee. We were coming in and management of the budget hadn’t been the best in the previous administration and there was, if I can remember, big deficits that were being run, the rainy day fund had been raided, and Department of Transportation had over a quarter of a billion dollars, over $250 million, taken out of it just to basically try to fund state government on some failed policies. And so it wasn’t easy the first few years for the Haslam administration and they had to make some really tough decisions and turn the state around.

 

Mr. Henry: We did. In my department. When I first got there, I had to cut nine people out the staff at Central Office. And you know, that’s different when you’re cutting them out in the field, but when you got to go give pink slips to people that had been there for a while.

 

But we didn’t have any choice. We didn’t have money and neither—you know, there wasn’t going to be any more money. It wasn’t the right time. Sales tax is a great way to get dollars, but it’s also, when times are tough, people have to get very conservative with their money. So, the dollars had not been spent wisely, like you said.

 

We were involved with a computer program that was absolutely a disaster. We’d had a lot of money that had been coming into state government, all the tobacco money that had been spent, we had the big education movement that Feds put a lot of money into it. That was over. You know, education improved a lot during that era. I think we did more advancements in anybody.

 

But it was a tough time, and those are not good times to live through when you have to cut people. But we did what we had to do; it’s the law. Legislature supported us 100%, and we move forward and times got better.

 

Sen. Bailey: Times did get better. And so by the end of his eight years as governor, that’s where you were able to see that 72% approval rating?

 

Mr. Henry: Yes. And we had about I think $1.3 billion in the bank. We got a number one rating from all the stockbrokers and the rating companies in New York. It was a quite successful year.

 

And I mean, the health department was in great shape. DCS was number one in the country. I mean it was—there was a lot of things that happened. And I think that was a tribute to his leadership as far as putting the right emphasis at the right place, and talking to a lot of people instead of just a few. And some governors do that. I think you’re better off when you reach out and talk to a lot of people; you can get more of a feel of what needs to be done.

 

Sen. Bailey: So, you’re an easy person to talk to; in thinking back to your days as being Deputy Governor with Haslam, were there times that he just picked up the phone and just called and said, “Hey, Jim, what’s going on today?”

 

Mr. Henry: We did. We usually had an early morning meeting, if we both got there and the schedules permitted, and we talked about those kinds of issues. And there was always an issue the day or something that was fairly controversial, but most of those meetings we talked, he made a decision on. We never made one with—you know, mostly he always took it into consideration, but he took a lot of my advice and he took a lot of other [laugh] people’s advice.

 

I think the one thing we did with the deputy governors position was made it an entry level place for everybody. I tried to, if somebody came by to see him, I tried to meet with them. And it’s not easy to get in see the governor because of his schedule, but if you’ve got access to him, and they’ve got confidence that you’re going to discuss this with him, they’re free to discuss it with you. It was that way with the General Assembly.

 

Sen. Bailey: As a member of the General Assembly, most of the time you know that the governor is busy, and so you just—you’re always looking for that one person in the governor’s office you know that will deliver your message to the governor. And many times, there’s issues that the governor doesn’t need to be bothered with that can—that needs to be handled by someone in his office or in his administration, but the governor doesn’t need to be bothered with that. So, I’ll tell this quick story, and I think you’ll remember it. We were in a severe drought, and you had—this was maybe your first or second year as deputy governor—the Bledsoe County Correctional Facility actually operated its own water treatment facility, which incidentally, didn’t supply water to the prison, but it supplied water to 7500 residents in Bledsoe County. And it has a reservoir, and because we’ve been in such a drought, that reservoir was basically dry.

 

Mr. Henry: Right.

 

Sen. Bailey: And so I remember calling you and saying, “Jim, we’ve got a problem.” And at first you’re like, “What’s the problem?” And I said, “Well, the water treatment facility, they’re about out of water there at Taft Youth Center, where they operate the facility.” And at the time, you didn’t realize that it was owned and operated by the state of Tennessee. “And you said, well, that’s not really our problem.” [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: I said, “Oh, yes it is.” I said, “It’s owned by the state.” [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: I didn’t realize it at the time—

 

Sen. Bailey: I know you didn’t.

 

Mr. Henry: —that we were in, providing services to those 7500 people.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh]. That’s right.

 

Mr. Henry: But I do remember renting some equipment, and—

 

Sen. Bailey: We did.

 

Mr. Henry: —reprocessed and getting it solved.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, all I can say is that conversation immediately, it immediately changed to, like, “Oh. Well, we’ve got to get on that.” And so I think at that time, you brought in—who was deputy commissioner in the TDEC, Brock Hill, and the governor put him in charge of getting one of those filtrations, so we went to Fall Creek Falls, and so they set up a temporary filtration system. And then we also worked with some other utility districts to do an [unintelligible 00:30:21] to be able to do that because it was a critical situation. I think you even flew up there one day and did a tour and saw that the intake grates from the reservoir—the water was already below the intake grates.

 

Mr. Henry: It came close to being a disaster.

 

Sen. Bailey: It did. And that was one time that I had total confidence in you because it was just like, couple of days, you called and you said, “The governor’s wanting to meet with you and others.”

 

Mr. Henry: You know, we had that meeting in the conference room downstairs, and I think everybody that was anything that was affected by that area, we came to an agreement on what we needed to do; I think we acted pretty quickly.

 

Sen. Bailey: One thing that I remember out of that meeting is that the governor was going around the room asking the various departments and those stakeholders that were in there, and he looked at everyone and he says, “This is no time for red tape. We’ve got to get this done, and there’s no excuses.” And so, I think everyone understood.

 

Mr. Henry: It’s amazing how it gets done when the governor tells you.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah.

 

Sen. Bailey: Because there was one or two that I remember walking in that room that day, and I’ll not mention any names, but there was a couple of guys grabbed me and pulled me to the side, and they were starting to tell me what their plan was, and I said, “Have you been there?” And they said, “Oh, no. We’ve not been there.” I said, “Then you don’t know what the plan is.” [laugh].

 

I said, “We’ve got to get this handled.” But since then, we ultimately turn that water treatment facility over so the state is no longer in the water treatment business and basically, I never get complaints from citizens in Bledsoe County about their water quality anymore. So, thank you for rising—

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah.

 

Sen. Bailey: —to the challenge. And I knew that you would make sure Governor Haslam knew that this was a critical situation.

 

Mr. Henry: He did. That was one of the—probably the largest crisis that we—I mean, that it came close to being a disaster.

 

Sen. Bailey: Correct. We averted the situation because you’re expediency in listening.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, thank you. But one thing that he liked to do was to get everybody in the room that were there would be no misguided instructions about getting something done. And when you do that, all of a sudden the red tape guys start saying, “Okay, let’s figure out how to do this.” And that’s a real commentary on his part. I mean, he’s—

 

Sen. Bailey: Lieutenant Governor McNally appointed me chair of Transportation and Safety. I remember several times that Governor Haslam requesting that I come down, and knowing that I was in the trucking business, he was always wanting to know what my opinion was regarding the IMPROVE Act. And as we moved into that legislative year, “Well, what if we do this? What if we do that? And how do you like this idea? How’s that going to affect the trucking industry?”

 

And so that was—I can say that he really spent a lot of time in trying to develop the best plan that he could, moving forward. Again, going back to a road situation, it has really allowed us to improve the roads in the state of Tennessee. But we can talk about that all day, but I’m just saying, on a personal level, he wanted to know my opinion on that because he knew that I was in the trucking industry. And then of course, being named chairman. Another funny story about Governor Haslam.

 

He, the night that Lieutenant Governor McNally, we were having a dinner there on the second floor—usually the lieutenant governor, the first year of a new session, he always invites the senators and their spouses to a dinner, and so the governor always comes up. And I remember Lieutenant Governor McNally, grabbing Governor Haslam, pulling him to the side, and I saw him pointing over there and, “Saying Paul Bailey is going to be my new chairman of transportation.” And [laugh] Governor Haslam looked at him and said, is that really a good idea? [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: So, I’ve had the opportunity to introduce Governor Haslam, several different time—

 

Mr. Henry: You always told that story. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: I tell that story [laugh], so.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, I was ready to go before he was on that. I wanted to do it the year before. And I think it was a question about it, and it wasn’t worth losing—if you lose a battle, it’s over. But he waited until it was the right timing, and we had a few difficult times, but we got it done and that’s what counts.

 

Sen. Bailey: Tell me about your run for governor.

 

Mr. Henry: I had been out of government for a while and running the company that I started to take care of kids and people with disabilities. And I was approached by some people. And I’d always wanted to run for governor. I never will forget a funny story about my dad.

 

I wasn’t a very good student and was more interested in probably other things than I should have been. But my dad was really a political person, he worked in the Eisenhower campaigns and ended up as pretty important figure in that part. And then I’ve had governors that have been part of my ancestry, and so always wanted to run. And when I got elected to the General Assembly, he came down and he took me outside and he said, “Jim,” he said, “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you.” He said, “You’ve done great. You got a good race. It was top-notch; you won, and I just wanted to tell you that I’m so proud of you.” And he said, “But quite frankly, he said, I was hoping if you got out of high school, you’d just get a job.” [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: I said, “Well, Dad.” But in those days, before I went to the service, I had a very difficult time of figuring out. The military did great things for me. I mean, gave me responsibility, got me away from home, gave me responsibility at and early age.

 

The year I spent in Vietnam and then two and a half years I spent in Italy told me just how special this country was. So, I came back wanting to get involved in public service. Just happened to be in right place at the right time. But anyway, after serving with Alexander and being part of that administration as far as support of him is concerned, I had lots of people, after I’d been chairman, and knew people across the state talked to me about it, I decided to run. So, the problem was, is that Fred Thompson had talked about running, and I did not get in at that time because it was—Fred was very popular; you weren’t going to be Fred Thompson it he ran for governor.

 

And so I waited, and then at the end, you know, he lost his daughter and decided to retire from the Senate and not run for anything. And it was pretty late when I started. So, I got in it. We ran a good campaign, we got very close at one time, and then I think we were going the other way during the—run in the end. But had 11 out of 12 newspaper endorsements.

 

That made me feel good about that. But I had more or less the agenda that I thought that the state needed some things done, and it couldn’t do it on its present budget because there wasn’t the dollars there, and if we needed—you know, there was a big debate over the income tax. I thought that was a question the people ought to decide not the legislature. So, I thought that ought to be a referendum item. And I didn’t think that all could be—all the problems we had could be solved by just passing an income tax.

 

The other thing was that they just passed a one penny sales tax, which brought in $1.1 billion. And Governor Bredesen, or whoever the next governor was going to be, was not going to have a problem with the dollars. And he also had that tobacco settlement that was about $600 million that went into the budget and then a $750 million from the Feds for education. So, there was lots of money bouncing around, and I knew that your financial problem was over.

 

Now, no one could predict what happened in 2006 with a recession. But it was a good time. It was a good time for me. I was thinking about starting a company that was pretty big at the time, and we were in four states, and it was a good time for me to step away from it. So, I ran; I had a good time. Dortch Oldham—you remember who Dortch Oldham was.

 

Sen. Bailey: Mm-hm.

 

Mr. Henry: Dortch Oldham told me one time he ran for governor in 1974 against [unintelligible 00:39:18] in the primary. He told me one time, he said, “You know, Jim,” he said, “I ran for governor and I wouldn’t take anything for the experience.” He said, “You know, I’ve traveled the state and met people that I’d never meet before; I knew I’d never made them again, and I’m glad I did. But tell you the truth, I wished I had back some of that money.” [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: [laugh]. That kind of how I felt about it. [laugh]. But you know, you always end up spending more than what you—but the one thing it did disappoint me about that is that money is a huge factor. And if you don’t have personal wealth, it’s a huge disadvantage to you to run.

 

Sen. Bailey: And I think that it’s sad in a way because there are a lot of good people that could govern the state really well, but yet they don’t have the personal finances to be able to—I’ve used the analogy, “Go to an ATM and have a fundraiser.”

 

Mr. Henry: I tell you, I think there’s an answer to that. If you limit what a personal—what you can put in, which is unconstitutional, they’ve said, but if you limited what you can put in, I never thought it would be anything fair about my parents being able to give me $2500 apiece, and Governor Bredesen being able to put in 10 million.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right.

 

Mr. Henry: I mean, nothing about that is fair. But if you limited what was spent in the primaries, and li—I think it would take people back to the courthouses. I think they would talk more to people instead of just putting on huge television campaigns and building an image. But that’s not our system right now.

 

Sen. Bailey: I was talking with Scott Golden several weeks ago at a Reagan Day Dinner, and looking ahead four years to another gubernatorial race, not the one that’s going to be coming up next year, but four years from now, I said, “Who are you hearing?” And of course, we named off three people immediately. And then he looked at me, and he said, “And there’s a billionaire out there that sold his business that’s looking for something to do, and he’s going to decide he wants to run for governor.” [laugh].

 

So, I thought that was just a good analogy of, you’ve got several people that are subconsciously known that they’re going to be looking at running for governor and four years. But his point was, is there’s always going to be that one person that nobody really knows about. That’s maybe—

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah. And if you go back and look, it’s been the people that’s been able to personally finance that been elected across the state and statewide offices in the last 20, 30 years.

 

Sen. Bailey: Yeah. And that’s, again, that goes back to because people are so focused today on other things, that I call it retail politics, being able to go to the ham breakfast, and go to the courthouses, and go to the cake walks, and visit all of those places. There’s politicians that do that, but a lot of your statewide candidates, the time is so short that they have to, they just have to make it up with social media and with television advertising. So, you mentioned, in my office, we have a portrait of several presidents, and one that you pointed out in particular—well two, actually, you pointed out in particular, but one you had the opportunity to meet right here in Tennessee, and that was Ronald Reagan. And that was, I believe you said, not long after he’d been shot by John Hinckley, Jr.

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah, we were the first public appearance he made after. They invited him to speak here, and so he came. And we met—I was Republican leader and we met in the Senate Speaker’s office, or the lieutenant governor’s office. That’s right across from the Senate chambers, and then walk down the hall to the legislative chamber. And the interesting thing was they had the hall lined with plywood.

 

Sen. Bailey: Really?

 

Mr. Henry: So, the people that had gathered there had no access to him. So, I mean, he was very nervous about going out into that crowd, as you can imagine. And I think that being the first public appearance, our chit chat that we had before that was, I think, kind of complicated for him. I’m not sure he was ready to meet the public yet because, you know, when you’ve almost had your life taken from you, for public appearances—but anyway, that was a great time for me, and I got to walk right behind him and into the chamber.

 

In fact, I’ve got a picture of it. I forget who sent it to me. Ron Gant, I believe, sent me a copy of a picture that the archives had found. So, I’ve got it framed in my office. But it was amazing to me how he made the transition.

 

We’re in a room talking with some people and it was nothing unusual; it was fine. But when he got before that camera, he was just magic. I mean, he related to people. They bought into what he had to say, it made a lot of sense to me. I mean, and everybody.

 

Sen. Bailey: And it was probably televised nationwide [crosstalk 00:44:29].

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah. And live.

 

Sen. Bailey: Live, yeah.

 

Mr. Henry: And, you know, he talked about opportunity and everybody starting at the same level and educating people to where they have the equal opportunity. You know, having a—creating a country of opportunity.

 

Sen. Bailey: Do you remember the exact reason why he chose to come to Tennessee at that time?

 

Mr. Henry: No, I don’t. I wasn’t in on it. I think they had invited him. I do remember that, an interesting thing it happened; there was a reporter that when Governor McWherter—Speaker McWherter—went to Washington, Sam Donaldson was there.

 

And so he met Sam Donaldson, and when Sam came here for Reagan’s speech, Governor McWherter’s sitting there and Sam just moves all his television stuff right in front of him and just kind of blocks him out. And it made McWherter mad as everything. He didn’t say anything. Then the next time that Donaldson came, they wouldn’t let him into the chamber.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh.

 

Mr. Henry: So, that was his way of getting back at to him. But, Sam Donaldson was—I went to all the cou—all the state Chairmen went to lunch in one day with Howard Baker, and—who was chief of staff—and Reagan to talk about the next year what was going to happen. It was funny, we were in a room like this, and they opened the door, and they let the press file by, and they were shouting questions at the president, you know, and everything, and Donaldson yelled, he said—asked him two or three questions, and Reagan was acting like he didn’t hear—

 

Sen. Bailey: Couldn’t hear him. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: So, Donaldson said, “We’re here to cover you not carry you.” And I thought that—well, how disrespectful can you be? So anyway, Donaldson was an irritating type guy, but a lot of people on that side that liked him, and a lot of people on our side that didn’t like him.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh]. Well, that’s very interesting that you had an opportunity to meet the president who now, most all of our GOP dinners, countywide dinners are named after. They used to be known as Lincoln Day Dinners and now they’re known as Reagan Day Dinners. And so that’s—to have the have the opportunity at that time as a legislator to be. And I’m sure he was apprehensive, a little bit. He knew he was going to be on—

 

Mr. Henry: Oh yeah.

 

Sen. Bailey: —he was going to be on national television, on the national stage, and I’m sure he—getting his mind where it needed to be as far as delivering that speech. And so. I can understand that from time to time, whenever I—when I go to places, and you’re a natural at—as far as being able to step up and speak, but you also want to get in that zone, especially if it’s important, so that you can deliver your message. Who are some interesting characters—let me just phrase it that way—who are some of the most interesting characters that you’ve served with, worked with, but—besides Frank Niceley, of course. And you know, you could have probably chosen a better driver whenever you were running for governor. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: I wouldn’t let him drive me in Upper East Tennessee.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, that’s a good choice. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: Before they knew it. You know, I think Shelby Rhinehart was an interesting character. I was involved in a redistricting. You know, McWherter decided he was going to let us be involved when I was leader. And I never will forget it, they started getting a committee together and drawing districts, and the first thing that I learned was that they let Shelby draw his first.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, really?

 

Mr. Henry: And then we all filled in around it yeah. And—

 

Sen. Bailey: I want to interrupt right there, real quick because I represent as a senator, part of Shelby Rhinehart’s old House District. If those that remember the story about the water plant, that was one of Shelby’s babies back then, and there was actually policy put in place that when they sold that water to that utility district up there, they could only sell it for, like, a dollar a thousand.

 

Mr. Henry: To that 7500 people?

 

Sen. Bailey: To that 7500 people. Which was in place as of just a few years ago when we had this crisis. And we found out about that, but that’s how far back his reach went that whenever that was put in place. So.

 

Mr. Henry: The secret that he had, in my opinion, was that he always supported the governor, whoever it was.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, okay.

 

Mr. Henry: He supported Alexander. Of course, he didn’t on the front end, but there was things that he was able to do that—he wasn’t in a district that he was ever in any danger of losing to anybody else; very popular. And he did a lot of things that you needed to be done that you didn’t want to. Retirement is one thing that can get out of hand in 15 minutes, and—because everybody’s coming for a special deal. Well, if you put a retirement program—and I remember when I first went on the retirement program, we were still paying Civil War pensions.

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, wow.

 

Mr. Henry: We had allowed people that were veterans of the Civil War to marry people that were 16 years old when they were 90, and so they continued to draw the pensions. And so—I think we were paying three at that time. John, from Murfreesboro, was chairman of the Finance Committee. But Shelby was able to keep that in tow, and he had a way of not really embarrassing people, but saying, “We can’t do that. We don’t have it.”

 

And that’s one reason why our retirement system is so strong. It’s funded, and we put a certain amount of money into it every year to keep it funded. And I worry sometimes about these people that are retiring from New York and know the financial condition of that city and what’s going to happen to them if they can’t fund their retirement programs.

 

Sen. Bailey: You know, we talk all the time about Illinois and California. I mean, those states have raided their retirement funds. They’ve just keep—

 

Mr. Henry: Exactly.

 

Sen. Bailey: —writing IOUs into them, and you have all of these people that are retiring from their state government, from their local governments, and it’s just not going to be sustainable, especially with so many people leaving there, and they’re losing jobs. And so that is a concern.

 

Mr. Henry: It is. And people are living longer, they’re getting two careers, and we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t turn the faucet wide open to that, or we’re going to end up financial troubles.

 

Sen. Bailey: So, Shelby Rhinehart is one character. And—

 

Mr. Henry: I think that of course, John Wilder was another one, that was very funny; always talked about himself in the third person.

 

Sen. Bailey: I’ve heard some of those stories. You get any stories?

 

Mr. Henry: Well, just um… you’d go in and ask him to do something and he’d say now, “Jim,” he’d say, “John Wilder likes this idea, but the Speaker don’t like it.” And, you know, it took me a while to figure out what he’s talking about. He liked it himself, but he wouldn’t go be for it, you know—

 

Sen. Bailey: As Speaker.

 

Mr. Henry: As Speaker. So, he was an interesting character that would have done anything to have been lieutenant governor. I mean, he would have—and he did. I mean, you know—

 

Sen. Bailey: He could count to 17 better than anybody—

 

Mr. Henry: He could count to 17.

 

Sen. Bailey: —that’s ever held that position.

 

Mr. Henry: Exactly right. I can’t tell you how many times that both sides thought they had him, and they didn’t. But I went to his funeral, and I think there was three or four governors there. That was quite a tribute.

 

I haven’t seen anybody else that was able to do that, but he was one of those conservative West Tennessee Democrats that had the highest regards for his opponents, but he did what he needed to do. And I think he was an interesting character.

 

Sen. Bailey: I had one of our retired news channel two reporters that covered the Hill, Chris Bundgaard, I interviewed him a couple of months ago, and he said when he first came to Nashville, he said he was roaming the halls of the plaza, and said, all of a sudden this gentleman grabs ahold of his arm and pulls him back there into his office. And he said, “What do you want to talk to the Speaker for? What you wanting to interview the Speaker for? He don’t have nothing to say to you.” [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: And so he said it was just a very unique way that he had of dealing with the media.

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah.

 

Sen. Bailey: But it was, like you said, he made very same—always talked in the third person. You know, “What you want to speak to the Speaker for?” But anyone else?

 

Mr. Henry: Well, I’ll tell you, one of the funny stories—and I was here when they removed Ray Blanton from office, but I didn’t know anything about it. I was basking in my glory of just being elected to the State House, and most of us didn’t know anything that was going on and of course—

 

Sen. Bailey: Now, let me ask this question. How many Republicans were there in the House?

 

Mr. Henry: At that time?

 

Sen. Bailey: At that time?

 

Mr. Henry: 38.

 

Sen. Bailey: 38.

 

Mr. Henry: Mm-hm.

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay. 38. All right.

 

Mr. Henry: Now, when we started—when I started, there was 38 and I think we ended up with 43. But we always had to have quite a few Democrats in order to get something done. And one of the—and I’ll just interject this—one of the things that we did was we kind of had an agreement with the leadership that who—whatever you did, there was no surprises. So, if you were going to do something, go up and oppose a bill, then give me a phone call and say we’ve got to oppose that.

 

But if you were going to support it, or if you weren’t going to say anything, you weren’t going to surprise it. We had a meeting at the governor’s mansion, usually, or down here in the Capitol, every Tuesday morning. And the only people who attended that meeting were the leaders, and we talked about the agenda. And everybody kind of gave their side of it; no commitments. And we had a rule that if you wanted to say—if a press asked you, you know, “What happened in the meeting?” You could tell them what you said, but you refer them to the other people about what they said. And so it was a pretty good rule that lasted all those years.

 

Sen. Bailey: Probably something that should maybe even be carried forward today. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: That’s not a bad idea because sometimes you can represent—misrepresent somebody’s stance on something. It’s pretty irritating.

 

Sen. Bailey: A lot of times when the media ask a question, I’ll say, “Well, this senator”—

 

Mr. Henry: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

Sen. Bailey: —“Paul Bailey, views it this way.” Or, “His opinion is this.” And I’m not speaking for the others. But you were saying you were basking in the glory.

 

Mr. Henry: And we just all of a sudden found out that Blanton had been removed from office three days early. And over the years, I’ve found out kind of what happened. Hal Hardin, that you know, was one of the key players in that and Hal knew that they were going to let a bunch of people out of jail with pardons, and they had already, I think, had been signed—not delivered, but they had been signed. He had a meeting with McWherter and Wilder, and I think the two Republican leaders, and the Attorney General.

 

They decided to give Democrats credit for it—they wouldn’t have done it unless they were for it—they decided that they were going to remove him because of what was going to happen, and a lot of scandals in that day. They all turned to McWherter and told him that he needed to be the one that made to call to Blanton to tell him that they were going to—that they had voted, or were going to vote to remove him from office. And so, they got in a room kind of like this, and McWherter sit down and they dialed the residence, and when they did McWherter handed the phone to the Attorney General. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: And the Attorney General had to [laugh] tell him.

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: I did not know that.

 

Mr. Henry: I think that’s pretty funny. But anyway, Blanton refused to [unintelligible 00:56:52]; he didn’t accept it. And he said, “You can’t do this. This isn’t legal.” And I’m not sure it was.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right.

 

Mr. Henry: But it was the right thing to do. And—but I’ll tell you, it was a time of really vast corruption in the state. And I’m so glad they got turned around. And, you know, I think Republicans and Democrats were responsible for turning the page on that.

 

We haven’t been hit by one of those scandals in a long time. And it’s one thing for a broker’s license to be $300 apiece, liquor license to be for sale, pardons and parole, pardons to be $5000. You know, there was a price for everything. And a banking license; if you were going to move a bank to another county, I think that was $5,000.

 

Sen. Bailey: Really?

 

Mr. Henry: But it’s—yeah, it’s a pretty sad commentary. But it also tells you about having a majority for a hundred years, and what—how bad you can let it get into shape and the corruption that can happen. We elected Winfield Dunn in 1969; he took office, and that was the first Republican in 50 years. And Howard Baker was elected I think in ’66, had the endorsement of the NAACP, was very much, but it was all about the Democrat split.

 

And the first time that I knew that there was a Republican majority is when I took a look at Senate vote in, I think it was around 2006, and there had been more people voted for Republican members than there had been Democrat members, yet we only got 14 or 15, 16 votes. And you know that it’s a redistricting war then, and we would work to a certain point, and then you’d have a redistricting and you’d lose ground. And that was frustrating. And I tell you something; that’s the only thing about government that’s really ever disappointed me. There ought to be a better way to do that.

 

And every party that goes in, has some degree of tolerance for playing with the lines I’ll say, but it was—I mean, the legislative district I was elected in was a hundred miles long. And that’s just picking districts that this party can win and the other cant. And that’s not democracy.

 

Sen. Bailey: No. No, I agree with that. I think that we’re going to be faced this year with redistricting, and it’s—there’s so much population that is moved into the middle part of Tennessee—actually thinking about this, Cumberland County being on your western border there in Roane County, and I’m going to say all the way to Dickson County and, kind of, all points in between Cumberland and Dickson County has seen a significant amount of growth as far as population is concerned. Because when you look at numbers, now, West Tennessee, a perfect Senate district is going to be about 211,000 people.

 

I’m currently at 221,000, and I believe it can be plus or minus 5%, but there’s districts—Senate districts—in the west, that only—current districts—it’s only 180-something thousand people in those districts. So, they’re going to have to figure out a way to stretch some of those. And so some districts are going to get bigger, and some are going to get smaller. And, of course, they’re going to shrink here in the middle Tennessee area.

 

Mr. Henry: So, 210 is going to be about the new district?

 

Sen. Bailey: 210 to 211 is going to be the new Senate district. And so, again, I’m currently sitting at 221,000 people and love every one of them. But—and do not want to give up a single county that I represent.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, that area, we took a look at it when we drew Senator Haggerty’s new regions, we put an office there because there’s such growth there that no one’s ever had an office.

 

Sen. Bailey: And let me tell you, Miss Bonnie Warren, that you have there, is absolutely one of the best assistants that you could have gotten to work that office. She is great.

 

Mr. Henry: I got an email from the governor’s office today bragging on how well she was working with them. And that’s what you want. I mean, the elections over for people that need Social Security benefits, or VA, somebody—veteran needing help getting his rightful dues. And we wanted people to be sensitive to it.

 

You can do a lot of things, but you can’t rewrite rules, but you can at least tell people instead of them being hung on and hung on for years trying to get a benefit. You tell them. I mean, they appreciate the truth. And we can’t do anything to change the rules. But if you’re qualified, you deserve it.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right. And as you mentioned, we don’t ask if you called here needing help, whether you’re Democrat or Republican. We make sure. And if you call and it’s a federal issue, we pass that—we in this office—pass that on to either congressman’s office or a U.S. Senate office, and then we do a follow-up to make sure that constituent was taken care of.

 

Mr. Henry: Well, we’ve got a report that I get every week about how many cases we got, what has happened on the cases, how many we got outstanding, and our group has really done good work with this passport issue.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, very good. So, your current job is with U.S. Senator Bill Haggerty, who is—in your position as state director. So basically, how many offices now do you have across the state of Tennessee?

 

Mr. Henry: We have seven offices, which is the most anybody’s ever had. And operating on the same budget. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: Okay, good, good.

 

Mr. Henry: And learned that state [government 01:02:57]. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: But we have seven offices and we’ve got 22 employees. And we’ve got a constituent worker and—two in Nashville and we’ve got one in the other regions. And most of the constituent work comes from here. And also Bonnie does a great deal of it. So, when we’ve got more than we can handle in Nashville, we switch them and let Bonnie or somebody that doesn’t have such a big caseload. And then we’ve got regional people out there on it.

 

I mean, they give me a report every week where they’ve been, and they’ve been very sensitive to people’s problems. And cities have a lot of problems with communications; we want to help cities, we want to help counties. There’s a lot of grants available that they need to know about. Sometimes, you know, that cities and counties don’t apply for the grants that can help them.

 

Sen. Bailey: Right.

 

Mr. Henry: So, I think Senator Yager does a good job in our county. He has all these people that have grants, and he has a grants kind of meeting, and they do about half a day of what kind of grants are available, and how you get them, and who’s eligible for them. Which is very helpful, I think.

 

Sen. Bailey: So. Real quickly, you served with Senator Haggerty in the Haslam administration. So was, again, that one of those phone calls that came in and said, “Jim, we need you to serve.”

 

Mr. Henry: Well, I—the way that happened, I wasn’t involved with the campaign because—for a lot of reasons. I was for him because I knew him, and he’s a smart guy, and had a great background to be a senator in the Economic Community Development. Plus the foreign relationships that he had, you know, when he was ambassador to Japan. But anyway, he came, we put on a little function for him there in Rome County, and as we were walking out to the car, I said, “You know, Senator, you really ought to build the best organization that anybody’s ever had to take care of constituent problems.”

 

And I said, “You know, I’m not saying that anybody hasn’t. I’m not criticizing anybody, but I think that’s be—that could start out as your trademark.” So, after the campaign was over, he called me and I didn’t know what he wanted to talk to me about. So, he called me in his office, here, and of course, I’d known him with the cabinet. He said, “You know, I think that was a great idea, and I’d like for you to do it.” [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: I said, “Oh, my goodness.” So, we did it. We put together seven offices and had all the people hired in about four to six weeks. And they have been really good, and we’ve got a system set up. One my deputy directors, Michael Sullivan—

 

Sen. Bailey: Oh, yeah.

 

Mr. Henry: And Michael is really good at follow up, and he does a great job of tracking.

 

Sen. Bailey: Yeah, I believe you stole him from the state party.

 

Mr. Henry: Fair and square. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: It’s kind of like the water that we got from Georgia.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, it’s got to be [sigh] tough as far as you have been so involved in state government. Obviously, your primary role is to make sure that those seven offices are serving the people of Tennessee and their needs, but I guess my question to you now is, do you think the constituents that your offices are serving, have they lost confidence in the federal government?

 

Mr. Henry: In a lot of ways I think they have. And it’s because of their inability to problem-solve. And the people of this state, they deserve better than what’s going on in Washington. The people of this country do.

 

And if they would worried about the politics and just do things that need to be done, and somehow put that aside. But I don’t know, it just looks like it gets worse to me all the time. And it’s frustrating for us because the real issues that need to be addressed in this country aren’t being addressed. And the immigration issue is terrible.

 

Sen. Bailey: Horrible.

 

Mr. Henry: And it’s going to affect every one of us, in years to come. And not maybe us, but our grandchildren, what that does to our tax system, what that does to change our way of life. You know, I mean I think we’ve got it pretty good here. And I think this is the best country. I don’t see it as a racist country.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, people are trying to get into this country, not trying to get out of it. [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: If you’ve ever been anywhere else, there’s no place like this. And I spent the year in the Orient, in Vietnam, and then I went to Europe, that I was so fascinated, I’m going to Europe, you know? They were like we were in the ’30s, and this was the ’70s that I went. But it’s—you just don’t know how far we’re ahead of the rest of the world until you get out.

 

And the bad thing is that most of the young people, they don’t have that experience of going to the places and seeing what is being raised on the other side of the field. But it’s… this is a land of opportunity. It’s a land of good people. We try to help people. I mean, nobody else—you know what they do for in China, for people with disabilities?

 

They tell you to take them out to the sidewalk, and the government will come by and pick them up. And you never seen them anymore. And even places in Europe that we consider very modern, they have none of those kinds of services for people. It’s really sad. I mean I was in Ireland not long ago, and they were talking about the first public education system was 1952.

 

Well, when was our first public education system? A hundred and fifty years ago? We’ve always had a system, and always it was free. But they were bragging about that. But you won’t talk about something that was purely the English kept them uneducated to where they could populate the world with labor.

 

And the Irish—my people were Scots-Irish. But that was there—they marched them to this country and marched them right across the fertile grounds of Pennsylvania into the mountains to where they could be between the English farmers and the Indians. And of course, when we got in the mountains, we—

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh].

 

Mr. Henry: —got out of control. [laugh]. But I just think we’re lucky to be living in a country where you can—all of us can be successful if we try. And that’s what I was taught. My parents taught me to work hard, pay my debts, and educate my children. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.

 

Sen. Bailey: And I think that that should be everyone’s goal.

 

Mr. Henry: Yes.

 

Sen. Bailey: Especially raising a family. You know, I sense your passion for children with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities, and you’ve spent a lifetime in state government in various levels, but much of that time has been spent trying to ensure that those children have not been left behind, like the ones you’ve described in China. And so I want to thank you for that, and thank you for your service as commissioner of DCS, and DIDD because I tell folks all the time that the Department of Children Services is a tough department. I don’t think that I would have the capacity to be able to work there.

 

It’s not that I don’t want to help the children; that’s what I want to do. But my heart breaks for those children that are in situations that they can’t help. And so, as we close out the program, I’d just like to give you an opportunity to maybe to respond to that. Because I sense your passion in your heart; that’s ultimately your lifelong goal is to make sure that we take care of those children.

 

Mr. Henry: You know, there’s kids all over the state that people don’t think about. There’s kids in Memphis, Tennessee, that get up every morning; they have no idea about what three meals a day are; having a daddy that’s there to guide them; having a mother that’s not on drugs. And then we wonder why these kids—let me tell you something; kids are not naturally mean. I mean, that’s an acquired habit, or that’s from being abused.

 

And if you can somehow turn that around—and that’s one of the things government ought to do—it can do. And it’s the same thing for people with—and kids with intellectual disabilities. I mean, it’s a topic that will dominate your life if you’re involved with it, but if you’re not, it’s not a very important thing. But when you see somebody trying the best they can just to say a word, and putting the effort in, then those kind of people deserve our help. And we’ve recognized that in Tennessee.

 

I think we were one of the leaders for a long time, and still do. But, you know, if everybody would just recognize what parents go through that own the programs and own the responsibility to help these kids, I just think it’d be a giant step forward for us. And really to me, that’s what government’s all about. I mean, it’s about water systems, and school systems, industrial parks, and helping people that can’t help themselves, which are people with disabilities, and kids that need help because they don’t have parents.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, Jim, thank you. Thank you for your service to our country.

 

Mr. Henry: Thank you.

 

Sen. Bailey: Thank you for your service to our great state, and thank you for being my friend. And I appreciate that very much.

 

Mr. Henry: I do too. I appreciate your friendship.

 

Sen. Bailey: One last thing that I remember—and I tell this about you—when you were Deputy Governor I called you one day, and I had a constituent issue and needed the administration’s help on, and I said, “Jim, I’m sorry, to always have to call you and ask you for some help.” And you said, “Paul”—how did you phrase that? You said, “What’s good about having a friend if you can’t call and ask him for a favor?”

 

Mr. Henry: That’s right. [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: [laugh]. I believe you phrased it that way as, “What’s good in having a friend if you can’t call him?”

 

Mr. Henry: If you’ve got a friend and can’t use them, what are they good for? [laugh].

 

Sen. Bailey: That’s right, that’s exactly—“If you got a friend and you can’t use them, what are they good for?” So, I’ve got to remember the exact wording on that, and I thought after you told me that that day, well he’s right. We develop these relationships with one another. And politics is a relationship business; people elect us to come down here and to represent them and represent their needs. And so you’ve got to develop good friendships with people that can meet their needs. So.

 

Mr. Henry: Thank you.

 

Sen. Bailey: Well, thank you again. Thank you very much for being here. You’ve been listening to Backroads and Backstories with Senator Paul Bailey and our special guest, Mr. Jim Henry. Please like and share our podcast, and you can pick us up on any of the shows that broadcast podcasts. Until next time. We’ll see you then.

 

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