Lang Wiseman, the Memphis native who announced weeks ago that he would be leaving his post as deputy governor to Republican Governor Bill Lee, dropped the other shoe on Monday, when he declared his departure officially as of this coming Friday, December 3rd.
Wiseman, a former University of Tennessee basketball star who went on to get a law degree from Harvard and served for a spell as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, announced that he would not be returning to Memphis but would remain in Nashville (suburban Brentwood, actually) to pursue future opportunities.
Once considered a possible candidate for a now-vacant seat on the state Supreme Court, Wiseman is also rumored to be interested in a possible future appointment as state attorney general. In any case, what he’ll end up doing will be done in Nashville.
That kind of one-way ticket is a fairly customary thing for Memphians who enter the vale of state politics. Perhaps the most famous emigre to the state capital is former Governor Winfield Dunn, who was a Memphis dentist and local Republican activist before his surprise election as Tennessee’s chief executive in 1970.
Dunn would serve a single term before absenting the governor’s office (at the time, the state constitution prohibited Tennessee governors from seeking consecutive terms) and was succeeded in 1974 by Adamsville Congressman Ray Blanton, a Democrat, whose administration would be plagued by scandal.
After waiting out the two terms of fellow Republican Lamar Alexander, Dunn would make another try for the governor’s office in 1986, losing to Democrat Ned McWherter of Dresden. Dunn had meanwhile become a resident of Nashville, where he would remain, making only an occasional return trip to Memphis.
Another Memphian who settled in Nashville was more avid about touching base locally and made several back-and-forth trips on Interstate 40, culminating in an ill-fated one.
This was Bill Giannini, a former chairman of both the Shelby County Republican Party and the Shelby County Election Commission. Giannini, who was then serving as deputy commissioner of the state Department of Commerce and Insurance, was returning to Nashville in 2017 from attending a political fundraiser in Memphis when he was killed in a car crash in Decatur County.
Two other one-time Memphians turned Nashvillians are Tre Hargett and David Lillard, formerly a state representative and a county commissioner, respectively.
For the past several years, Hargett has held the office of Secretary of State and Lillard that of state Treasurer.
In addition to the aforementioned, there are numerous other former residents of the Bluff City who have lingered in the capital city, serving as lobbyists or state functionaries or what-have-you.
And, without mentioning any names, there have been instances of an elected Memphis representative or two who basically ended up as more or less full-time residents of Nashville, making only occasional toe-tap visits — generally at election time — back to a Memphis home address of record.
In state politics, “Go West, Young Man” is effectively reversed more often than not.
