James Naifeh
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James O. Naifeh (born June 16, 1939), usually known as Jimmy Naifeh, is a Tennessee politician who currently serves as the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives. At 16 years and counting, he is currently the longest serving Speaker of the House in Tennessee history. He is a Democrat.
Naifeh is a second-generation Lebanese-American from Covington, a town north of Memphis. His family was in the grocery business. Following his graduation from the University of Tennessee, Naifeh served in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.
He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976, and has served as Speaker since 1991. Prior to his election as Speaker served in other positions in the Democratic Caucus such as chairman of the Rules Committee, Majority Floor Leader, and chairman of the Rural West Tennessee Democratic Caucus. He represents House District 81, which includes most of Tipton County and all of Haywood County. He is married to Betty Anderson, considered by many Tennessee political observers to be by far the most influential lobbyist in the state. Naifeh's detractors and opponents see this as a conflict of interest. Naifeh's reply is that she has no undue influence over him in any area of legislation and that she had been in that profession for many years before the beginning of a personal relationship between them, so it is hardly as if she entered the field once she married the Speaker as a way of offering access to him.
Naifeh is considered a master of parliamentary procedure and tactics, which is very important in that the Speaker of the House in Tennessee, unlike his national counterpart in Congress, generally personally presides over all sessions of the chamber. He is also regarded as being very partisan, particularly by his Republican opponents, who have long made him a "target" for defeat. In the most recent redistricting, much of the southern portion of Naifeh's native Tipton County, was removed from his district. Many suggest that this was because Memphis suburbanites, who are generally quite conservative and reliable Republican voters with no long-term ties to Tipton County, would vote to replace Naifeh with a conservative Republican. However, he easily defeated retired Air Force colonel Tony Lopez in 2002.
In December 2002, African American physician Dr. Jesse Cannon, a Republican and Naifeh's personal physician, announced that he would oppose Naifeh in 2004. Dr. Cannon counted heavily on support from outside the immediate region and was fairly successful raising campaign funds among affluent Republicans in the Nashville area. In an interesting dynamic to the race, the only other county in the district, added in the most recent redistricting, Haywood County, is Tennessee's only black-majority county. However, on November 2, 2004, Naifeh defeated Cannon rather handily, by a margin of approximately 58% - 42%. The Democratic majority in the Tennessee House was narrowed by the overall statewide outcome of this election and is now down to 53-46. Some pundits suggested shortly after the election scenarios in which another Democrat considered to be less partisan, such as Frank Buck of Dowelltown in Middle Tennessee, could have been elected Speaker if he could get the unanimous support of the Republican minority and the help of a few dissident Democrats from the eastern two-thirds of the state (until January 2007, when state senator John S. Wilder was defeated in his reelection bid for the speakership of the state senate, both houses of the General Assembly had been led by West Tennesseeans since 1973). However, Republican party discipline was totally lacking, when the issue came to a vote (Buck declined to be nominated). Nine Republicans actually joined with all of the Democrats to reelect Naifeh. These Republican members have been warned of the possibility, even the probability, of facing officially-party-endorsed opponents in the August 2006 primary election, should they choose to stand for another term.
