Jim Henry (politician)

James M. Henry (born February 22, 1945 in Jefferson City, Tennessee), generally known as Jim Henry, was minority leader in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1981 to 1986, and a 2002 candidate for the Republican Party nomination for governor of Tennessee, losing the primary election to U.S. Representative Van Hilleary, who in turn lost the subsequent general election to Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen. Henry is currently in business providing services to the developmentally disabled and troubled children as President and CEO of Omni Visions, Inc. In December 2010, Tennessee governor-elect Bill Haslam chose Henry to be the commissioner of the new state department of Intellectual Disabilities.^[1]

As a young man, Henry attended Hiwassee College and the University of Tennessee and served with distinction in the Vietnam War. Subsequent to his military service, Henry became active in veterans' issues and in the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He also became politically active, first serving as a city councilman in Kingston, Tennessee in 1971 at the age of 26.

Henry remained on the Kingston Council for two years and then served as mayor of that city until 1978. He also became active in Republican circles (although the mayoralty of Kingston is a technically non-partisan office), rising relatively rapidly to be chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

In 1980, Henry was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives from the 32nd District, in traditionally-Republican Roane County, of which Kingston is the county seat. In his first term, he served as chair of the Republican caucus, and upon his re-election in 1982 was made minority leader, in which position he served three two-year terms. During this time, Henry rode back and forth to sessions of the Tennessee General Assembly in Nashville with two famously partisan Democrats, state Senator Anna Belle Clement O'Brien and state Representative Tommy Burnett, and has stated that he learned from the experience that the vast majority of issues facing Tennessee are not particularly of a partisan nature or amenable to purely partisan solutions.

In 1989, Henry was appointed to the powerful Fiscal Review Committee, but in 1990 was narrowly defeated for a seventh term in the House by Dennis Ferguson, who still represents the 32nd District as of 2006. A combination of factors including a well known Republican, John Smith running as an Independent and low voter turnout led to Henry's narrow defeat. Afterward, Henry began to devote the majority of his efforts to his business working with the developmentally disabled (one of his own children suffers from a developmental disability) and reaching out to children affected by drug abuse.

In 2001, Henry was approached by state Republican leaders identified largely with the Sundquist Administration and the party's moderate wing with the intention of encouraging him to run for governor the next year. Henry agreed, despite facing long odds due to the party's increasing conservatism and the relative popularity of Fourth District U.S. Representative Van Hilleary, who had far superior name-recognition, in part due to the unusual configuration of his Congressional district, which at the time stretched from Virginia to Mississippi. Henry made every effort to run a statewide race, but was swamped in the August 2002 primary by Hilleary by a margin of about two to one, carrying only Roane and one adjacent county while Hilleary carried the other 93. Hilleary took Henry's challenge very seriously — too seriously, according to Hilleary critics — spending much money which others felt needed to be saved to use against Bredesen in the general election and needlessly alienating Henry's supporters, several of whom subsequently supported Bredesen or remained neutral, causing Hilleary's margin in East Tennessee to be less than that traditionally needed by Republicans to have a chance in statewide elections and helping lead to his defeat by Bredesen by a fairly narrow margin.

In 2005, Henry was again approached by some Republican leaders to run for governor, especially when it began to appear likely that no prominent Republican would challenge for the nomination to oppose Bredesen and that the nomination could go to a relative political unknown or perennial candidate. However, Henry quickly refused to mount a second gubernatorial run at the time. (Some Republicans' fears regarding the election were later allayed by the candidacy of state Senator Jim Bryson.) Henry has promised to remain a loyal Republican supporter but has stated that he sees it as being in the best interest of his family at this time to avoid campaigning for elected office at the present.

Jim Henry is no relation to 1990 Tennessee Republican gubernatorial nominee Dwight Henry but is sometimes confused with him as both have been Republican candidates for governor of Tennessee, and both served in the Tennessee House of Representatives at the same time from nearby districts. Henry is from a family rich in political history. He is related to former Gov. Peter Turney of Winchester (1893–1897) and former Speaker of the Senate John Fotch Henry of Knoxville.

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