Harlan Mathews

Harlan Mathews

Harlan Mathews (* 17th January 1927 in Sumiton , Walker County , Alabama ; † 9. May 2014 in Nashville , Tennessee ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party , of the state of Tennessee in the US Senate represented.

Public office in Tennessee

Originally from Alabama, Mathews studied in his home state at Jacksonville State College , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1949 ; it followed a study of administration at Vanderbilt University in Nashville . He completed this with a master’s degree. He was married and had two sons.

Mathews stayed in Nashville and joined the Tennessee State in 1950. Initially employed in the state administration, he later belonged to the staff of Governors Gordon Browning , Frank G. Clement and Buford Ellington . In 1961 he was appointed to the state government as Commissioner of Finance and Administration . He held this office until 1971; During this time he went to a night school in Nashville to catch his law degree.

After Republican Winfield Dunn assumed governor in January 1971, Mathews left the state cabinet and went into the private sector. He was the vice president of a construction company in Memphis for two years . In 1973 he returned to the state administration and became deputy to longtime chief financial officer (Comptroller) of Tennessee, Bill Snodgrass . The following year he was by the Tennessee General Assembly of Finance (State Treasurer) elected after his predecessor Tom Wiseman had resigned to run for the office of the governor. He stayed in office until 1987.

Senator in Washington

In 1993 he was finally appointed US Senator by Governor McWherter. He took over in Washington, DC , the mandate of the recently alongside Bill Clinton for US vice president elected Al Gore . It was clear from the start that Mathews would only act as a placeholder and would not seek re-election. On the one hand, the appointment was understood as an honor for a long-standing politician; In addition, the governor did not expose himself to the suspicion of pursuing his own party-political goals in the long-term successor to Gore.

So Harlan Mathews stayed mostly in the background during his time; he largely agreed with the policies of President Clinton and the then Democratic majority in the Senate. When it came to the successor within his party, the number of applicants was limited because with Fred Thompson , who enjoyed great popularity as a prosecutor and actor, an opponent on the Republican side that was apparently difficult to defeat. Ultimately, Congressman Jim Cooper was nominated, to whom Thompson was clearly defeated.

Thompson was sworn in back in December 1994 because Harlan Mathews followed the tradition of vacating his seat earlier in the event of a by-election for an unfinished term. He left the Senate as quietly as he had acted there and then joined a law firm in Nashville. He died on May 9, 2014 of a brain tumor.

Web links

• Harlan Mathews in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Short biography on the website of his law firm ( Memento from November 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Cass: Former US Sen. and Deputy Gov. Harlan Mathews this. In: The Tennessean , May 9, 2014.