ShareHaynes to retire after 28 years in Senate
Lucas L. Johnson IiSen. Joe Haynes announced Friday that he will not seek re-election in 2012, saying a newly redrawn district by Republicans wasn't necessarily a factor in his decision.
However, the Goodlettsville Democrat, who has served in the Senate for 28 years, did note what he called an "interesting symmetry" in the circumstances surrounding his decision to run in 1984 and the one he would face 2012.
"In 1984, the ruling Democratic majority literally changed the district to exclude my home in an attempt to protect a Democratic incumbent," said Haynes, whose district includes large parts of Nashville in Davidson County.
"This year, the ruling Republican majority has radically changed my district in an attempt to draw a district more favorable to a Republican candidate."
He said he still believes he could win.
Haynes, 75, said his "family, a huge stack of unread books and a little-used fishing boat demand my attention now."
Haynes' wife, Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Barbara Haynes, announced her retirement last year after 29 years on the bench. Haynes was part of a failed effort to oust longtime Senate Speaker John Wilder, D-Mason, in 1987. Wilder lost the Democratic nomination, but managed to cobble together a coalition of senators from both sides of the aisle to remain in power.
Haynes challenged Wilder for the Democratic nomination for speaker in 2007, but lost. Wilder's defeat by current Speaker Ron Ramsey was cemented in the full chamber election when the Blountville Republican peeled off the vote of former Democratic Sen. Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville.
Wilder died in January 2010 at age 88.
In 2009, the Tennessee Press Association honored Haynes along with two other state lawmakers and then-Gov. Phil Bredesen for their efforts to improve open government in Tennessee and to make it easier for citizens to navigate the state's open records law.
Haynes in 2008 sponsored a bill seeking to make it a crime for illegal immigrants to accept pay for work done in Tennessee. The bill ultimately failed.
"Everyone knows they come to Tennessee for jobs," Haynes, then the chairman of Senate Democratic Caucus, said at the time. "If we remove the payment for the jobs, we remove the incentive for them to come to Tennessee."
Haynes also voted against guns in bars and placing on the ballot: a proposed constitutional amendment in 2014 to allow the state to impose stricter limits on abortions and a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a measure Tennessee voters overwhelmingly approved in 2006.
Haynes is the fourth Democratic lawmaker to announce he won't run for re-election in the fall.
The others are Rep. Harry Tindell of Knoxville, and Sens. Roy Herron of Dresden and Eric Stewart of Belvidere, who is running for Congress.