John Shelton Wilder through the 44 years he served

The old lion of the Tennessee legislature has died. Former Lt. Gov. John Wilder, who led the Tennessee Senate longer than anyone in history, died at Baptist Hospital in Memphis early today at age 88, after suffering a stroke at his home earlier this week.

Wilder’s death comes just a year after he finally retired from the seat he held for 44 years, 36 of them as speaker of the Senate and lieutenant governor of Tennessee.

Tennessee may never see his like again.

He was the longest-serving lieutenant governor in the nation. He may, in fact, have been the longest-serving, freely elected legislative leader in the world. He was “Gov. Wilder,” even after he lost his leadership post, even after left his seat.

For four decades, he was a fixed point in a political landscape that shifted around him until it was almost unrecognizable to the old Democrat from Fayette County.
Wilder built his long career on compromise, moderation and an innate sense of fair play. He shared power with Senate Republicans back when his party had a lock on power and there was really no need to do so.

He was a charming, quirky character, prone to rambling speeches and “Wilderisms” — fortune cookie bits of wisdom that left generations of reporters squinting at their notes in confusion.

“The Senate used to go quack quack,” he said once, in a sly reference to senators’ old practice of hiding their vodka out of Donald Duck juice cans during long floor sessions. “The Senate don’t go quack quack no more.”

He battled special interest groups like loan sharks and the price-fixing liquor lobby. A Democrat in the Jeffersonian tradition, he preached against government debt and counseled fiscal responsibility.

In the 1960s, he defied his neighbors and most of the rest of West Tennessee agribusiness interests by encouraging the black tenants on his farms to register to vote. When other farmers drove those sharecroppers out of their fields, Wilder allowed them to camp in his.