John Shelton Wilder

Wilder died early on the morning of January 1, 2010 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis following a stroke on December 28, 2009. He was survived by his younger brother Wiggins Wilder; his two sons: Shelton (John Jr.) and David; his four grandchildren: John III, Joseph, Jarod, and Whitney; and his five great-grandchildren: Jess (John IV), Suzie, Russell, Ansel and Marcel.

Unlike many lieutenant governors, particularly in other states, Wilder never ran for governor. In 2009 he said that he had wanted to run for governor in 1974, but had been talked out of it by his family, and was "glad I stayed where I was because the Senate is the Senate."

In February 2008, the 2007-08 edition of the Tennessee Blue Book was dedicated to him.

On March 20, 2008, Wilder announced his decision not to run for re-election later that year.

However, in the vote held on January 9, 2007, all 17 Republicans voted for Ramsey and were joined by Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, ending Wilder's tenure as Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee.

On March 8, 2007, the Tennessee news media reported that Wilder had been seriously injured in a fall and was in intensive care in a hospital in Memphis. He was released from the hospital on March 11, 2007, and returned home to finish his recuperation.

Following the November 2006 elections, the Republican Party retained a one-seat majority in the Tennessee Senate. However, Republicans who had supported Wilder in the past, particularly Williams, found themselves under severe pressure to adhere to party discipline, with even the threat of officially-endorsed primary opponents, unprecedented for Tennessee Republicans, for those who failed to comply with the party line, according to a series of columns by Tennessean columnist Larry Daughtrey. Wilder was challenged within the Democratic caucus for nomination as speaker by State Senator Joe Haynes of Nashville. Later articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper cited the possibility that all 16 Republicans might vote for Senator Ron Ramsey of Blountville and that 16 Democrats, including Wilder himself, would vote for Wilder, with Democratic State Senator Jerry Cooper, accused of wrongful business dealings with a bank controlled by Wilder, abstaining to prevent any appearance of conflict of interest. Under Senate rules, a 16–16 tie would result in Wilder's retention of the speakership.

After this, Wilder, until 2005, continued to be reelected "unanimously" and to award chairmanships to his supporters in both parties, making the Tennessee Senate one of the few legislative bodies in the world to be elected on a partisan basis, but organized on a more-or-less nonpartisan one. Even when two outgoing state Senators switched parties in the mid-1990s, giving the Republicans a short-lived one-seat Senate majority, nothing of consequence changed.

Two Republican members of the Tennessee State Senate – enough to assure Wilder's reelection provided his traditional unanimous Democratic support in recent years – voted for Wilder on January 11, 2005, and he was sworn in for his 18th term as lieutenant governor. (One of them, Micheal Williams, was then rewarded with the post of Speaker pro Tempore.) Wilder then appointed Republican majorities to seven of the nine committees but left the five existing Democratic chairmen in place; this resulted in Democratic majorities and chairs on two committees, including what is regarded as the most important one, the Finance Committee, which left many Republicans very upset.

However, in a surprise (but not entirely unprecedented) move, Wilder was then nominated by the Republican Caucus for Lieutenant Governor. With the support of all 15 Republicans in the chamber, and six dissenting Democrats, Wilder won the vote 21 – 15 and then proceeded to organize the Senate on a "bipartisan" basis, awarding a majority of the committee chairmanships to his Democratic loyalists with the remainder going to the Republicans. This was not out of character for Wilder; in 1979 he had acquiesced in the ouster of Governor Ray Blanton three days before his term was supposed to end after a series of controversial pardons. The state constitution is somewhat ambiguous on when a governor is supposed to be sworn in, so Wilder and his counterpart in the State House, Ned McWherter, supported the early swearing-in of his Republican successor, Lamar Alexander. Wilder called the move "impeachment, Tennessee style."

Wilder was elected Speaker of the State Senate by his fellow Senators in January 1971, which made him the state's Lieutenant Governor. Under the Tennessee state constitution, the Speaker of the Senate is first in line of succession to the governorship. The title of Lieutenant Governor was granted to the Speaker of the Senate by statute in 1951.

Wilder did not run for reelection in 1960, but returned to the state Senate in 1967. After this time, a state constitutional amendment extended the length of terms in the state Senate to four years. Wilder was elected to a four-year term in 1968 and was reelected every four years thereafter until 2008. He represented Senate District 26, which currently included Chester, Crockett, Fayette, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, McNairy, and Wayne counties.

He was a member of the former Fayette County Quarterly Court (now the County Commission) for 18 years. A Democrat, he was first elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1958, serving until January 1961.

Wilder married his wife Marcelle in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

John Shelton Wilder (June 3, 1921 – January 1, 2010) was an American politician who was the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee for 36 years from January 1971 to January 2007, possibly the longest time anyone has served as Lieutenant Governor or a similar position in the history of the United States. He was a Tennessee state senator from 1959 to 1961 and again from 1967 to 2009. Tennesseans do not elect their lieutenant governor; rather, the Speaker of the Senate, who is first in the line of succession to the governor, is granted the title by statute.

Wilder defied precedent by seeking to serve as lieutenant governor for an extended period. Previously, no one had served more than three consecutive terms as Speaker of the Senate since Tennessee's current constitution was adopted in 1870. He faced little opposition until the mid-1980s. By then, many of the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus had tired of his leadership. There were also regional issues at stake – by this time the speakers of both houses of the legislature had been from West Tennessee for almost two decades. The dissident faction coalesced around the leadership of State Senate Majority Leader Riley Darnell from Clarksville in Middle Tennessee. When Darnell received the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in 1987, Wilder's long tenure as Lieutenant Governor appeared to be over.