Longest Serving Speaker?

by Karl Kurtz

The death of former Georgia Representative Tom Murphy, who served for 28 years as Speaker of the House of Representatives, raises the question of whether he was the longest serving speaker ever.  The answer to that is no.  Solomon Blatt, Sr. (photo--sorry, that's the best available resolution) served as speaker of the South Carolina House, 1937-46 and 1951-72, a total of 32 years.  Perhaps Murphy had the most consecutive years, but we can’t confirm that for sure because NCSL doesn't have any records for periods before Speaker Blatt.  “One of the longest-serving speakers ever” is about all we can say for sure about Speaker Murphy.

Are there some legislative archivists or librarians who can disprove claims that Blatt was the longest-serving and Murphy the longest-consecutive-serving?  If so, please add a comment below or send us an e-mail by clicking on "Contact us" in the right column.

And while we're about it, we have to point out that one has to be careful to specify speaker of the house.  Tennessee is the only state that refers to the presiding officer of the senate as "speaker."  By virtue of being elected speaker by the senate, the person who holds this office also serves as lieutenant governor.  John Wilder served as speaker of the Tennessee Senate, 1971-2006, a total of 36 years, thereby surpassing both Blatt and Murphy as "speaker."  Was Wilder the longest-ever presiding officer of a legislature?  We can't answer that for sure either.

Photo credit: http://www.scstatehouse.net/gif/blatt.gif.

Comments

[Lee Posey]

My favorite quote of Speaker Murphy's was: "You done quit legislating and gone to meddling now." The Speaker was always very kind and gentle toward me when I was a legislative neophyte in Georgia.