James_September-October_2026_web - Flipbook - Page 75
overnors come
and go, but the
speaker is always
there,” said Speaker David Ralston
to me one late
December 2021 evening at a downtown Ellijay restaurant. It was a tumultuous time in Georgia politics,
as the state had become ground
zero in the national discourse.
Earlier in the night we had been
at the annual Gilmer County GOP
Christmas banquet. One attendee
had accused Georgia’s longest
Republican speaker of “taking
orders from the governor.” In his
folksy, personable way, Ralston dispatched the accusation with a brief
lesson on the independence of the
Georgia House of Representatives.
To which the crowd of attendees in
his home county applauded.
As we sat there afterward
reflecting on the encounter, the
conversation turned to the last
Democrat to be state House speaker: Tom Murphy. Of course, the
“governors come and go” line was
a famous quote of Murphy’s— one
that I’d heard Ralston mention on
more than one occasion.
It was never a knock on the
governor, but a testament to
Ralston’s deeply held conviction
of the independence of the institution. It was apparent that even
though the political party in control
had changed, Murphy’s blueprint
still served as the basis of how the
House conducted business.
Murphy was a Shakespearean
character, with a duality that placed
him among the most riveting of
Southern politicians of the era. He
was a real life “country lawyer” who
also held court with the likes of Ted
Turner and President Jimmy Carter.
As a child of the Great Depression, Murphy was a tireless advocate for rural Georgians who also, as
former Gov. Roy Barnes would later
say, “...was the best friend Atlanta
ever had.” Indeed, he was the driving force for things like MARTA and
the Georgia World Congress Center
among other Atlanta institutions
that are part of our everyday lives.
Murphy was a fiercely partisan Democrat who would stop at
nothing to keep his party in power,
while saving some of his fiercest
battles for fellow Democrats like
Zell Miller and Pierre Howard.
Known for his trademark white
Stetson and cigar, he was the central figure in Georgia’s emergence
as the “Empire State of the South,”
with Atlanta as the capital and economic driver for a region roaring
back from a century of dormancy.
At the height of his reign it was
said that he could kill legislation
with a glance and bring it back
to life with a nod of the head. Yet,
by the end, he presided over the
demise of 150 years of statewide
Democratic rule. His 2002 General
Election loss coincided with the
dawn of a Republican controlled
era that had once been unimaginable after the Civil War.
Preserving the Record
The preservation of Murphy’s
records began almost immediately
upon his exit from the State House
as he had donated his collection of
papers and artifacts to the University of West Georgia. For the Bremen
native, it was the obvious choice to
be the lasting home of his effects.
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