NASHVILLE, Tenn. — With voters choosing Republican Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday to follow him, Gov. Bill Lee now enters the final stretch of eight years as Tennessee’s 50th governor. Term limits kept him off the ballot, and his time in office runs out on Jan. 16, 2027.
Lee came into office on a wide margin, taking 59.6% in 2018, and widened it to 64.9% when he won a second term in 2022. He took his second oath on Jan. 21, 2023.
Economic recruiting is the centerpiece of his record. His administration landed Ford’s BlueOval City in Haywood County and the first U.S. operation of Korea Zinc, split between Clarksville and Gordonville, and pushed nuclear energy and manufacturing growth around Oak Ridge.
In schools, Lee replaced the decades-old Basic Education Program with the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement formula starting in the 2023-24 school year. The model gives each student base funding, adds weighted dollars for specific needs and pays bonuses tied to performance. He also signed the ELVIS Act in 2024, aimed at shielding musicians from unauthorized AI copies of their work, along with permitless handgun carry and an expanded deadly force law covering property crimes.
On public safety he funded more than 100 additional Highway Patrol troopers and updated training for hundreds of school resource officers.
His Education Freedom Scholarships, the school voucher program, drew the loudest opposition from educators and public school advocates, and some lawmakers have flagged its growth as a budget risk. Rural health care was another sore spot, with an August report finding more than a third of rural hospitals in the state at risk of closing.
Executions shadowed his final years. Lee halted them in 2022 over untested lethal injection drugs, the state resumed in 2024 under a protocol cut to 44 pages, and after a failed execution in September despite two doses of pentobarbital he paused them again and ordered an independent review.
Blackburn, who will be the 51st governor and the first woman to hold the job, takes over a state where those debates remain open.
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