Tennessee House Majority Whip Johnny Garrett Remarks on ‘Successful’ 2025 Legislative Session

Tennessee House Majority Whip Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) reflected on the recently-adjourned 2025 legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly during a conversation Friday with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy where he applauded state lawmakers for their “successful” work, specifically when it came to passing a “good conservative budget.”

On Tuesday evening, Tennessee state legislators moved to adjourn this year’s legislative session, marking the official end of the 2025 session of the 114th Tennessee General Assembly which saw over 600 bills passed and become law.

State legislators also moved to pass Governor Bill Lee’s proposed $59.5 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which Garrett pointed out allocates over $325 million for Tennessee’s public education system and over $1 billion for infrastructure.

“We passed a good conservative budget. We instituted choice for parents while also investing over $325 million in our public education system, which includes pay raises for our teachers. We’ve invested in our infrastructure as getting people from A to B is highly important in this state,” Garrett explained on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

“I’m excited about what we got done this year for our budget purposes and for all Tennesseans. It’s a good, conservative budget,” Garrett added.

Garrett, who was elected to the Tennessee House in 2018 and has remained in the role uncontested by another Republican challenger since, went on to discuss his role as majority whip, explaining that his primary jobs are to manage campaign efforts for the Republican caucus and track vote counts on legislation.

“I’ve got two roles. One is I’m the head of our campaign committee for our caucus. So when it’s election time, our caucus will be involved in certain races that we think are competitive in the general race, which will be next November, and I head up those efforts to make sure we bring our guys and gals back in 2026,” Garrett said.

“Then, on the other side, I’ll also handle where our votes are on particular pieces of legislation…I appoint several deputy whips to help me count the votes on the floor…we go ask the members where they are. We don’t try to convince them, we just say, ‘Hey, where are you on this particular piece of legislation’ so I can get an accurate vote count to the sponsor of the legislation or the leadership,” Garrett added.

Addressing the symbolic nature of the “whip” title, Garrett stressed that his role does not involve coercion and instead focuses on facilitating communication and ensuring accuracy in the legislative process.

“Obviously, the whip is symbolic. It’s the name of my particular office. Some people have, for whatever reason, problems with that,” Garrett said.

“The only thing that I make sure my team of whips do is that they need to know the piece of legislation…and they don’t express their opinions on it. We’re not trying to sway [members], we’re literally just trying to understand where their vote is…We just really need to know so we can get an accurate vote count of whether or not the vote needs to actually go forward to a vote,” Garrett added.

Watch the interview:

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “State Rep. Johnny Garrett” by Johnny Garrett.