Chris Devaney

Chris Devaney grew up in a small town in Texas where he learned from an early age the values that would later shape his career. It was also here that Chris first saw the power of grassroots Republican politics when he watched his parents help lead a small local party into the majority by leading with principle and never giving up. By the time Chris attended the University of Oklahoma, where he earned a bachelor’s of arts degree in Political Science, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in the public arena. Upon graduation, he began what he thought may be a career in journalism and eventually went to Washington with NBC Radio News. Chris, however, wanted to be more directly engaged in promoting conservative values, so he left journalism to work for the United States Senate Republican Conference where he performed media relations. In 1994, Chris came to Tennessee to help a Nashville attorney by the name of Fred Thompson win a seat in the United States Senate. Chris stayed with Senator Thompson and worked for him both in Tennessee and Washington. He has said many times that this experience working with Senator Thompson gave him an insight into principled leadership that continues to guide him today. Chris later applied the skills he had gained by becoming the Executive Director of the Tennessee Republican Party. Under his leadership of the Party’s political operation, Devaney played an important role in helping to elect United States Senator Bob Corker in 2006 and set the stage statewide for what would become the historic State Senate elections of 2006 and State House elections of 2008. Following Senator Corker’s election in 2006, Chris was asked to join the Senator as his State Director. As with his time with Senator Thompson, Chris took this as an opportunity to be on the front lines of where Republican principles and sound public policy meet and to learn first hand what effective leadership truly means. On May 30, 2009, Chris Devaney was elected as the Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. Chris and his wife Heather live in Chattanooga with their four children and attend Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church.