Senator Lamar Alexander visited Smithville last Tuesday evening.

The Senator was in town to speak at the DeKalb Republican Party's annual Reagan Day Dinner, but made some time to speak to the local press before the event. Among the topics discussed were the recent terror attacks in Belgium, education, and the nomination of a new justice on the United States Supreme Court.

When asked his opinion of whether to approve the president's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent death, Judge Merrick Garland, Alexander said that he felt that the next commander in chief should choose someone to fill the position.

“This debate is not about Judge Garland,” the senator said. “It’s about whether to give the American people a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. I believe it is reasonable to give the American people a voice by allowing the next president to fill this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Under our Constitution, the president has the right to nominate, but the Senate has the right to decide whether to consent at this point in a presidential election year. Senator McConnell is only doing what the Senate majority has the right to do and what Senate Democrat leaders have said they would do in similar circumstances.”

On the subject of the Brussels terrorist attacks, Alexander said that a recent law should make it easier to be proactive in such situations.

“We are reminded far too often that terrorists remain committed to attacking our way of life through evil acts such as those in Brussels. The American people stand with the people of Belgium today,” He said.

“What happened in Brussels is a sobering event, and it makes even more important the law that we passed this last year on terrorism that allows our government, if it gets permission from a court, to listen in on telephone conversations that might come from Brussels to Smithville or Afghanistan to Nashville and if there is a suspicion that there is terrorist activity, if we have gotten court approval of the seriousness of it, we should be able to find that out and take some action before a terrible event like that happens in our country,” the senator continued. “We've already had some, but obviously we have people around the world who are so evil that they care nothing about destroying innocent lives.”

Alexander, who is also the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said that he considers the end of the Common Core mandates from the federal government during his tenure in the senate an important accomplishment.

“When I was campaigning for re-election,” he said, “I told Tennessee voters that if they would re-elect me to the Senate that I would end the federal Common Core mandate, and that’s exactly what we did in this Republican congress. The federal Common Core mandate is history. It's over. Done with. Gone. It's got a stake through its heart. It's up to Tennessee and school teachers and school boards what academic standards ought to be in our state. That's a good step forward in the right direction.”

When asked if he had any advice for voters this election season, the senator said that he would not dream of telling Tennesseans how to vote, but did recommend that voters cast ballots that count.

“I learned a long time ago that Tennessee voters make up their own minds, and they didn't elect me to tell them how to vote,” Alexander shared. “I think, particularly in presidential races, that people should make up their own minds. One thing we Republicans have to remember is that it’s not enough to nominate somebody that we agree with. We've got to get somebody we agree with and who can get a majority of the voters, or Hillary Clinton is going to appoint the next Supreme Court Justice and we're not going to be able to repeal and replace Obamacare."

Alexander was born in Maryville, and is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and New York University School of Law. He served as Senator Howard Baker’s legislative assistant, and was an assistant in the Nixon Administration in the late 1960s.

His a former Tennessee governor, first elected in 1978, then reelected for a second term in 1982. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education, from 1991 to 1993. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Alexander is now serving his third term in the senate.