Joseph E. Armstrong started down the political path as Knox County’s youngest commissioner in 1982, moved on to positions of power and influence at the state Legislature under Democratic rule, then – after Republicans gained control of the General Assembly – gained national prominence as president of the National Caucus of Black State Legislators.
At age 58, his two-year term as NCBSL president ended in January of this year and he had settled into a legislative role as an often-outspoken advocate for minority viewpoints who was nonetheless willing to work with majority Republicans on many business-related matters as a respected senior state lawmaker.
Elected to represent House District 15 in 1988, he is tied with House Speaker Beth Harwell and Deputy Speaker Steve McDaniel, both Republicans, for being the House’s most senior member after election to 14 two-year terms.
He won his seat by defeating former Rep. Pete Drew, who was elected as a Democrat but switched parties to become a Republican in a district that included most of Knoxville’s black population, then and now. He had just over 55 percent of the vote in defeating Drew.
As a county commissioner, Armstrong rose to become vice chairman of the Knox County commission. As a legislator in the days of Democratic dominance, he became chairman of the House Health and Human Resources Committee at a time when the panel was involved in legislation that implemented TennCare and many other measures that laid a foundation for today’s laws on state health care. He held the same role years later when Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen moved to reduce enrollment in TennCare – a move he opposed and, in the process, helped cause some modifications before the cuts took place.
Armstrong also served a term as chairman of the Black Caucus in Tennessee’s Legislature. He has been a delegate to Democratic National Conventions.
Armstrong was appointed by President Obama to the White House Health Task Force on Health Reform in 2009, a part of the president’s efforts toward developing, implementing and enactment of the Affordable Care Act. In this year’s legislative session, he made several speeches in support of Gov. Bill Haslam’s Insure Tennessee proposal to expand Medicaid in the state that was killed by the GOP majority.
Armstrong held the House Health committee chair during the time when the alleged events occurred that led to Wednesday’s indictment on fraud and tax evasion charges tied to an increase in the state’s cigarette tax, enacted in 2007 at the urging of then-Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Armstrong had long advocated higher cigarette taxes, declaring as Health Committee chairman that anything reducing consumption would promote health. A year before Bredesen’s tax increase was approved, he was sponsor of a bill raising the cigarette taxes with revenue earmarked for lowering the state sales tax on food. After Bredesen’s bill passed, he declared the 42-cents-per—pack increase “should have been a dollar.”
Armstrong’s wife, LeTonia, is a longtime lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies. For years, she represented Abbott Laboratories in Tennessee and other southeastern states. The company split into two division in 2011 and LeTonia Armstrong continued a regional lobbyist for one of them, AbbVie – though she stopped registering as a lobbyist in Tennessee Legislature in 2012, records indicate, while continuing to represent Abbvie in other states.
The youngest of eight children born in Knoxville to Charles Louie and Pauline Armstrong, he graduated from Holston High School. Armstrong has described his father as a devoutly religious man.
He was previously married to Alethia Armstrong, who when he first ran for the House in 1988 was a research analyst for the Senate State and Local Government Committee, then chaired the late former Sen. Avon Williams, D-Nashville. Armstrong has three children by that marriage.
Armstrong has had multiple business interests, ranging from insurance and banking to serving as chairman of the board for TenGasco, a natural gas distribution company.
He is the owner of Knoxville radio station WJBE, through a limited liability company called Arm & Rage. He bought the statin bought two years ago when it was known as WWAM and then changed the “call sign” to WJBE – the name used by a past Knoxville station established by the late famed soul singer James Brown. Under Brown, those letters stood for James Brown Enterprises.
Armstrong was a sales representative for WJBE in the late 1970s while attending the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he graduated with a degree in business administration in 1981.
He has been active in many civic organizations, ranging from the Boys and Girls Club to the Optimist Club and from the NAACP to the Beck Cultural Center. He is a trustee of the Zion A.M.E. Church.
Armstrong has accumulated a pile of awards over the years, including being named twice as “legislator of the year” by the NCBSL and once by the Tennessee Association of Human Resource Agencies along a “humanitarian” award from the Tennessee chapter of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World.
His tenure as a legislator has not been without previous controversy, perhaps most notably from the national attention perspective when he in 2011 he objected to the University of Tennessee selling breath mints – marketed as “Disappoinmints” – mocking President Obama. After his objections, UT took the product off the shelves. Armstrong subsequently said he’d made a mistake in the matter.
This session, Armstrong led a lonely and unsuccessful effort to mandate seat belts on school buses after a fatal accident involving two buses in Knoxville. Members of the Republican majority opposed the move as too costly for school systems.
But he often worked with Republicans on other issues, particularly involving business and little-noticed quirks in state law. For example, he and former Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, jointly and successfully sponsored a bill legalizing cosmetologists to give manicures to the disabled at their homes – as opposed to prior law that said manicures could only be provided at a licensed place of business.
In general, Armstrong has a reputation of a crafty, amiable lawmaker with a sense of humor, always aligning with fellow Democrats on social issues but willing to talk compromise.
Says the NCBSL press release announcing his election as president in 2013:
“Rep. Armstrong stresses political participation on all levels of government, believing it is the one true way to improve the quality of life and assure freedom and equality for all. He is often quoted as saying, “Voting is our choice of hope.”
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Note: This is the unedited version of an article written for the Knoxville News Sentinel.