Bill Lee

William Byron Lee (born October 9, 1959) is an American businessman and politician who has served since 2019 as the 50th governor of Tennessee. A member of the Republican Party, Lee was president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Lee Company, a business operated by his family, from 1992 to 2016. In 2017, Lee described himself as a social conservative. As governor, he has signed bills to ban abortion in Tennessee, mask mandates, and ranked-choice voting; to allow guns to be carried without a permit, create school voucher programs, and increase penalties for protest-related offenses. Lee signed Tennessee's "bathroom bill", as well as a bill that assures continued taxpayer funding of faith-based adoption agencies that exclude LGBT people for religious reasons, and the Adult Entertainment Act, which banned drag shows in public until a federal court ruled it unconstitutional. Early life and career William Byron Lee was born on October 9, 1959. He was raised on his family's cattle farm started by his grandparents in Franklin, Tennessee, the Triple L Ranch; the family raises Hereford cattle. Lee is a seventh-generation Tennessean. After graduating from Franklin High School in his hometown, Lee entered Auburn University in 1977 and graduated in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. In college, Lee was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity known at the time for its use of Confederate imagery, and a photo printed in the university's 1980 yearbook shows Lee in a Confederate military uniform at the fraternity's "Old South" party. In 2019, after his attendance came to light, Lee expressed regret for his participation: "I never intentionally acted in an insensitive way, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that participating in that was insensitive and I've come to regret it."