Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor next year, entertained about 75 people at Monday evening's meeting of the Greene County GOP with a fast-moving talk and ready answers to questions.

Ramsey noted that he made news this week without intending to, by answering a reporter's question about the confirmation of Appeals Court Judge Sonya Sotomayor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ramsey had already noted his strong support for the Second Amendment Right to bear arms, and his introduction of the right-to-carry bill that he said has improperly been characterized as the "guns in bars" bill.

Ramsey said society has nothing to fear from someone who is willing to take a training course at a firing range test, submit to a background check, be fingerprinted and palm-printed and pay $200 for a carry permit.

He said Tennessee has become the 37th state to allow persons with handgun permits to carry their weapon with them into a restaurant.

Ramsey said he told the reporter that, if he had to vote whether to confirm Sotomayor, he would vote against her, because he believes she has ruled against Second Amendment rights several times.

Before talking on issues, the Blountville native told the audience about his business career and his entry into politics.

"It matters who governs," Ramsey said, and that is the message he has been taking "from Mountain City to Memphis" this summer.

Ramsey reminded the group that he announced his candidacy for governor last winter in Greeneville, at the Republicans' annual Lincoln Day dinner.

During Monday's talk, he said he made the formal announcement here because by the Lincoln Day dinner he had realized that too many people who otherwise would support him were being courted by another candidate.

Without naming Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, former president of Pilot Oil Co., Ramsey said he made the decision to announce his candidacy when he received an invitation to a Haslam fund-raiser held "right here in Greeneville" and saw that some of the people whose names were on the invitation were folks he thought of as "Ron Ramsey people" who might not yet know he was a candidate.

Ramsey said he will have a rally at the Sullivan County Courthouse at 6 p.m. this Thursday, Aug. 6. Between now and then, he will speak in Jackson, Clarksville and Gatlinburg.

Ramsey said there are "good men" seeking the GOP nomination. In addition to Haslam and himself, the other candidates are Shelby County District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a longtime congressman from Chattanooga.

Ramsey said he is the only one of the three who has started and grown two businesses, and the only one that will not need a briefing book on how state government works before taking office.

"I can write the briefing book," the 17-year legislative veteran said.

Ramsey was raised on a dairy farm two miles from Bristol Motor Speedway and still resides there.

He earned a degree in surveying from ETSU, then worked for another surveyor for two years before starting his own firm. Later, he became an auctioneer and real estate broker.

Until starting his campaign for governor, Ramsey was active in both businesses, with the help of his wife, Sindi, plus a daughter and a brother.

Growing up in a family of Democrats, Ramsey said the closest he came to being politically active before the 1990s was putting a Ronald Reagan bumper sticker on his car.

He said that starting a business in the aftermath of the Carter administration helped make him a Republican, but the process was gradual.

Ramsey said he began thinking about running for office while attending a "Realtor's Day on the Hill" in Nashville as president of the Bristol Board of Realtors.

That led to a friendship with former legislator Jim Holcomb. He said Holcomb told a Bristol reporter that Ramsey would be running for the seat he planned to vacate, before Ramsey had even decided on that.

Elected to two terms in the state House of Representatives, Ramsey then was elected to the first of three terms in the Senate, representing Sullivan and Johnson counties.

In 2007, Ramsey became the first Republican speaker of the Senate in 140 years, after raising funds and recruiting GOP candidates through two election cycles. Republicans now hold a 19-to-14 majority in the state Senate.

All of those experiences, he said, have turned out to be invaluable in his current campaign.

In response to a question about campaign spending, Ramsey said that, "unfortunately," only about 600,000 people will vote in next year's Republican primary, which will be held a week from next Thursday.

To win the general election, the Republican nominee will then have to become well known to the state's 6.2 million people to win, Ramsey said, and that will take several million dollars.

Ramsey was prohibited by law from running while the legislature was in session, but stated publicly that he wanted to raise $1 million by the end of June, thinking that he would have more than a month to do that after the end of the session. As it turned out, the session did not end until June 18, but Ramsey was able to raise $1.3 million in the 12 days remaining in June.

Ramsey said he has proved that he wants to give parents more choices in education by introducing a charter schools bill. He called himself "adamantly pro-life," and pro-business.

In his introduction, Republican Chairman Lewis Ricker noted that Tennessee Banking magazine called Ramsey "The best legislator on the Hill" for business.