Senator Richard Burr, from North Carolina, expects to be named Lamar Alexander’s successor as the Senate’s top Republican on the education committee, a source familiar with the senator’s thinking said Friday. A press release from Patty Murray of Washington, the Democratic chair of the committee, on Friday also referred to Burr as the incoming ranking member, or the head of the minority party on the panel.
Burr does not have much of a record on higher education issues, said lobbyists and advocates, who said he will likely not have as great an interest in those issues as Alexander, a former president of the University of Tennessee who retired from the Senate earlier this year.
