WASHINGTON — In harshly worded speeches on the Senate floor Thursday, Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker blasted Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for holding up the confirmation votes of two Tennessee Valley Authority board members.

Sen. Reid has protested a lack of Democrat nominees by President Bush for TVA’s nine-member board, but the Tennessee Republican senators said the majority leader’s actions are crass partisanship.

“I think it’s a tremendous diminishment of the Senate to have the majority leader say that he absolutely is not going to bring TVA appointments to the floor because they’re not Democrats,” Sen. Corker said. “It diminishes him, it diminishes this body and it diminishes all of us who serve in it.”

Sen. Reid’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The re-appointments of Bishop Graves of Memphis and Susan Williams of Knoxville to the public utility’s board has been up in the air for months because of the partisan spat.

Of the nine members on the board, only one, Skila Harris, is a Democrat, and her term expires May 18.

Sen. Reid sent a letter to Sen. Alexander in mid-April, criticizing President Bush’s continued nominations of Republicans to the board.

“Given the inadequacy of bipartisan representation on the TVA ... I do not support proceeding with further TVA confirmations at this time,” Sen. Reid wrote.

In a biting response that presaged his floor speech, Sen. Alexander wrote back to Sen. Reid on Wednesday, saying the majority leader is “trying to change seventy-five years of law and custom” that do not dictate which political party the nominees come from.

In addition, Sen. Alexander wrote, the hold-up of Mr. Graves’ confirmation is an “insult” to Memphis and “an affront to more than one and a half million African Americans in the seven-state TVA region.”

Mr. Graves is the first Memphian and black to serve on the board.