Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call.
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled.
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.
For the times they are a-changin’
– Bob Dylan
It can take generations for politicians to be held accountable for the consequences of their actions. Most live comfortable, consequence-free lives, which makes the blowback Tennessee Republicans are experiencing as a result of their tepid “thoughts and prayers” response to the March 27 Covenant School shootings all the more striking.
Early Wednesday (4/12/23) afternoon in downtown Memphis, 28-year-old Justin Pearson took a crowd of supporters to church on the courthouse steps after Shelby County Commission appointed him to fill the state House seat that the Republican supermajority had kicked him out of the week before. His colleagues Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson were with him, just as they had been when they took to the well of the House to acknowledge the gallery full of student protesters who were demanding a real response to the Covenant School shooting where three 9-year-olds and three adults were murdered by a killer with an assault rifle. The Republican supermajority were particularly ticked off at Pearson for bringing a bullhorn into the House chamber.
Pearson’s old boss, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, was there to celebrate, too. Pearson is a former Cohen intern and is widely considered to be a likely successor to Cohen when he retires from Congress.
This isn’t all about guns, of course. Race is an issue, too.
Jones and Pearson are Black. Johnson, who is white, escaped expulsion by a single vote, which is fortunate for her since there is no chance the Republican-dominated Knox County Commission would have appointed her to fill the District 90 House seat that she won by a 14 percent margin last year. She’s been an irritant to the establishment for years. But the optics of the expulsions were awful, and Tennessee Republicans have been forced to defend themselves against charges of racism for a solid week, with no end in sight.
There was a similar celebration in Nashville on Monday (4/10/23) after that city’s Metro Council returned Jones to his seat. Both he and Pearson must run in special called elections within 90 days. Taxpayers will foot the bill.
The Tennessee Three
Many Tennessee Republicans who spent Easter weekend watching the Tennessee Three being celebrated on national TV believe that this exercise was quite unnecessary.
But the Tennessee Three are having a large time. They were on their way to New York City Sunday afternoon when they ran into Joan Baez in the Nashville airport. A video of Jones and Baez singing “We Shall Overcome” is making the rounds on the internet. They were on Good Morning America Monday morning before returning to Nashville where Jones was appointed to his seat on Monday afternoon. He was back in the House Monday night. Rarely have the wheels of justice ground so swiftly or so jubilantly.
Meanwhile, one of the stories that has been dragged into the spotlight is the House rule that allows bills to be killed in committee by voice vote where the will of the majority is determined by the ear of the committee chair. One such vote killed off a bill that would encourage 18-year-olds to vote. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. A supermajority is as good as those who own it.
The Wall Steet Journal was the only mainstream media outlet that attempted to defend the supermajority’s actions with an editorial slugged “Who’s undemocratic in Tennessee? The lawmakers with the bullhorn? Or those who voted to expel them?”
On Saturday morning, CNN host Michael Smerconish, a centrist Republican, mounted defense of the supermajority’s actions by throwing the WSJ headline out to his audience as a survey question without explaining that the highly gerrymandered Tennessee House is an autocracy where Republicans outnumber Democrats 73-26, giving them the 2/3 vote (66) needed to suspend the rules plus 7.
Smerconish seemed to think his survey result was going to be a close call, but when he announced the totals at the end of his hour-long show, 91 percent of those who responded said the lawmakers who voted to boot the three Democrats from their ranks were the undemocratic ones. Smerconish appeared to be astonished. Maybe he was faking it, but I was astonished at his astonishment, and surprised that the vote was even that close.
While the Tennessee Three were having a big time in the Big Apple, Speaker Sexton was getting calls from investigative reporters who wanted to know where he lives. Turns out that he vacated his Cumberland County district more than a year ago, despite collecting hefty amounts of mileage and per-diem pay reserved for legislators who live at least 50 miles from the capitol. We will probably hear about the Speaker’s other perks – like his state-paid chauffeur – at another time.
And there’s Gov. Bill Lee, who has heretofore not even blinked while signing legislation making it easier to for anyone with a pulse to buy and carry any kind of firearm wherever they want without a permit or background check. On Thursday he signed an executive order that he’s calling an “order of protection” to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous felons. He is also asking legislators to pass a red flag law (without calling it a red flag law, of courses) to take guns away from repeat offenders. He was unwilling to support these basic gun safety measures before the Tennessee Three made the scene.
The gun lobby will be most annoyed at losing even this slight bit of privilege.
Speaking of people who are annoyed, I’ve been talking to a lot of Republicans this week, and every single one of them says Sexton has blown any chance he had to become Tennessee’s next governor. I’ve also talked to Democrats who are excited about the prospect of chipping away at the Republican supermajority, which gives the GOP the veto-proof right to pass any kind of law their favorite lobbyists request (e.g., the no exceptions abortion law).
Some on both sides of the aisle are wondering if Sexton will survive as speaker. Republicans are calling him a dumbass.
It’s not just one or two Republicans saying these things. And it’s not just the usual “RINO” outsiders. There is a widespread belief that Sexton and his “leadership” team exercised poor judgment after the murders at Covenant School. They are being blamed for making the state GOP look like a bunch of racist rubes while transforming three previously little-known Democratic state legislators into the rock stars known as the Tennessee Three.
Meanwhile, Pearson was sworn into his once and future House seat on the steps of the state Capitol. The Tennessee Three are officially back in the People’s House.
Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.