Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton is terrible. Everyone knows it, but Democratic Rep. Justin Jones is doing something about it. He’s calling for a vote of no confidence in Sexton, and he has some very good reasons, including Sexton’s role in ousting Jones and fellow state Rep. Justin Pearson from the Legislature, a move Jones said “[led] our state down the path to failure, humiliation and authoritarianism.” (Voters reinstated the two as fast as humanly possible/legally allowed.)
It’s not all personal, though. Jones points out that Sexton has misrepresented his residency — sort of a big deal. Sexton claimed he lives in Crossville but he reportedly resides in Nashville, which is a lovely city but is outside his district. Jones suggests that Sexton defrauded taxpayers by accepting the per diem to travel from Crossville, where he doesn’t live, to the capitol building in Nashville, where he has a house that he bought on the down low through an anonymous trust (just like all your perfectly respectable business transactions).
Jones also called out Sexton for failing to hold Rep. Scotty Campbell accountable after an internal investigation concluded Campbell had violated the Tennessee General Assembly workplace policy on discrimination and harassment. (Campbell would later vote to expel Jones, Pearson, and Gloria Johnson.)
Jones accused Sexton of limiting citizens’ ability to participate in debates. Sexton, who’s called peaceful protests “insurrections,” forbids onlookers from bringing signs into the capitol (although guns are still allowed) and has literally closed off areas of the capitol to everyone but lobbyists. That’s very Boss Hogg of him.
Jones himself is the living proof that Sexton continues to silence House members who disagree with him. Monday, Sexton forced a vote that gagged Jones for the remainder of the legislative day and ordered the public removed from the gallery. Jones was apparently speaking “off topic,” and of course Sexton controls what’s “on topic.” For instance, Jones was ruled “off topic” merely for disagreeing with a “gun safety” bill that would’ve just put more cops in schools.
Jones told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night that he wasn’t speaking out of order, but in fact “voiced the concerns of my district – (state House) District 52 in Tennessee: what will make us feel safe, what will help in this time of crisis because of the continual occurrence of mass shootings and gun violence in our state and in our nation.”
Gov. Bill Lee had urged the Legislature to pass some reasonable gun safety provisions after this spring’s gun massacre at The Covenant School in Nashville, but the Republican-controlled Legislature sat on their hands. The governor called them back for a special session on August 21 and very little was achieved.
Lawmakers approved three bills that will speed up background checks, provide Tennessee residents with free gun locks, and require an annual state report on human trafficking, which I assume they believe is relevant. Of course, there’s more money for school safety officers and an advertising campaign that’ll gently urge people to lock up their damn guns.
However, while Republicans pat themselves on the back for their show bills, few parents are pleased with these paltry results or think these measures actually address their concerns about easy access to guns.
“We’re talking about life and death, and this legislature has basically done nothing,” said Sierra Barnett, a mother of two preschoolers in Mt. Juliet, near Nashville, an area Sexton should know well.
The special session was a one-sides farce, in open defiance of even the Republican governor’s meager efforts to address gun violence. That alone justified Jones’s no-confidence vote against Sexton. He’d planned to make the motion during the “unfinished business” period of the Monday’s session. He even had the House clerk’s OK to proceed, but Sexton just moved for a final vote to shut him up.
(It’s revealing that Sexton won’t just allow a no-confidence vote, as there are nowhere near the votes necessary to actually remove him as speaker.)
The vote passed 70 to 20, along party lines, and Democrats walked out in protest. It’s unclear why no other Democrat called for a vote of confidence in Jones’s absence.
“What is happening is not democratic,” Jones said outside the capitol. “It is authoritarianism.”
Unfortunately, the major snag with fighting authoritarianism is all the authoritarianism. The Tennessee House, under Sexton’s rule, remains a failed state.
[Popular Info / Forbes / Chalkbeat]
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This Sexton person is doing his level best to make a Rep. Justin Jones a national public figure. Good! The Democratic Party needs younger candidates for statewide and national office. This Sexton person may be a Republican, but he's helping the next generation of Democratic leaders. Bipartisanship!
Weirdly there were a whole bunch of examples of white people being "off-topic" in exactly the same way as Jones, and yet by my count -- zero times zero, carry the zero -- there were exactly none white people censured and silenced for rule-breaking.
I mean, racists gotta racist, but I thought that they had acquired some skill at the plausible deniability thing since 1954.