Move to Expel Tennessee 3 Backfires Spectacularly - Horowitz

Move to Expel Tennessee 3 Backfires Spectacularly - Horowitz

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote Lord Acton. The 19th-century British historian and politician’s apt observation applies perfectly to the Republican supermajority (75 to 23) in the Tennessee House of Representatives' unprecedented, racially tinged and politically boneheaded move to expel the now famous Tennessee 3 for a breach of decorum. 

The specific violation of the House rules was that State Representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, 3 Democrats who represent  Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis, respectively,  briefly disrupted a legislative session to lead a non-violent protest calling attention to the unwillingness of the House Republicans to even consider or allow for a debate on an assault weapons ban and other gun safety measures in the wake of a mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, resulting in the deaths of 6 people, including 3 young school children.

A proportional response to what was essentially a decorum violation would have been a censure or some other form of admonishment.  Instead, Speaker Cameron Sexton, (R-Crossville) proceeded to marshal his supermajority to impose the legislative version of capital punishment, when only 2 Tennessee state representatives had previously been expelled in the 155 years or so since the end of the civil war era. In both cases, there was far more serious misconduct and nearly unanimous bi-partisan votes.  

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The Tennessee speaker did so without first holding an Ethics Committee hearing and with little or no other deliberation.  And he managed to make this blatant overreach--one that was already fraught with racial overtones--look even worse by successfully winning the expulsion of Representatives Pearson and Jones, the 2 African American legislators, while falling short of the votes needed to expel Representative Johnson, the only white member of the Tennessee 3.

Speaker Sexton’s ham-handed vindictiveness backfired spectacularly, turning 2 obscure, nearly powerless backbench legislators serving as part of a badly outnumbered Democratic minority into national celebrities overnight with a wide open at least for this moment national media window to make their case on the need for gun safety laws in Tennessee and for the threat to democracy posed by Mr. Sexton and his supermajority.

Acutely aware of the racial history of their state and squarely in the non-violent activist tradition of John Lewis, who began his storied civil rights career as a  college student working to integrate Nashville’s businesses, Representatives Jones and Pearson have made the most of the moment, adding new rocket fuel to the movement for gun safety laws in Tennessee—a movement that was already being propelled by thousands of high school students protesting daily at the State House.  Additionally, the 2 representatives have reminded the nation that Tennessee was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and made a powerful case that Speaker Sexton is the latest embodiment of white supremacism, shutting down African American voices.

 “What is happening here today is a farce of democracy,” remarked Representative Jones in a evocative 20 minute speech before the vote in expel him, which was carried live on MSNBC and CNN. "What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict. What we see today is just a spectacle. What we see today is a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process."

Barack Obama, among many other Democratic officials around the nation, publicly backed the Tennessee 3.  “What happened in Tennessee is the latest example of a broader erosion of civility and democratic norms,” tweeted the former president. “Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress.'

The final coup de grace is that Representatives Jones and Pearson in all likelihood will not stay expelled.  In a completely foreseeable development, the Nashville Metro Council and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners (the elected body for the county that includes Memphis), which under Tennessee law are responsible for choosing their replacements, appear poised to send Jones and Pearson back to the Tennessee House. In other words, the end result of this fiasco is likely to be only a brief interruption in these 2 now famous representatives’ terms.

There is some legal gray area here, so Speaker Sexton could attempt to block their reentry, which would lead to a legal battle, that most legal observers think he would lose. The obvious advice to the speaker is to heed to another time-tested maxim: when you are in a hole, stop digging.

It will be interesting to see if the speaker is capable of any learning behavior, and graciously welcomes Representatives Jones and Pearson back. That is the best and perhaps only way to stop the bleeding.  If he chooses to continue this losing fight, he is only going to make them more famous and make himself look even worse.