Stunned Republican calls out Tennessee speaker over 'horrible' expulsions

Amid the roar, former Republican state Rep. Kent Calfee is a voice crying out from the wilderness, questioning House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s handling of a floor protest that led to expulsions for two of three lawmakers.

Calfee, who took to Twitter over the weekend to express his dismay, says the speaker’s decision-making was “Horrible! Horrible!” in the ouster of Rep. Justin Jones (welcomed back with open arms) and Justin Pearson (soon to be reappointed) while Rep. Gloria Johnson narrowly avoided expulsion.

“I’ll be 74 in May, there’s damage been done to this state that will not be repaired in my lifetime. Beats all I’ve ever seen. Kept Gloria and kicked out the two Black men,” says Calfee, a 10-year lawmaker from Kingston in East Tennessee.

House Republicans apparently didn’t grasp the gravity of the moment as they argued for hours Thursday that the trio needed to be removed because they approached the well on March 30 and protested for tighter gun laws in the wake of the Covenant School shooting that killed six people. They did it without the speaker’s permission and used a bullhorn to rally people in the balconies once the speaker cut off the microphone.

Majority Leader William Lamberth pointed out they drew attention to themselves and took away the voices of 6.8 million people before some of the shooting victims were even buried.

While Republican leaders are worried about decorum, though, the general public’s mind-set is: They’re kicking out two Black men for trying to save children from machine guns.

While Sexton pushed for expulsion, Calfee contends censuring and stripping the three of their committee assignments would have sufficed. He also recognizes Jones was accustomed to getting into trouble after years of protesting at the Capitol and points out voters knew they were electing activists when they sent the duo to the statehouse.

Calfee is no stranger to speaking his mind.

He told the Tennessee Lookout last year he heard former House Speaker Glen Casada say he was going to call the governor to get now-former Rep. John Mark Windle the rank of National Guard general in return for his vote on Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher bill during a 45-minute deadlock in 2019. Calfee also said the governor invited him to his office for a chat because he thought he was making him look bad and described the conversation in detail, including a hug Lee gave him at the end of their meeting. The governor has said that he doesn’t know anything about it.

Granted, Calfee remains irritated at Sexton for firing his assistant, Nadine Korby, after his office was searched in a federal raid two years ago.

Calfee was not a target of the investigation. But out of that probe, former Rep. Robin Smith pleaded guilty and stepped down, and Casada and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, face a federal fraud trial for allegedly using a campaign vendor for a kickback scheme. Cothren also continues to date Korby’s daughter.

Whether Calfee still harbors a grudge against the speaker is unclear, but it’s obvious he has the same view of the current House debacle as others do, including many Republicans.

Calfee contends a no-confidence vote should be held on Sexton, much as one was done on Casada before he resigned amid a sexist and racist texting scandal in 2019.

“Sexton handled that horrible. He went way above and beyond. It’s a mess,” Calfee says.

Lame arguments.

Forgive House Republicans if they had their legal hats handed to them in Thursday’s expulsion hearings. They’ve gotten so accustomed to having their way in committees and floor votes they rarely have to make a strong argument. It showed, because even in a case that wasn’t really a court case, they fumbled and stumbled and still won two out of three, although the decision on one is moot now with Jones being reappointed by the Metro Nashville Council.

Their first foul-up was to introduce a seven-minute video that, as it turns out, contained only about four to 15 seconds of action that might have been admissible in a court of law. That’s assuming a judge would have allowed it to be shown, since it wasn’t shared with Democrats before the hearing.

The video — which was said to be unedited but was introduced with subtitles and pieced together from different incidents — was so well-done that it wound up exonerating Johnson, showing her mainly twiddling her thumbs.

Former Rep. Windle, who stole at least part of the show in representing her, called the charging resolution an “abomination.” He appeared to sway some folks, too.

Then came the prosecution by Republican House members who pointed out that the trio gathered at Johnson’s desk and then walked to the well and started speaking without the speaker’s permission. Jones had been going in and out of the chamber all morning to fire up the hallway crowd made up mostly of parents and teens. He and Pearson also had been gaveled down several times for speaking about the need for tighter gun laws, instead of sticking to the bills.

The horror, the horror of it all.

Rep. Ryan Williams joined the prosecution by pointing out Jones wore a button showing opposition to AR-15s and claimed to say the rules didn’t apply to him. (Props and signs aren’t allowed on the floor, a rule that’s occasionally enforced for egregious violations) That might matter if the general public gave a rat’s bunkus about House rules. But people don’t understand the rules and don’t care.

Then came the accusations from Republican lawmakers that Pearson threw a “temper tantrum” when he didn’t get his way, which led Pearson to ask the question, “How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”

It wasn’t so much what they said, either, as how they said it.

Pearson argued that Rep. Andrew Farmer, a Sevierville attorney who sponsored the resolution to have him expelled, spoke to him that way “because he’s comfortable doing that, because decorum allows.” Pearson pointed out for the 100th time he was rallying because the Legislature shouldn’t be “beholden” to the National Rifle Association and gun lobbyists.

Before that, Rep. Gino Bulso, a Brentwood attorney, tried to push Johnson to admit guilt, but she wound up trashing his legal argument. He made the mistake of asking a question for which he didn’t know the answer.

When he tried to pin the bullhorn on her, Johnson responded she had one that never left her scooter other than when the singer Margo Price used it to attend a rally.

“You can check for fingerprints. It’ll have mine and Margo Price’s,” she said.

After years of holding a supermajority, Republicans might have gotten a little lazy. They rarely have to make a strong argument, and when Democrats put together a tough debate, their response is usually, “Thank you for your comments,” or “I renew my motion.”

Sexton wouldn’t say whether he was pleased with the case the majority made, though Republican leaders said the argument against Jones and Pearson was stronger than against Johnson. Sexton also declined to respond to Calfee’s Twitter comments.

But legally speaking, onlookers believe Republicans got hammered.

“I think we had better legal minds, and we had the facts on our side and the law on our side,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons said. “And as a trial lawyer, it’s always nice to have the facts and the law on your side. And I think the biggest problem was those members came in with a politically partisan agenda with their minds already made up. With the exception of a few of them, they just voted along party lines.”

Whose advice?

Whoever is providing Speaker Sexton with strategic advice is not faring well, going 0-for-0 on every major decision in the last two weeks.

When Sexton called the floor protest an “insurrection” equal to or worse than Jan. 6, people went bonkers. He wound up walking that back a bit, saying only the three lawmakers were insurrectionists.

Thus, he had little choice but to push for expulsion. How do you back away from that claim, especially when everyone knew it was no “insurrection.”

OK, maybe I was scared to death – that I’d be writing the Stump until midnight, which doesn’t make Stockard happy.

The second major miscalculation was to support expulsion — although he tried to lay it on other members — when there are no rules, other than one saying the House can expel rule-breakers with a two-thirds vote.

Jones and Pearson wound up getting a bigger platform than ever and now martyrdom.

“We gave them each due process. They had the chance to defend themselves. Members had the chance to ask the questions, and then there was the vote,” Sexton said. “Based off the vote and the evidence presented and the testimony of those three individuals and one that had her attorneys, the votes were tallied and that’s what happened.”

And that was the third mistake.

Sexton claims the trio “took away the voice” of the entire chamber for 45 minutes on the House floor that fateful day. Yet it came down to 15 seconds or less because he recessed to try to figure out what to do.

Thus, it took a six-hour hearing Thursday to return between four seconds and 45 minutes to Tennessee voters. The trio was expected to apologize last Monday night but didn’t, according to Sexton, although it’s unclear whether that would have affected the outcome.

And while most people agree the House can’t function with one ruckus after another, they’d also say the punishment outstripped the crime.

Consequently, Jones made a triumphant return Monday to the Capitol after being appointed to the House seat by the Metro Nashville Council. Pearson probably won’t be too far behind him.

The lingering question is: What’s next for those two? After becoming part of the “Tennessee Three,” known worldwide, they could raise enough money to run for president — well at least for mayor of Nashville or Memphis.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.