Stockard on the Stump: Pearson returns with fists in air but no disruption

Nashville resident Rita Nix waits patiently Thursday morning for newly-reappointed Rep. Justin J. Pearson to arrive for yet another swearing-in ceremony.

The War Memorial Plaza crowd is still small as people mill about looking for the Democrats’ rising star to arrive from Memphis.

“I jumped up out of my bed to support these young men,” Nix says, leaning forward to speak. 

Like many others around the world, Nix stands with the “Tennessee Three,” saying even though Rep. Gloria Johnson survived an expulsion vote, the Republican move last week to kick out Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville appeared to her to be “racist.” She’s motivated to see Pearson take the oath of office and wants his return to offer a message.

“I hope it sends to the rest of the world we’ve got to love each other. We’ve got to be as one, because a house divided falls. …. There’s so much hate in the world, there’s so much hate.” 

Pearson arrives shortly.

His parents speak, but he’s the one people want to hear, as he asks House colleagues to move to the side of the plaza dais and urges supporters to join him, pointing out, “It’s a people power movement, not a politicians’ movement.” Politicians move, nevertheless.

Just a week after Republican lawmakers expelled him and Jones for leading a rally on the House floor against gun violence in the wake of the Covenant School shooting in which six people died, including three 9-year-olds, Jones and Pearson are known worldwide and likely headed with Johnson to the White House, where they’ll take their message against gun violence to President Joe Biden.

Less than 24 hours after being reappointed to his post by the Shelby County Commission, Pearson, a freshman lawmaker and environmental activist from Memphis, reads the names of the school shooting victims and mentions the people killed in a Louisville shooting as he calls for tighter gun laws to bring an end to mass murders.

He points out part of the solution for Republicans was to try to expel him and Jones. But they found their way back in less than a week.

In the meantime, Gov. Bill Lee signed an order tightening background checks and proposed a protective order to keep guns away from people deemed a danger to themselves and others. It’s drawing a weak reception from Republicans, and Pearson thinks even more should be done.

“They worked to expel our constituents’ representation by subverting our democracy for their mob-ocracy, where their dollars and their egos rule,” he says. “But our democracy is powered by people and people power always wins.”

This generation has fresh beliefs and a renewed vigor to remove America from the plague of mass shootings that are now as common as a new day, he says. The “proliferation of poor policies” coming out of the state Legislature is a factor in the gun deaths that take place in Memphis and other cities, shattering lives and communities, Pearson contends.

“It was just one week ago that we sat in the statehouse, on the well of democracy, and were persecuted, were called out of our names, were talked down to and talked about. Were told we didn’t understand democracy, we didn’t understand our responsibility, told we didn’t belong here. But today, just a week later, there’s a resurrection that’s been promised to a persecuted people,” Pearson says.

He also promises ultimate victory, and a few moments later enters the House chamber, raising his fists in defiance with the jubilant sound of silence.

The smoking gun

If there was any doubt House Republicans are in disarray over their dismal showing in the expulsion hearing last week, the unearthing of audio from a caucus hearing provides concrete evidence.

Posted Thursday by the liberal Tennessee Holler news site, the audio displays an airing of grievances in the aftermath of the disaster that led to expulsion for Pearson and Jones and exoneration of Johnson during a six-hour-plus hearing.

In the secretly-recorded audio, Republican Rep. Jason Zachary complains that he’s tired of being called a racist by Black lawmakers and contends that Reps. Jody Barrett of Dickson and Bryan Terry of Murfreesboro flipped and went against expelling Johnson, who survived by one vote.

The outcome made the entire caucus look like a bunch of white racists and brought the wrath of the world down on them.

“I think now everyone should recognize that Democrats are not our friends,” Zachary says on the audio, which can’t be independently confirmed, although Republicans are well aware it surfaced. 

The Knoxville Republican whines that Black lawmakers “trashed” them as racists, even calling them “white supremacists” this week and urges the caucus to unify and roll over Democrats. (Does anyone get the unification theme here?) He further contends the caucus was “hung out to dry” by Barrett and Terry, who had promised to vote for expulsion.

Barrett, a first-year Republican from Dickson and a lawyer, apparently started getting cold feet the day of the hearing, saying the caucus never “established a case” against Johnson. He also says he wasn’t given a chance to question any of the trio, and once the vote was called, he was still having “an internal debate.”

“Then the bell rings, I’m concerned I’m gonna vote yes on a resolution that I know is wrong,” he says.

Barrett claims he just couldn’t put his name on something that in the “annals of history is wrong.”

Majority Leader William Lamberth, who went to Barrett’s desk to see how he was feeling, didn’t realize he was considering a no vote on Johnson or he would have consulted him differently. Again, Zachary blasts him, saying Barrett told him he was going to vote to expel all three.

Of course, Zachary is the lawmaker who flipped his vote on the governor’s education savings account bill in 2019 after being assured by then-Speaker Glen Casada that Knox County Schools would be removed as a voucher district. This year, Zachary co-sponsored legislation to allow vouchers in Knox County.

So we have to ask the question: Who’s flipping off whom? 

Based on the audio, caucus leaders also thought they had every vote wrapped up, thus the pathetic presentation that made them the laughingstock of the legal world, even though it wasn’t a real court hearing.

“We had the jury already. This obviously wasn’t a trial, but I knew every single one of your vote counts,” Rep. Johnny Garrett says in the audio. “I knew that we did not have to convince you all.”

Thus, Garrett says he was “shocked” when Barrett told him he might not be able to vote to expel Johnson. The Goodlettsville Republican argues that the “simple walk” the trio made from Johnson’s desk to the well without permission was enough to expel all three.

But while the others were clearly peeved, Rep. Scott Cepicky of Culleoka might have won the Oscar in this B flick for over-acting — or overreacting —however you want to look at it.

Cepicky points out anyone who disagreed with the resolution to expel Johnson could have filed an amendment and talked to caucus leadership.

“If we don’t stick together, if you don’t believe we’re at war for our republic … with all love and respect to you, you need a different job,” says Cepicky, who voted against Tennessee’s incentive package to bring the Ford truck plant to West Tennessee.

He claims “the left” is dying to take over Tennessee and argues that it’s not a “neighborhood social gathering.” It is true Democrats are in dire need of the state’s 11 electoral votes, or at least they were in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and awarded the victory to Georgia W. Bush instead of Al Gore because of Florida’s hanging chads.

In case he forgot to notice, Donald Trump won 65-plus percent in the last two presidential elections, although some wonder if this expulsion incident started moving things the other direction.

Cepicky continues, saying he’s going to have a hard time watching Rep. Justin Jones walk the “hallowed halls” of the Capitol and watch him “disrespect this state.”

“You’ve gotta do what’s right. Even if you think it might be wrong, you gotta do what’s right, and you gotta protect the freakin’ republic here in Tennessee, or you know what, let’s all go the hell home. I’m getting gray hair sitting here listening to this bull—-.”

But is America’s democratic republic hanging in the balance because of what happened in Tennessee two weeks ago? No, because people such as Rita Nix in Nashville would say it’s going through a renaissance, and she counts as much as anyone.

Barrett refused to comment Thursday. The House Republican Caucus also declined to say anything about the caucus meeting bellowing, calling them “private conversations.” But seriously, what defense would they have?

In transition

Republican Rep. Paul Sherrell moved to the House Transportation Committee from Criminal Justice this week, about a month after Black lawmakers urged Speaker Cameron Sexton to sanction him for a comment about renewing lynching in Tennessee.

While Sherrell’s statement might have been flippant — that the state should start “hanging from a tree” as a form of capital punishment — Black lawmakers were outraged. 

Whether Sherrell understands sarcasm is unlikely. But that’s off limits, considering Tennessee’s and the South’s history for lynching Black men. 

Sexton said Thursday Republican leadership had “ongoing conversations” and that Sherrell wanted to move to the transportation committee.

Black Caucus Chairman Sam McKenzie says he’s glad GOP leadership finally listened to their request.

“You can blame it on his acumen, a faux paus or whatever, but he should not be hearing and passing laws in the criminal justice committee,” McKenzie says.

The Knoxville Democrat hopes the move is a “small token” by Republican leaders to say they were wrong in expelling Pearson and Jones, even as Democrats were telling them they were making a “huge mistake.”

Either way, Sherrell is off criminal justice and now bound to destroy Tennessee’s road system.

Not the feds again

The FBI and U.S. prosecutors have been in the Capitol complex so much in the past few years they had to construct a new justice building a few blocks away. It looks like they’re coming back.

Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate called for an investigation this week of the Tennessee House in the wake of the Jones and Pearson expulsions.

Sexton says he welcomes a Justice Department investigation. 

And keeping up the Republican mantra, Leader Lamberth says he’s curious to see what would happen if U.S. senators stepped into the well and used a bullhorn to start a protest. 

“I have a feeling I know what would happen. They would be immediately arrested and hauled out of the U.S. Senate,” Lamberth says. “So before they start casting stones at us for actually following the rules in this chamber and ensuring every voice is heard, they might want to analyze what would occur if that happened in the U.S. Senate.”

Oh well, they rolled the dice and lost.

Republicans are set to enact the “flow motion” next week to expedite bills, vote on a state budget and get the heck out of town. At this point, leaving is the best strategy.

The problem is that Democrats feel they haven’t been getting a fair shot in debate in recent years. It was on full display again Thursday when Republicans used a procedural maneuver to cut off debate on a bill limiting teaching of “divisive concepts” in state universities. (It passed)

And that, in part, led to the Justinian protest of 2023 and the discombobulation of Tennessee politics.

“There is water at the bottom of the ocean.”