Gnashville

Dem. State Rep. Justin Jones speaks at the State Capitol Building with Speaker Cameron Sexton presiding. Photo by Seth Herald (Getty)

The radical GOP legislature in Tennessee had craved the national spotlight. In this legislative session, it passed the nation’s first ban on public drag performances, banned gender affirming care for trans youth, killed proposed gun violence prevention measures, and expelled two young Black state representatives for “decorum” violations.

But since then, it hasn’t been going well for the Tennessee GOP. A federal judge has temporarily halted the drag ban; the ACLU and Lambda Legal have filed a federal lawsuit against the ban on gender affirming care; gun safety activists and now even clergy have held sustained protests at the Capitol after the mass shooting at The Covenant School; and the two “Justins” who were expelled were reinstated by their local county commissions.

The national attention did bring something else, though: press investigations. Specifically, the antics of an apparently power-hungry and corrupt majority garnered the attention of intrepid reporters. Now, GOP leadership in the state House of Representatives is reeling from two big stories that have already led to the resignation of the vice chair of the House Republican caucus and calls for Speaker Sexton to step down.

So let’s enjoy this Schadenfriday together and review what has the GOP leaders gnashing their teeth in Tennessee’s state capital.

A buried sexual harassment complaint and alleged assault

Rep. Scotty Campbell, 39, was until recently a high ranking official in the Tennessee Republican Party. But six hours after a story by NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams broke about Campbell’s vulgar and inappropriate behavior toward two teenage legislative interns, he resigned in disgrace.

Karma landed a good swing here. Campbell had been a forceful advocate of expelling the “Tennessee Three,” including the two Justins (Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones). He had argued, “If you were in court and behaved like those three did, you would have been found in contempt of court.”

Campbell, who claimed he himself was a “promoter of entertainment,” had also garnered national attention during the debate on public drag performance bans by asking that the phrase “or similar entertainers” be removed from the bill. He wondered openly, and rather creepily, whether “Tennessee’s own Miley Cyrus, at Bridgestone Arena—I’ve seen her there in the past myself—would that cross the line? Would she be subject to a…pair of handcuffs?” He also asked whether the legislation would prohibit a “bra-and-panties match” by wrestlers at a county fair.

But it seems the bra-and-panties Campbell had been most interested in were those worn by two female, teenage legislative interns, whom a bipartisan ethics committee found Campbell to have sexually harassed. One of the interns described in detail Campbell’s vulgar and disgusting behavior, telling the committee that Campbell 

made comments about how ... he was in his apartment imagining that we were performing sexual acts on one another and how it drove him crazy knowing that was happening so close to him.

I uncomfortably explained that that was not happening, and he insisted that he knew it was and asked me to tell him about it.

I explained that she is my friend, and he proceeded to describe how sexually attractive he finds her.

The intern about whom Campbell was openly fantasizing was 19 years old.

On other occasions, Campbell was accused of offering cannabis gummies to the intern in order to see her piercings and tattoos and asked explicit questions about her sexual partners and practices, begging her for “several hugs” because he was “very, very lonely.” She rebuffed his advances, saying “absolutely not.” According to the intern, at one point Campbell reached out his hand and grabbed her around the neck. She recoiled, felt sick and left, blocking his number after that.  

In response to local press questions, Campbell denied any such conversations or actions ever took place and claimed the intern was making it all up. Campbell claimed instead that he had had “consensual conversations” and whined that private conversations “are supposed be private.”

The intern didn’t feel that way. She complained to officials, who began an investigation. That resulted in a finding by a four-person, bipartisan ethics subcommittee that Campbell violated the chamber’s policy against harassment. But under the rules of the body, the details and even the finding itself by the subcommittee remained confidential, with no one permitted to talk about it.

That’s when GOP House leadership got involved in an apparent cover-up. Speaker Sexton, who has known about the scandal since late March, took no disciplinary action against Campbell and kept the entire matter secret. Taxpayer dollars apparently were then used to relocate the victim from her downtown apartment building, where Campbell also lived. Her furniture was shipped back to her home in another part of the state, while she was placed in a downtown hotel for the remainder of her internship.

On Thursday, Rep. Justin Pearson mentioned the resignation of Rep. Scotty Campbell for harassment of interns. He was immediately gaveled “out of order” by Speaker Sexton.

Speaker Sexton’s residency woes grow

A separate investigation by Judd Legum at Popular.Info revealed that Speaker Sexton had secretly purchased, via a trust, a $600,000 home in Nashville in September 2021. He did this even though he represents Crossville, which is two hours away. As Legum noted, “If Sexton is not a ‘qualified voter’ in Crossville, he is ineligible to represent Crossville under Article II, Section 5a of the Tennessee Constitution.”

Legum also discovered that Sexton had downsized his Crossville home to a much smaller condo and enrolled his child in a Nashville area school, raising the very real question of whether Sexton is actually living in Nashville—even while claiming thousands of dollars in state-funded expenses. 

That investigation prompted a much larger, in-depth inquiry by Tennessee’s largest paper, The Tennessean, into Sexton’s actual legal residence. Two county Democratic Party groups in Sexton’s district have now called for Sexton’s resignation, and some 20,000 people have signed an online petition also calling for him to step down. 

Those efforts at present aren’t likely to go very far. And Republicans are busily wrapping up the session by continuing to refuse to hold a vote on gun safety measures, such as a red-flag bill that most Tennessee voters want. They also voted to disband community oversight boards that hold the Nashville police accountable—something the city’s residents overwhelmingly voted for in 2018. (In another aggressive move, Speaker Sexton even had a grandmother who spoke out against the disbandment of the oversight boards arrested and removed from the gallery on Thursday. The video, posted by Rep. Justin Jones, has gone viral.)

With the eyes of the nation still on them and a growing number of scandals, including the Campbell harassment and cover-up now being investigated by the press, Sexton and the GOP are clearly now on the defensive. Through undemocratic gerrymandering, they have maintained their legislative supermajority, but their extremism and lack of transparency and accountability is mobilizing serious opposition.

Nashville may be ground zero for the battle for true representative democracy, but it is also indicative of a much larger struggle. The GOP’s woes in Tennessee, and its refusal to act in the interest of what the majority of citizens actually want on matters like gun safety, result directly from the lack of any real check upon its power. If the GOP holds all the power, it believes it can wield it with impunity, just like Campbell did to those interns. The people of Tennessee are in just such an abusive relationship.

This same kind of anti-democratic, corrupt behavior has already resulted in seismic shake-ups in more purple states such as Wisconsin and Michigan; the fact that the Deep South is now facing a reckoning means that Democrats have successfully brought the fight directly to the heart of GOP power.

That should put all Republican officials on notice. The press and the Justins of the world have made this much clear: The GOP is not safe from accountability, not anywhere, not even in the reddest, most unfairly stacked state legislature it can create.

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