Tennessee GOP Politicians Demonstrate How Seamlessly Racism & Fascism Work Together

Hayward County, Tennessee, northeast of Memphis is a rural county with a Black majority— the only county in the state aside from Shelby County with a Black majority. It’s the biggest cotton-growing county in the state. The county has lost population in every census since 1980 and there are now fewer than 18,000 people living there, down from nearly 28,000 in 1940. The county votes Democratic and Trump lost with about 44% of the vote both times he ran. Hayward was one of just 3 counties that voted against Trump in either election, the other two being Shelby (Memphis) and Davidson (Nashville), each of which gave Trump around a third of its vote.

These 3 counties are a political mirror image of Tennessee, one of the reddest states in the Union and in 2020 Trump took the state 60.66% to 37.45%. Only Wyoming (26.55%), West Virginia (29.69), North Dakota (31.78%), Oklahoma (32.29%), Idaho (33.07%), Arkansas (34.78%), South Dakota (35.61%), Kentucky (36.15%) and Alabama (36.57%) gave Biden a smaller percentage of its votes than Tennessee. The state is a red hellhole completely dominated by the GOP outside of the biggest cities. The state Senate has 27 Republicans and just 6 Democrats and the state House elected 75 Republicans and just 24 Democrats, 2 of whom— young Black men— were illegally removed by the racist majority last week.

The GOP super-majorities can do whatever they want— and all that power has gone to their heads. There is no check on their power and the GOP in Tennessee is now a full-fledged fascist entity. Last year, for example, they decided to deprive the Democratic voters of Nashville of the opportunity to be represented in Congress by a Democrat. Davidson County which formerly made up most of the 5th congressional district and sent Democrats to Congress, has now been split up between 3 rural-based congressional districts represented by 3 neo-Nazi congressmembers, Mark Green, John Rose and serial liar Andy Ogles.

And last week, the KKK Republicans— in other words, every single one of them— kicked Rep. Justin Jones (Nashville) and Rep Justin Pearson (Memphis) out of the legislature. Natalie Allison, who had the Tennessee capitol as her beat from 2018 ’til 2021, reported that no one should have been surprised. She describes the Republicans in the legislature as the worst bunch of hypocrites imaginable. For example, “After a Republican lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls he had taught and coached, he was made chairman of the House education committee.”

There was a time before when one-upmanship wasn’t the organizing principle inside the Tennessee statehouse. Not so long ago, there was more balance in power and, with that, more comity in the chamber. But as Republicans have made bigger gains, they’ve also become more politically confrontational.

The modern Tennessee Republican Party was forged by Howard Baker and others in the 1960s and 70s by tapping into a bipartisan coalition of voters— bringing the GOP from near irrelevance within the state to soon producing some of the nation’s top Republican talent.

“This kind of scene Thursday was the last thing they would have wanted to see happen,” said Keel Hunt, an author of books on Tennessee politics who worked as an aide to then-Gov. Lamar Alexander, a Republican.

I’m reminded of an evening I was sitting in the House press corps box in April 2021, when the House honored Alexander— a Republican and champion of civility, now remembered for his moderate flavor of politics— after his recent retirement from the Senate. Moments later, Republican leadership brought far-right conservative commentator and MAGA firebrand Candace Owens onto the floor, describing her as one of the party’s leading thought leaders of the day, fighting against “creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny.” The Tennessee House passed a resolution thanking her for moving to the state.

The state party knows that it’s drifting. Some openly and proudly admit it. It’s also evidenced by Sen. Bob Corker’s decision not to seek reelection in 2018, and Gov. Bill Haslam’s opting out of running for Alexander’s open seat in 2020. Both Corker and Haslam know they were unlikely to have survived a primary in the state, had they stayed true to their own brands of more moderate conservatism. Corker’s Senate seat ended up going to Marsha Blackburn, a Trump loyalist, and Bill Hagerty, now in Alexander’s seat, handily won the GOP primary after securing his own endorsement from Trump.

The same dynamic is on display at the state Capitol, where former Rep. Eddie Mannis— a John Kasich-Gary Johnson voter in 2016 and a gay Republican— entered the legislature in 2021 with plans of voting like a moderate, in line with his Knoxville district. Last year, he bowed out after just one term, later saying there were “too many people there who are just mean and vindictive,” only caring about “winning at all costs.” Other members live under the fear and dread of a possible primary challenge— the only election that now matters in most districts in Tennessee— if they stray from the party orthodoxy on guns, access to abortion and other issues.

The debate around removal of the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest went on for years, even as Black lawmakers pleaded with their colleagues to take down the statue. Republicans punted on opportunities to authorize removal, with many wanting to keep the statue in place. In return, protesters — often led by Jones, one of the expelled representatives — rallied at the Capitol on a regular basis, their shouts outside the chambers carrying through the thick, shuttered wooden doors as lawmakers took up other legislative business. (The bust was finally removed in 2021, with resistance from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, after GOP Gov. Bill Lee whipped votes on the necessary state commissions to resolve the issue once and for all.)

The undercurrent of race is present in many of the Capitol’s controversies.

“Black people are idiots,” Cade Cothren, the chief of staff to former House Speaker Glen Casada, once wrote in a text message during a conversation about Common Core curriculum. It was one of several uncovered prior to his resignation in 2019. Both Casada and Cothren are now awaiting federal trial in a case involving alleged bribery and kickbacks at the legislature. Cothren has since apologized for the racist comment, and more recently has even condemned the legislature’s decision to expel the Black Democratic legislators.

A former GOP legislative staffer told me that in 2020, a member of House Republican leadership in a text message referred to Jones, then an activist, and another Black lawmaker as “baboons.” Former GOP Rep. Brandon Ogles, then vice-chair of the Republican caucus, at the time also recorded the staffer discussing the text. He shared a copy of the recording with Politico. The member of leadership in question denies sending the text. The comments were allegedly made while Jones was taking part in protests following George Floyd’s murder by police.

A member presenting a bill about sanctuary cities in 2018 used the term “wetback” while telling a story. On two separate occasions in 2020, Republican legislators publicly cracked jokes about Black people eating fried chicken.

Want to take a wild guess which one didn't get expelled?

Now Republican legislators are fundraising off their “heroic” expulsion of Jones and Pearson, “openly bragging Friday about what critics have called a blatantly anti-democratic move that shows the party's growing authoritarianism… In a Friday fundraising email, the Tennessee GOP said: ‘Their adolescence and immature behavior brought dishonor to the Tennessee General Assembly as they admitted to knowingly breaking the rules. Actions have consequences, and we applaud House Republicans for having the conviction to protect the rules, the laws, and the prestige of the State of Tennessee. Our fight is just beginning,’ the email concludes.”

Just one Republican voted against expelling all 3 Democrats, Charlie Baum of Murfreesboro, a rapidly growing suburb of Nashville in Rutherford County. After the vote, he said that he hopes “that democracy is not affected. I am anxious for the constituents in these districts to very, very quickly be represented again with legislators. The legislators they select may very well be the ones that were expelled.”

In a statement from Public Citizen, Robert Weissman wrote that the expulsions were “a racist and disproportionate act of retaliation against legislators who had joined demonstrators chanting in the chamber, in protest of Republican refusal to adopt commonsense gun control measures in the wake of the March 27 school shooting in Nashville… In modern American history, expulsion of state legislators is very rare— not just in Tennessee but throughout the United States, and rightfully so. Legislators should expel elected officials only in extreme circumstances, not over policy differences or impingements on decorum. Legislative supermajorities already have enormous power; when they wield that power to strip away even the offices of the minority, they are treading on very dangerous ground.”

“Some Tennessee legislators– and a lot of MAGA commentators online– are un-ironically calling the state representatives’ chanting an ‘insurrection.’

“Of course, the United States did witness a real insurrection on January 6, 2021. Not one member of Congress was expelled for promoting Donald Trump’s patently false claims that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from him or for supporting the attempted coup carried out at Trump’s behest. Only 10 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives would vote to impeach Trump in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, and only two of them were able to get re-elected.

“American democracy is in a profound crisis, riven by lies, right-wing extremism, conspiratorial thinking, and subservience to corporate and special interests, and racism. What just happened in Tennessee is yet another reminder of the perilous state of our country.

“Yet, a hopeful future is also a visible feature of our nation, demonstrated in the courage and principle of the targeted representatives (Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who was not expelled) and the energy and commitment of the protesters– overwhelmingly young people– demanding justice and commonsense gun regulation. This is a powerful reminder that democracy does not die easily. Indeed, the energy in Tennessee will help inspire and power the nationwide movement not just to defend but to expand and deepen our democracy, and we are committed to rising to the occasion, and being part of this movement to make our country a more just and equitable place for all.”