There must be much cursing and wailing and gnashing of teeth going on right now in the Tennessee State House. The good ole boys who got rid of the two Tennessee reps, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson last week, purged their names and contact information from the directory and website this weekend. They were all set to take their names off the door but lo and behold, the Nashville City Council just reinstated Jones and Pearson’s vote will come up on Wednesday.
Damn. What’s a good ole boy to do? Washington Post:
Tennessee state Sen. London Lamar (D), who represents part of Memphis, said the expected vote in Shelby County on Wednesday to reappoint Pearson could be closer than Monday’s vote on Jones in Nashville.
The Nashville Metro Council has 40 members, and Lamar said 29 of them have already publicly committed to supporting Jones. The Shelby County Commission has 13 members, including four Republicans.
But Lamar, a former state representative, said she is now confident that Pearson also has enough votes to be reappointed.
“In an attempt to be malicious, you have now created two political megastars who have now made history,” said Lamar, who conceded she was skeptical of the confrontation tactics that the two lawmakers had embraced to draw attention to gun violence. “I think now it is going to be hard for the Tennessee GOP to continue their covert and overt racism tactics because now the whole nation is watching.” […]
Nashville is a city of contrasts, representing the country’s divisions dating back to the Civil War. Today, the main state office building is named after former president Andrew Jackson, who owned enslaved people, while three different streets that encircle capitol grounds are named after Martin Luther King Jr., former congressman John Lewis and civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
At a rally Monday afternoon, several hundred people chanted “No Justin, No Peace” as they called for Jones to be reinstated. “The fact we have to be here is completely absurd,” said Mary Kay, 69 of Nashville. “I just wanted to be here to support the young people because the more bodies, the more representation…Power corrupts and the [Republicans] have taken this to the tenth degree, and it’s got to change.”
This is going to be one interesting session of the state legislature and the murders today in Louisville have only added to the friction. Keep your eyes on Tennessee. This is political ground zero. Nashville affected the political weather vane and the wind is blowing a different direction now.
I know two people who should be on the cover of Time for “men of the year”.
Who wants to bet that the TN Legislature’s next major bit of “legislation” will be to strip local agencies from being able to name replacements for open legislative seats? Or, to allow the Legislature to decide whether to seat replacements? Or a combination of the two?
Jones got reappointed 36-0.