Freshly expelled Tennessee politician Justin Jones appears to have enough votes in the Nashville Metropolitan Council to send him back to the state legislature.
Jones, along with fellow Democrat Justin Pearson, was removed from his elected position Thursday in a nearly unprecedented vote in the Republican-dominated Tennessee House of Representatives.
Along with a third lawmaker — a white woman who was not expelled — the Black legislators participated in a highly spirited House-floor protest over gun control last week that “knowingly and intentionally (brought) disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” according to House Speaker Cameron Sexton.
According to NBC News, Jones has the 23 vote majority he needs in the 40-member Metropolitan Council to be reinstated. That tally is reportedly from a collection of interviews and social media posts collected by NBC.
“It’s a terrible precedent to set, that we disagree with you and you’ve disrupted our House proceedings and therefore we’re expelling you,” Councilmember Burkley Allen said. “That’s not the way democracy works.”
Jones and his colleagues disrupted last week’s session demanding action following a mass school shooting days earlier where a former student at a private Christian school killed three children and three adults before being gunned down by police.
The killer, armed with three weapons, blasted through The Covenant’s School’s locked door during a 14-minute Monday morning rampage where 152 rounds were fired before police ended the attack.
Jones told NPR he felt his and Pearson’s expulsions were motivated by race.
“This is the consequence of a body that wants to suppress not just our vote, but the votes of our districts that are majority Black and brown,” he said Thursday.
The Tennessee State Constitution allows for an interim successor to be appointed until a special election takes place to fill a vacated seat. The Nashville council, which reportedly supports Jones, picks that representative. It’s unclear if Pearson would receive the same support in his county. Nashville officials are scheduled to meet Monday.
Jones, 27, was touted by some as a rising political star after becoming the third Tennessee representative expelled from the state legislature since the Civil War era. He was elected to office in 2022.
“A state in which the Ku Klux Klan was founded is now attempting another power grab by silencing the two youngest Black representatives,” he said on the House floor shortly before he and his colleague were ousted.
After narrowly surviving the two-thirds vote need to expel lawmakers, Rep. Gloria Johnson told CNN race may have been a factor after Jones was booted from his post.
“We’re going to fight hard to get him back,” the 60-year-old Democrat said.
Pearson, 28, took office in January after establishing himself as a grassroots organizer, according to Knoxville, Tennessee, station WATE.
“Too many elected leaders are in position, but they don’t have people power,” he said “We’ve got people power.”
Jones and Pearson used a bullhorn to make their point during last week’s protest. Republican Rep. Lowell Russell claimed that influenced his vote to expel the Black representatives leading that event, while sparing Johnson.
“(Johnson) did not participate to the extent that Jones and Pearson did,” Lowell said.
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the Volunteer State Friday evening to meet with the trio that’s been dubbed “The Tennessee Three.”
