Opening Day

In Nashville this is how we know it’s January: The temperatures drop, the rest of the birds fly south, and the Tennessee legislature rolls back into town. It’s all as certain as the next morning, though that part about the legislature can be especially chilling and as cheerless as the winter wind.

“Now is the time,” the 19th Century statesman Daniel Webster is said to have once said, “when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen. The legislature is in session, and no man’s property is safe.”

Today was Opening Day for the 2020 session. On the House side, 2019 was clearly a hard year for the Republican super-majority, most of the travail having little to do with official business. To make a very long story mercifully short, the problem was Rep. Glen Casada (who still represents District 63 in Williamson County, by the way). The speakership was the highest political job Casada ever wanted, and yet he couldn’t hang onto it. Because he could not handle power.

Casada had trafficked in favors and tolerated low behaviors, thinking these would give him job security. In the end, he was left with no job and fewer friends, their memories of his patronage having dimmed by then, as memories will.

So today a new speaker, Cameron Sexton of Crossville, gaveled the House to order, and the mood on the hill is considerably more upbeat.

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Last Thursday I caught up with Speaker Sexton just ahead of this new session. It was my fourth interview with him. (The first was on August 13, soon after the House GOP caucus had agreed to put the big gavel in his hands.) In our visits, to my eye and ear, Sexton’s bearing and tone are as different from his predecessor’s as June is from January.

There is about Sexton an air of freshness and candor, not furtiveness nor conspiracy. He looks at you with steady eyes. He is measured in his answers but has sidestepped none of my questions, either on pending legislative issues or his own life story. Already he seems at ease with his new role. He appreciates the complexity of the legislature (where he has served since 2010), and he travels statewide broadly and publicly.

His visits into distant districts across the long state serve multiple purposes, of course: They help him cultivate working relationships among his fellow members, and help prepare Sexton himself to lead the House forward.

Sitting in his new speaker’s digs on the sixth floor of the Cordell Hull Building, you get from Sexton a sense of humility, his gratitude that people trust him, his respect for his fellow members, and a reverence for the institution of the House and its long history.

How you launch a new regime is important because it telegraphs much. Sexton will be tested soon enough – every Speaker is – but for the record we should note that this is how he began.

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Speaking of relationships, here’s something to watch over the coming months: How will Speaker Sexton and Governor Bill Lee develop their working routine? They are both Republicans, true enough, but in a super-majority we have learned there are many rooms. Word is these two barely know each other outside ceremonial handshakes.

How often and how fluidly they might collaborate remains to be seen. (Baseline: Remember how the TANF story unfolded last month, and before that how the divisive issue of private school vouchers ended for the whole House at the close of that tortured session last year. Neither of those episodes put anyone in mind of healthy coordination.)

I believe Sexton, at this moment, is more attuned than Lee to notions of “legislative independence” relative to the governor’s office. On one level, that’s understandable; Sexton has served in government for ten years, Lee only one. Some governors have started in office seeming to regard the General Assembly not as a co-equal branch but as a board of directors. Not so in government.

As we are also reminded now, watching extreme Washington, the branches of government are importantly different – separate in their powers and prerogatives - and for good historical and constitutional reasons.

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Anyone who worked with the late Ned McWherter in his day can tell you how he had a pocketful of colorful expressions. My favorite among those was when he would say, “Let’s just ease along.”

That didn’t mean he was indecisive. Partly, it was his way of dealing with all the advice that come a Speaker’s way. More fundamentally, he knew that the passage of time (even a small breather) could give better perspective, cool hot tempers, on occasion bring wisdom, and thus consensus could rise.

After four interviews with Sexton, I’ve noted that he uses just two other words for a similar effect: He says, “We’ll see.” In our visits, he can be drawn into long answers on various issues, but he also knows that rendering quick judgments on every question is not in a speaker’s job requirements. This will come in handy for Sexton, as it did for McWherter, as he deals with 98 other members. The speaker speaks when he’s ready.

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A strong presiding officer, meaning a speaker who is honest in his word but sparing in his palaver, can often be a facilitator of quiet progress. On the Senate side, the affable Lt. Gov. Randy McNally is another model of this. Sometimes he will plant a seed of an idea or, with a well-timed word, slow down a questionable bill. 

To understand his character, I once asked Sexton to tell me the names of his “mentors.” He was quick to name McNally. Their friendship dates back to McNally’s earliest legislative campaigns in East Tennessee.

Their mutual regard is reminiscent of another pair of long-serving speakers: two Democrats, McWherter and Lt. Gov. John S. Wilder. Today, of course, it’s the Republicans who hold those same positions, with McNally and Sexton now sitting atop the houses of our state legislature.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that their alliance will prove positive for Tennesseans in this very different age. I suspect it may help them both as leaders. It might even inspire Governor Lee to sharpen his own game.

How might all of that unfold?

o Will McNally and Sexton collaborate often and share much in the months and years ahead?

o Will Lee make a point of getting their counsel early and often? Will they each require their respective staffs to cooperate at a high level, especially on matters that will affect millions (of people, of dollars) that ought not be purely political.

o Will they ditch the jargon of broken Washington and instead focus squarely on the health and welfare of Tennesseans and rise above the breakage here? Or will too much narrow ideology get in the way?

We’ll see.