Democrats Target Rep. David Byrd Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Tennessee Democrats are cautiously optimistic about November.

Their candidate for U.S. Senate, former governor and Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, has a realistic chance of beating Republican Marsha Blackburn, which would make him the first Tennessee Democrat sent to the Senate since 1990. It would also make him the first Democrat elected statewide since he carried every county in his 2006 gubernatorial re-election campaign.

While most Democrats are focused on Bredesen and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean, one is zeroing in on a smaller race. Outgoing state Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) has one goal this fall: organize political action to kick Rep. David Byrd (R-Waynesboro) of state House District 71 out of office.

“I’d like to see someone who sexually assaults children leave office,” says Jones, speaking to the Scene on the same day as Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony at U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. “I don’t want my kids going to Cordell Hull [state legislative office complex] and being around people like him.”

In March, then-WSMV reporter Alanna Autler published allegations from three women who say Byrd sexually assaulted them when he was their high school basketball coach. House Speaker Beth Harwell and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, both fellow Republicans, quickly asked Byrd to resign. Instead, he’s running for re-election.

Late last month, Jones joined activists and one of Byrd’s alleged victims to announce a partnership with a national political group established to defeat politicians accused of sexual misconduct. Their sole target in Tennessee: David Byrd. Jones is helping the group raise money to spend in Byrd’s House district, District 71, which is located along the Alabama border to the southwest of Nashville. The group released an anti-Byrd television commercial this week and activists plan to canvas in the district on Saturday.

And yet Frankie Floied, the Democrat seeking to unseat Byrd, is not asking for their help. He also says he doesn’t talk about the allegations while campaigning.

“I saw a need in the community for a representative to be answerable to the people, to be transparent, to let the people know what’s going on, what’s going on in Nashville, someone who has the best interest of the 71st District at heart,” Floied says. “I didn’t think [Byrd] was doing that.”

Floied did say in a prepared statement, without mentioning Byrd’s name, that if the trust bestowed upon teachers, preachers and community leaders is violated, “it should be remedied in the best way possible.”

Floied grew up in Hohenwald, Tenn., and served in the U.S. Navy before working as a state trooper. He then worked his way up to criminal investigator and into a leadership position at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, later returning to his family farm in Lewis County. He is the first Democrat to run for the seat in a decade, but he says he’s a “very conservative Democrat” — one who supports Second Amendment rights and shares “a lot of the values that the people in this district have.”

What sets him apart from Byrd, Floied says, is his support for expanding Medicaid, spending more on infrastructure and establishing a living wage of $10 or $12 per hour in Tennessee.

“These people are struggling,” he says. “They’re struggling hard just to get by. They need someone that understands that and is willing to fight for them.”

Jones, who has never met or spoken with her fellow Democrat, has more succinct reasons for supporting Floied: “He’s not David Byrd, and he’s not been accused of sexually assaulting anybody.”

Byrd has not denied the allegations made against him, which include accusations that he kissed and groped teenage students when he was a coach in his late 20s. In a statement made in March and re-released when the group, Enough Is Enough Tennessee, announced the plan to defeat him, Byrd said: “Conduct over 30 years ago is difficult, at best, to recall, but as a Christian, I have said and I will repeat that if I hurt or emotionally upset any of my students I am truly sorry and apologize.”

Despite Harwell’s and McNally’s calls for Byrd to resign, the Tennessee Republican Party “is working to elect all of our Republican nominees,” state party spokesperson Candice Dawkins tells the Scene. And the Wayne County Republican Party is “ABSOLUTELY behind Rep. Byrd and active in his re-election campaign,” says county party chair Stephanie Pearson in an email. Glen Casada, a leading contender to succeed Harwell as speaker, is paying for digital ads backing Byrd’s re-election campaign.

“These allegations were over 30 years ago, and like I say, if the voters like my work ethics and how I try to help people in this district, then that’s what they need to look at,” Byrd tells the Scene, again stopping short of denying the former students’ accounts.

Though he doesn’t deny the allegations, Byrd says Jones’ group is “just trying to run a political smear,” echoing language used by Kavanaugh in his hearing.

District 71 is extremely conservative. Donald Trump was accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women prior to the 2016 election, and yet he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in each of the counties in District 71 by at least a 4-to-1 margin. Two years later, the Democrat trying to defeat a Republican state representative in that district isn’t mentioning his opponent’s allegations, and some supporters there don’t think he should. 

“Frankie ought to defeat David Byrd, even if David Byrd didn’t have some of the flawed problems that he does,” says Jerry Turner, chair of the Lewis County Democratic Party. “We do not mention any of [the allegations] in the stump speeches. We’re leaving that out of our campaign plan.

“It’s better to win on your own merits than to have somebody else’s flaws defeat them.”