With the legislature returning to Nashville this week, state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini is calling out House Speaker Beth Harwell for failing to reign in all the many rowdy wingnuts and various miscreants in her party’s caucus.
Mancini could have cited any number of misbehaving House members (don't worry, we'll get to Rep. Jeremy Durham in a little bit) but she picked Rep. Andy Holt, who earned the nation’s scorn—but not Harwell’s—by tweeting support for the armed militia occupying that federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. In her press release, Mancini referred to $177,000 in fines levied against Holt by the EPA last year for dumping pig waste from his farm—another transgression that went unnoticed publicly by Harwell.
It's been almost a week and Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell still refuses to condemn the reckless and irresponsible statements made by Rep. Andy Holt (R-Dresden) supporting the armed extremists in Oregon and telling President Obama to ‘Take your gun control and shove it.’ This isn't the first time she has refused to show any leadership and hold her members accountable for their bad behavior, either. The Speaker's House has been out of order since she refused to acknowledge the conflict of interest and ask Rep. Holt to resign his leadership position on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee while serious environmental charges against him are pending. It’s time for Speaker Harwell to lead and implement oversight for her members.
Mancini is trying to take partisan advantage of this situation, of course, but she makes a good point. Harwell has been loath to exercise her considerable power in her five years as speaker. The governor’s main ally, she presides over a mighty supermajority, yet she seems unwilling or unable to do or say much of anything when leadership is required. Case in point: Jeremy Durham.
Harwell could have denounced Durham and cut ties from the beginning (or at least quietly forced Durham to shut up and go effing away). Instead, breaking every rule of PR crisis management in the book, she has been missing in action. That has allowed the bad news to multiply to the point where it's dominating headlines at the start of an election-year session and making Republicans look even worse than usual.
With the House GOP caucus meeting tomorrow to decide whether to remove Durham from his leadership position as majority whip, the speaker has remained conspicuously circumspect in discussing what exactly he's done wrong. She says she takes any unlawful conduct "very seriously." (That's good to know). She says Durham needed workplace counseling but she won't say why, leaving it all to the public imagination.
Reporters, spurred on by Durham's insulting tweets and texts, are salivating over this story, so much so that The Tennessean devoted a little extra space to the young representative in Sunday's paper. Said an unidentified "high-ranking Republican" in the devastating article's money quote:
Jeremy Durham is a walking cancer for the caucus. The only thing bigger than his ego are the headaches he creates. From his questionable interactions with lobbyists to the way he berates staff and his inappropriate relationship with colleagues, this needed to happen a while ago.
Durham may have been out of control, but House Republicans seemed perfectly content with him as majority whip until a month ago. That was whenÂ
the AP's Erik Schelzig found out prosecutorstried (and failed) to indict Durham in 2013 for changing the date on his pill prescription. Even now, it seems unlikely that Harwell is one of those pushing behind the scenes to oust Durham from leadership. Publicly, she won't say what she thinks. She's comfortable in the role of neutral observer. Sounding relieved,
she told reporters, "This is not a decision that falls on the speaker."
The House GOP caucus chair, Rep. Glen Casada, wants to close tomorrow’s meeting to decide what to do about Durham. That'll only generate yet more bad publicity for Republicans. Harwell talks a lot about the importance of transparency. Still, in this case it appears she’ll let the caucus decide whether to conduct its business in secret.
Durham and Holt aren't the only House Republicans who have been acting out. Just before Thanksgiving, Casada caused a media shitstorm by calling for activating the National Guard to round up Syrian refugees. Harwell kept quiet.
Last month Rep. Mark Pody met with militant (possibly violent) far-right Christian hatemongers and let his freak flag proudly fly. Not a peep from Harwell.
We could go on. In 2011 when Rep. Curry Todd—champion of the state’s guns ’n’ bars law—was caught near Hillsboro Village driving 60 mph and drunkenly swerving in and out of his lane with a loaded Smith & Wesson 38 Special in a holster in his car, Harwell said absolutely nothing. Finally, more than a week later when the story wouldn't go away, it was Majority Leader Gerald McCormick who called for Todd to resign his committee chairmanship.
Silence is Harwell’s modus operandi. She’s like a kindergarten teacher gazing placidly out the window as her classroom full of brats goes berserk, pulling pigtails and kicking shins all around her.
True, there aren't enough hours in the day for the speaker to shoot down every stupid thing that Republican House members do or say. But some offenses are so outrageous and ignorant that they demand, if not condemnation, at least a terse public statement of disapproval from the party’s leader—just so people think adults remain in control of the Capitol.
Is Harwell a wimp? Possibly so. More likely, she's making a political calculation. She'd rather not agitate any of her caucus members, especially right wingers who only barely tolerate her now. She'll need all of them if she tries to remain as speaker in 2018 or if she runs for governor. In the House, somebody has unlocked the doors to the padded cells, but that's too bad. The speaker is looking out for No. 1.
