On Thursday morning, Tennessee state Rep. Scotty Campbell (R) was walking to the Capitol in Nashville when a reporter stopped him to ask about allegations of harassment brought against him by an intern.
Campbell told NewsChannel 5 he “had consensual, adult conversations with two adults off property.” Six hours later, the lawmaker — who two weeks ago voted to expel three Democratic colleagues over decorum violations — submitted a letter of resignation, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) announced Thursday afternoon.
According to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a bipartisan ethics subcommittee reported to Sexton on March 29 that it found Campbell had violated the Tennessee General Assembly workplace policy on discrimination and harassment after reviewing the results of an internal investigation.
Connie Ridley, director of the Office of Legislative Administration, declined to provide a copy of the complaint, citing a confidentiality clause stating “that no information concerning a complaint will be released to anyone not directly involved in an investigation, a lawsuit, or the implementation of corrective action.”
However, NewsChannel 5 reported Thursday that it had obtained an email indicating that an intern had complained to legislative officials that Campbell had made sexual comments that left her feeling “progressively more afraid and uncomfortable.”
Campbell didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post. But the 39-year-old representative, whose district included portions of four counties in northeastern Tennessee, denied any wrongdoing to NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams, who stopped the lawmaker on his way to work: “I had consensual conversations that were agreed to, and I’m really surprised that we are here this morning,” Campbell said.
According to the legislature’s discrimination and harassment policy, complaints prompt an immediate internal investigation. A report is then provided to the House’s four-member workplace discrimination and harassment subcommittee.
On March 29, the subcommittee received the report on Campbell and found the lawmaker had violated policy. It sent a letter with its conclusion to Sexton that same day, according to the memo.
Sexton and his office didn’t respond to requests from The Post asking whether any action was taken internally. But he told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday that as the speaker, he “has no role in putting out any kind of corrective action. That comes from the subcommittee.”
The allegations and investigative findings against Campbell, who was the vice chair of the Tennessee House Republican Caucus, came as a surprise to the chairman of the caucus, he told The Post.
“I was not made aware of the allegations or ethics investigation until this morning,” the chairman, state Rep. Jeremy Faison, said Thursday in a statement to The Post. “The House has accepted his resignation. The caucus will hold an election to fill his position at a later date.”
Campbell stayed in office for three weeks after the subcommittee issued its findings. On April 6, he voted to unseat the “Tennessee Three,” the Democratic lawmakers who joined protesters demanding gun control at the state Capitol after the March 27 mass killing in a Nashville school.
Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled but later reinstated following national outrage. Rep. Gloria Johnson survived expulsion by one vote. On Thursday, she called the allegations against Campbell “horrendous,” decrying the uneven way in which the legislature’s Republican supermajority has addressed rule violations in the past.
“Yet if you talk without permission, you get expulsion resolutions,” Johnson wrote in a tweet.
Before the unseating of Jones and Pearson, the Tennessee House had only expelled lawmakers three times in its history — one of them following a violation of the legislature’s harassment policies.
In 2016, Rep. Jeremy R. Durham (R) was expelled after a state attorney general report found that he had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with nearly two dozen women.
The next year, Rep. Mark Lovell (R) resigned amid allegations of “inappropriate touching.” He denied the claims, but an ethics subcommittee investigation later found Lovell had violated harassment policy.
After three women accused former Rep. David Byrd (R) of sexual assault, Republicans in 2019 killed a resolution to expel him. “You have to balance the will of the voters and overturning the will of the voters,” Sexton told a local news station that year.
Also that year, Rep. Rick Staples (D) stepped down from the House Ethics Committee after the subcommittee determined he had violated the legislature’s sexual harassment policy. And the House Republican Caucus held a 45-24 no-confidence vote on then-Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada (R) after text messages emerged showing he encouraged or approved of his chief of staff making disparaging and sexual comments about women, including interns and a lobbyist.
Lawmakers have also engaged in other problematic conduct without getting expelled — such as joking about lynching, running an anonymous gossip Twitter account and urinating on a colleague’s chair.
Matthew Brown contributed to this report.