This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.
A rift among Tennessee House Democrats seems to have impeded the minority party’s efforts to pass affordable housing legislation, despite the bill’s success in the Senate. After a heated text exchange between Democratic lawmakers, the state party is begging the caucus to work together.
Tensions bubbled to the surface Wednesday afternoon when the House Cities & Counties Subcommittee was asked to consider a bill by Sen. Charlane Oliver, D-Nashville, and Rep. Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, called the “Homes Not Hedgefunds Act,” which would restrict the number of residential properties that a company could purchase in Tennessee.
The bill breezed through the Senate, passing 31-1 on the floor, a rare feat for regulatory policies carried by Democrats, who are outnumbered 4:1 in the Senate and 3:1 in the House.
When it went before the subcommittee in the House, Rep. Vincent Dixie, D-Nashville, motioned to consider the bill, but it died due to a lack of a second, despite Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville, also being on the dais.
Behn said Thursday that she wasn’t expecting the bill to necessarily pass in the meeting, but had hoped to roll it while she and Oliver figured out the best path forward, including entertaining the possibility of other House sponsors.
Instead, it died without discussion, stunting Oliver’s progress.
While bills often fail — a pair of Republican-sponsored bills also failed in committees this week due to a lack of motion — the Democrats can’t afford much infighting given their position as a superminority.
The vote also exposed a rift among the lawmakers, which does not bode well for the party’s uphill battle to mobilize voters and gain state seats during an election year.
After the meeting, a screenshot provided to the Nashville Banner shows that Mitchell and Behn got into a heated text exchange.
In the screenshot, which appears to capture only part of an exchange in a group chat with other Democrats, Mitchell sends only partially visible text about the bill.
Then the pair have the following exchange, uninterrupted by other members of the group:
Behn: “F— off”
Mitchell: “When you own a home you might understand”
Behn: “Go f— yourself”
Mitchell: “Very crude”
Behn: “You’re a sore loser for losing a primary and that makes me very sad for you”
Mitchell: “Your a liar with no integrity”
Behn: “This wasn’t about me, this was about Charlane and the generations of families who would have benefited from this legislation. Hope it was worth it when you’re put on blast”
Behn later said she believes Mitchell deliberately hindered the bill as retaliation against her, after she beat him, Dixie and businessman Darden Copeland in a heated primary last fall when Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District became suddenly available in a special election. During that election, Behn also targeted Mitchell by questioning his relationship to and donations from the owner of Advance Financial, a controversial predatory lender based in Tennessee.
Asked about the meeting, Mitchell said Thursday that he said he didn’t support the bill for strictly policy reasons, specifically that he believes it would hinder homeowners’ ability to get “top prices” when they sell property, and he believes it is too similar to President Donald Trump’s affordable housing executive order.
When asked about the texts, Mitchell told the Banner that he did not want to get involved in a story about the exchange, adding that he doesn’t “see it as a conflict.”
“I mean, I wish there wasn’t,” Behn later said of Mitchell’s comment.
Behn said that she was outraged when she texted Mitchell because she doesn’t believe their interpersonal conflict should get in the way of Oliver’s bill, noting that she “could not believe that a white male legislator would undermine the labor of a Black female legislator.”
“I’m sad that the story isn’t that Sen. Oliver passed a bill that made its way with bipartisan support through the Senate,” Behn said, noting that the U.S. Senate also passed similar legislation.
“So that could have been our story in Tennessee. Unfortunately, the story is that a lone Democrat who has past political beef with someone let petty politics get in the middle of something transformative,” Behn added.
Dixie, the other Democrat on the committee, also lost to Behn in the primary, but appears to be somewhat above the fray, though he’s still exhausted from the heated race.
In a conversation unrelated to the bill, Dixie told the Banner on Wednesday that he had decided not to run in District 7 again this year because he did not want to be the “sacrificial lamb” for the party.
He did lament Behn’s decision not to run again after winning the nomination and gaining unexpected momentum during the special election.
“I feel like the person who won that nomination should have run again. It puts the party at a disadvantage,” Dixie said. “They spent all that money on that brand to get that name recognition. Then you’re like, ‘OK, I get what I need out of it. See ya.'”
Still, Behn said Thursday that there are “not at all” hard feelings between her and Dixie.
“Vincent and I, we care about doing what’s right for Nashville and the state,” Behn said. “So we’ve come together post-primary, and we’re just trying to improve things for our communities, which is obviously why he gave me the first motion.”
Caucus Chair Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, dismissed the exchange on Thursday, noting that the caucus is in lockstep on major issues, including a White House-backed suite of anti-immigrant policies by Republicans, which the Democratic members unanimously voted against Thursday morning.
“Absent a formally adopted caucus position, each of our members is free to vote in whatever manner they feel appropriate for their respective district. We take pride in the fact that our members vote with the best interests of their constituents in mind, not how they’re told to vote for partisan purposes like the Republicans,” Clemmons wrote in an emailed statement.
But the Tennessee Democratic Party more aggressively denounced the public infighting, saying elected officials should prioritize the best interests of Tennesseans, and noting that this kind of disjointed appearance hurts the party’s credibility with voters.
“Perceived dysfunction, not to be mistaken with real dissension, further erodes public trust and undercuts our job of getting more Democrats elected,” state party Chair Rachel Campbell said in an emailed statement Thursday. “While this is not the first time this has happened, we commit to doing our part to make sure it is the last.
“The people of Tennessee deserve nothing less than accountability, for Republicans and Democrats alike. Our message is simple: Tennesseans come first. Leave everything else at the door or step aside for someone who will.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.