Speaker Sexton’s tenure has become a focus on social media, with references to his refusal to expel a Republican state representative, David Byrd, who, beginning in 2018, had been accused of child sexual assault years earlier, when he was a high school basketball coach in the 1980s.
One AP reporter responding to a Politico reporter Monday night observed on Twitter,
I'm reminded of the many Republican lawmakers who told me and other reporters in 2019 that they felt uncomfortable expelling Byrd because he had just been elected and they didn't want to go against the will of the voters…. https://t.co/c3r8InbPm2
— Kimberlee Kruesi (@kkruesi) April 4, 2023
Byrd, amid the allegations that surfaced in 2018, won re-election that year. Despite telling his colleagues and the GOP governor in 2019 he would not seek re-election again, he did so, and won in 2020. He did not run for re-election in 2022.
Two of his accusers spoke with Mother Jones, describing what they say were Byrd’s actions, which included these passages:
“Honestly, I don’t remember the very first time he touched me,” one accuser, now an adult, told Mother Jones. “It was more that he talked about it: He wanted to see me naked, he told me he spent more hours with me in a day than he did his wife, that when he had sex with her he was thinking about me.”