Glen Casada

Richard Glen Casada Jr. (born August 2, 1959) is an American politician, and a former Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, where he represented District 63 (Williamson County) from 2003 to 2023.

Glen Casada was born on August 2, 1959.

He graduated from Western Kentucky University with a B.S. in Agriculture and Education in 1982.

In 1994, Casada was elected to the County Commission of Williamson County.

In 2003, he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In 2022, Casada decided not to seek reelection to the Tennessee House of Representatives, citing a desire for "a new chapter of public service."

Casada instead ran for the Republican nomination for Williamson County Clerk, losing to incumbent county clerk Jeff Whidby by a margin of 4,218 to 12,860 votes.

In 2009, Casada was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit in federal court, Captain Pamela Barnett v. Barack Hussein Obama, which claimed that Barack Obama was not an American citizen and therefore ineligible to be President of the United States.

Judge David O. Carter ruled that Casada and other state legislators did not have standing to sue, since the supposed harm they feared was "highly speculative and conjectural."

In April 2011, Casada tried to repeal a workplace non-discrimination bill for sexual orientation and gender identity in Nashville.

In an interview, he explained he was trying to "create a uniform environment across the state, similar to what the interstate commerce clause does for our country."

The bill was supported by David Fowler's socially conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee, and the Log Cabin Republicans were opposed to it.

His opposition to Syrian refugees attracted national attention in the media in 2015.

He would later be implicated for having a role in using a firm known as Phoenix Solutions to launder money.

In November 2015, Casada said he wanted to stop admitting Syrian refugees in Tennessee.

He also wanted to return those who were already in the state to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In October 2016, Casada ran for re-election against Democratic candidate Courtenay Rogers.

Casada won the election by more than 17,000 votes (a ratio of nearly 3 to 1).

Casada voted for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary of the 2016 presidential election, and he voted for Donald Trump in the general election.

In February 2017, he was selected as the Republican Majority leader.

On March 4, 2017, Casada was one of the main speakers at a rally in Legislative Plaza in Downtown Nashville to celebrate the policies of President Trump.

He was the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives from January 8, 2019 through August 2, 2019, whereupon he resigned his post amid scandal.

This was the shortest stint of a Tennessee Speaker of the House in modern history.

Casada was previously the Majority Leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In May 2019, several scandals broke out in the speaker's office from investigations that were conducted by WTVF, a local television station.

First, it was uncovered that Casada's Chief of Staff, Cade Cothren, had possibly attempted to frame Justin Jones, a local civil rights activist, for violating a restraining order.

This claim was later found to be false by a special prosecutor appointed to the case.

The text messages acquired showed Casada received one racially charged and several sexually explicit text messages from Cothren.

One of the messages included Cothren who resigned his position on May 6.

Several lawmakers then encouraged Casada to resign as House Speaker as more information was revealed by the WTVF investigation.

The other revelations were:

It was also uncovered that Casada hired Michael Lotfi, a political operative put on the House payroll, but who did not have to report to work daily.

He was only required to come "when needed."

Lotfi was tasked with spinning a story to make Rep. David Byrd's sexual assault accusers look like they were fabricating their story.

The FBI opened an investigation on the controversial vote on Educational Savings Accounts (School Vouchers).

Members of the House of Representatives noticed that the additional "Research Analysts" hired, were being assigned to be "hall monitors" and track certain members of the body.

Shawn Hatmaker was confirmed to be one of the "hall monitors" and was relieved of his duties.

On May 8, 2019, Casada apologized to his GOP colleagues and said that he would unify the House with an action plan.

He then met with the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators on May 20, 2019.

Later that day, the TBCSL announced that they had lost confidence in his ability to lead and asked for his resignation.