It's now a three-man race in the House to determine who will replace incoming speaker Cameron Sexton as the Republican caucus chair.

Rep. Jerry Sexton, R-Bean Station, confirmed Friday he is also in the running for the position.

"I feel like that I can offer a lot and bring a lot of experience to the caucus with my background in business and leadership," Jerry Sexton said. "We certainly need to be refocusing right now in our caucus, and I think we have a great opportunity to do that."

Sexton has owned a furniture manufacturing company for more than 30 years, a business he has grown to three locations and several hundred employees.

Cameron Sexton, who was elected chair by the caucus in November, was voted nominee for speaker on July 24 to replace Glen Casada, who resigned on Friday from the leadership position amid scandal.

After reports by The Tennessean and NewsChannel 5 surfaced showing Casada's involvement in exchanging sexually explicit text messages and some members questioning his fitness to continue leading the House, Jerry Sexton led the charge in calling for a caucus meeting to vote on Casada's future.

At that May 20 meeting, the majority of the caucus voted that they had no confidence in Casada's leadership.

Gov. Bill Lee subsequently called an Aug. 23 special legislative session where the House will officially vote on Cameron Sexton as speaker. The evening before, the caucus will meet to select a new chairman.

Per bylaws, the position is the second-ranking officer in the caucus, tasked with calling and presiding over caucus meetings, facilitating debates within the group of lawmakers, assisting the majority leader with fundraising and communicating with members on "legislative matters."

On the day of the most recent caucus election, Cameron Sexton said it would be up to the caucus whether it decided to continue working with political operatives Casada had hired as legislative employees this session but are no longer employed with the state. In one case, such an operative was also being paid for marketing work by the caucus while working as a state employee.

Jerry Sexton said Friday that as caucus chair, he would not be inclined to continue using a vendor that had been controversial but was not making a firm commitment on the matter.

"There's too many out there to choose from to have anything that causes distractions," he said.

Jerry Sexton, whom Casada appointed chairman of the public health subcommittee, was first elected to the legislature in 2014.

"We have a great opportunity to focus on the strong things that we've done in the past and to continue that and grow it even more," Sexton said of why he was running for speaker.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.

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