RALEIGH – As usual, many of the state’s media organizations used the Sunday before the start of a legislative session to preview the issues and controversies likely to dominate debate in the General Assembly. The 2007 batch includes an expected budget gap of half a billion dollars or more, possible new authority for localities to raise sales or other taxes, proposals to issue billions of dollars in new state bonds, and a host of policy questions about education, capital punishment, landfills, and other issues.
One thing does make this year’s preview season notable: the absence of intrigue. There’s no real suspense about who’ll be running the North Carolina House. That will make 2007 different from every year since the 2001-02 session. And it will make this year more about challenging issues than compelling personalities.
The roots of the House leadership intrigue lay further back, in the 1998 election cycle and its aftermath. After four years of Republican majorities in the House, Democrats regained a slight edge in the chamber. Rep. Dan Blue of Raleigh, the former speaker, saw Democratic influence and allegiance shifting to a bloc led by Rep. Jim Black of Matthews. He sought a coalition with House Republicans, and came just a vote shy of organizing the chamber for the 1999 session.
From that point on, Speaker Black perceived it necessary to increase control of both the legislative process and Democratic politics, the former to ensure that defections would not imperil key legislation or his hold on power, and the latter to make current and future lawmakers beholden to him for campaign cash and advice.
In 2000, Democrats retained the House majority. But a number of the contests were hard-fought and relatively close. During the 2001 session, Black and other legislative leaders sought to reduce their risk by gerrymandering new districts to further dilute the influence of Republican votes (ever since, GOP House candidates have received more votes than Democrats, even in 2006, but the district-by-district outcomes did not reflect these proportions). Most Republicans supported a challenge to the new district maps in court, with the important exception of former Speaker Harold Brubaker and his lieutenant, Richard Morgan. The latter two said that by going to court to enforce state constitutional constrains on redistricting, the GOP plaintiffs were setting a bad precedent for judicial encroachment on legislative prerogatives. The plantiffs disagreed, arguing that the constitutional rules in question were designed to prevent the very blatant gerrymandering Black was foisting on the voters, and that it was nonsensical to expect a rogue legislative branch to enforce the rules on itself.
Underneath all this, there was a growing personal animosity between some of the plaintiffs – Rep. Leo Daughtry and former Rep. Art Pope – and the Brubaker/Morgan faction.
The lawsuit proceeded. The plaintiffs won at the trial court in Johnston County, and later in the N.C. Supreme Court. Because Democratic leaders of the legislature ran out the clock in 2002 rather than speedily redraw the maps to comply with court orders, the elections that year were held within districts drawn by a court-appointed expert. Because there was less gerrymandering, and the Republicans in general had a good year, they regained a slight 61-59 majority in the House.
It didn’t last long. One of the Republicans, Michael Decker, switched parties to make it 60-60 (he later admitted as part of a federal plea bargain that he received a bribe to do so, apparently from Black). Then the Brubaker/Morgan faction got its revenge on the rest of the GOP caucus, negotiating a secret arrangement to deliver effective control of the chamber to Black and the Democrats for 2003-04, with Morgan serving as a co-speaker but not with equivalent power.
The Black team, with Morgan’s acquiescence, proceeded to redraw the House districts again. It was no coincidence that Democrats won a small majority for real in 2004. Still, there was still some doubt about what role Morgan and his Republican faction would play at the start of the 2005 session.
Now, there is no doubt. The 2007 session will convene without Morgan and some of his allies. The GOP minority will be led by Rep. Skip Stam of Raleigh. The Democratic nominee for speaker, Joe Hackney, won’t be challenged by a coalition candidate. In a sense, House politics won’t be as compelling.
But the substantive issues facing the General Assembly remain compelling. Perhaps a little boring policy work will do the body good.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.