Jim Black had an amazing January, but his February hasn’t started well.
The two-term House speaker wants a three-peat. Last month’s coup, the party switch of Rep. Michael Decker, got Black back into contention after losses in the November elections had appeared to sideline him. But the subsequent political pummeling that Decker took, both from party leaders and from his constituents back in Forsyth County, probably scared off other Republicans who were thinking about crossing over to support Black when the session convened last week. They still seem spooked (as does Decker, I understand).
Basically, then, Decker got Black back into the game – but has also kept him from winning it, so far.
That doesn’t mean things won’t change on Wednesday, which I hear may be the last day that all the Democrats hold together to support Black’s bid. If he can’t pull a wayward Republican over by the Wednesday afternoon session, look for dissidents Dems led by Reps. Martin Nesbitt and Mickey Michaux to begin negotiating in earnest with the Republican caucus. This may, in turn, have the result of pushing Black into more serious negotiations with Rep. Richard Morgan’s faction of five GOP dissidents.
I have no idea how things are going to turn out. But I do have an opinion about the tussle thus far: I think it has seriously damaged Black’s reputation.
Yes, of course he has pride. Yes, I am sure he truly believes himself to be the best possible leader of the House. And after Decker’s switch, the speakership has probably seemed so tantalizingly close that giving up would be painful. But let’s get real. The voters of North Carolina elected a Republican majority, albeit a slim one, in the House. The popular vote was actually a bigger mandate for the GOP than the district-by-district count reflects. (That’s for all you misguided Al Gore fans out there, who should also recognize that Republicans actually won the popular vote in contested NC Senate districts. They wuz robbed!)
Even after the Decker switch, which was perfectly legal but hardly principled, the numbers are deadlocked at 60-60. It is wrong of Black, representing the party who got fewer votes in November, to expect to control the House as he did during the past four years, when Democrats had a more legitimate claim to majority support. Whatever concessions he may have offered Republicans in the form of committee chairs, his apparent insistence on not only a sole speakership but also control of the Rules Committee is simply unreasonable and reflects poorly on his judgment and sense of fairness.
The political class in town seems to dislike the co-speakership idea, and have gone out of their way to portray it as little better than World Wide Wrestling for politicians. That’s not my impression at all, having talked to lawmakers and legislative observers in states where power-sharing deals have been struck. No one particularly likes them, and they don’t banish partisanship or gamesmanship from the legislative process, but they do make the best of a difficult situation. They allow split legislatures to muddle through – which, like it or not, is what voters ask for when they vote in equal party delegations.
In this case, the voters didn’t even do that. The 2003 speaker squabble has become a Black mark on a political career, regardless of the outcome.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.