#NCGA: House leadership races? (We’ve got the inside scoop.)
The Republican majority will huddle next weekend to pick leaders for the chamber AND for their caucus. Since they are a majority in the General Assembly’s lower chamber, the Republican picks will be quite the big dogs in the upcoming sessions. The candidates to replace Thom Tillis on the speaker’s dais have been bandied about cyberspace and the drive-by media. Thanks to some really-inside sources, we have a comprehensive roster of the candidates being considered by the GOP caucus next weekend. (Of course, we’re going to offer up our opinions / analysis on the candidates. That is, after all, what you pay the big bucks for on this site.)
Let’s get started:
Speaker of the House
Blust, John
Burr, Justin
Daughtry, Leo
Holloway, Bryan
Moore, Tim
Setzer, Mitch
Our Take: Conventional wisdom says Daughtry and Moore are in a nip-and-tuck dogfight for the top job. But remember, politicians lie — NOT JUST TO US — but also to each other. You frequently get individual legislators promising their support to multiple candidates for the same office. The best bet for conservatives would be Guilford’s John Blust. He is a super-smart guy — a lawyer AND a CPA. Blust and John Rhodes were at the forefront of the opposition to House Speaker Jim Black and co-speaker Richard Morgan. Insiders tell me Blust is well-liked, but has one big strike against him. He is really big on FAIRNESS. Blust is all about transparency, openness, and civility to all members. Basically, let everybody be heard. Most legislators want that stuff when they are in the minority, but forget all about it when they get into the majority.
Speaker Pro – Tem
Howard, Julia
Stam, Paul “Skip”
Stevens, Sarah
Our Take: This is pretty much a meaningless job. (Don’t believe me? Ask Dale Folwell.) Julia Howard was one of the ringleaders of the group that defected to allow Jim Black and Richard Morgan’s reign of terror to commence. She should NEVER get any kind of reward, as a result of that treachery. Stam is way too comfortable with the folks on the other side of the aisle. Once you get past the pro-life issue, he starts sliding to the port side of the ideological scale. Sarah Stevens doesn’t exactly light our fires, but she is a helluva lot better than the other two.
House Majority Leader
Boles, Jamie
Dixon, James “Jimmy”
Hager, Mike
Jones, Bert
Our Take: This is the field general for the majority party. You command the troops during battle on the floor. For conservatives, the best choices would be Bert Jones or Mike Hager. You may remember Hager for trying to repeal the alternative energy mandates, but then being thwarted by speaker Tillis. Given his representation of Moore County, we are familiar with Jamie Boles. Much of his work on Jones Street has focused on legislation benefiting the funeral industry. (He is a funeral director.) He got some bad publicity last year from local drive-bys for some really sketchy, throwing-political-weight-around tactics in a local rezoning case. During his first term (2008-2010), local conservatives had to spend a lot of time knocking sense into him on basic conservative positions. Boles’s voting record has turned a little to the right recently. So, he’d make an OK consolation prize for conservatives.
Deputy Majority Leader
Brown, Brian
Majority Whip
McElraft, Pat
Republican Conference Leader
Jeter, Charles
Our Take: This appears to be pay-back for three of Thom Tillis’s most loyal soldiers. We wrote earlier about Brown’s really bizarre campaign accounting practices. THAT information would make me very wary about putting him in charge of anything important. It sure would be nice to have more than one candidate for consideration for each office here.
Joint Caucus Leader
Hurley, Pat
Warren, Harry
Our Take: We’ve got two rather unremarkable moderates here. (Both earned C’s for 2013 from Civitas.) Another choice would be nice.
Charles Jeter has a talent for saying exactly what you want for hear, which makes him likable and gives you a warm fuzzy feeling – until you realize you can’t depend on anything he says. He had such a bad reputation for telling whoppers when he served on the Huntersville Town Board that his fellow commissioners would shake their heads and say, “That’s just Charlie.”
Harry (driver licenses for illegals) Warren doesn’t need to be in charge of anything!
Brian Brown is in the hip pocket of the radical environmentalists of the CCA. We do not need him. He is also in the hip pocket of Tillis associate and squish radio station owner Henry Hinton.
There are a few good choices in this lot, but a lot more who think more like Democrats.
But somebody has got to swing the gavel.
I know the NC Tea Party never likes anybody but we need someone to fill the leadership positions. It is just the way things are.
First of all, we conservatives are not all ”Tea Party”. Many of us are from the Jesse Helms / Ronald Reagan wing of the party and have been around a lot longer than the Tea Party. The Tea Party are welcome reinforcements, but not the whole of the conservative wing of the party.
There are some good really guys in the mix on the two most important offices, Blust and Hager. There are a number of other good conservatives I would like to see come forward for some of those uncontested offices. Leo Daughtry would be acceptable, as after all he was also an archenemy of Richard Morgan, but I think Blust would be better.
Holloway, Burr and Jones are every bit as conservative as Jesse Helms and more so that Reagan was.
Anyway, what some people pass off as conservative is nothing other than being bomb-throwers.
The GOP caucus needs people who can LEAD and form consensus among the GOP House members. If they cant do that, they need to sit their butts down and shut up.
Yes, the GOP leaders need to convice their Republican colleagues to pass more amnesty for fence jumpers, more toll roads, stepped up common core legislation, increased government spending, and raise the gas, food, air, water, oxygen tax again. These GOP leaders will reach across the aisle to bring on board the Democrat minoirity and claim great leadership by reaching across the aisle trying to score points with Pravda! To which the Democrats will gladly go along with and thank the GOP leaders for carrying the water for them until the Democrats are soundly back in power. Once back in power the Democrats will slap the stupid Republicans on the back and shout, Thanks for minding the shop while were were gone for a little while suckers! Those stupid Republicans are such wimps we get them to carry our water while we’re out of power. They serve us well. D. Democrat