#NCGA: Hager’s push for caucus-driven leadership ruffling some feathers
Incoming House majority leader Mike Hager is trying to open up the decision making process in the General Assembly’s lower chamber. Typically, the big decisions in that chamber have been made behind closed doors by the speaker and a handful of close advisers and legislative allies. Some of the chamber’s longer-serving members — including some close allies of former speaker Thom Tillis — are not exactly thrilled with Hager’s idea.
One House insider filled us in: 
”Hager’s point is pretty simple. There are 70-plus members of the Republican caucus who got elected by their consituents to come up here and make decisions and represent them. What we’ve had is a handful of folks making the decisions for everybody, and a bunch of others sitting around in the dark, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for marching orders. Hager wants to ensure that the House’s direction and caucus’s strategy includes decisions reached by the caucus as a whole. He wants to make sure a broad spectrum of voices is heard — that everybody who wants to toss in their two cents gets to. Some people are hollering about that, saying ‘We need to empower our speaker.’ Hager is not talking about stripping the speaker of power. He’s talking about creating a real sense of teamwork and transparency. I don’t see how that is a bad thing.”
My source tells me this move was spawned from frustration with the SOP of the Tillis era in the House. There reportedly wasn’t much discussion outside of the upper echelon of leadership. My source tells me that House members were regularly misled about the tone and tenor and content of discussions between the House and Senate.
My source describes Hager as a highly-popular figure within the House Republican caucus — as well as among key members of the Senate Republican caucus — who can leverage that into some success with this quest.
The Republican Party in North Carolina used to pride itself that it was a party that operated from the bottom up, instead of from the top down like the Democrats. Hager is to be praised for his attempts to bring those solid traditions back to the GOP. Tillis, and indeed Boehner, prefer the Democrats’ top-down model, and to me that makes them not much of Republicans.
Just goes to show there really is only one party with two different names. So that’s why I think a new party titled Constitutional Conservative Party should form calling citizens from ‘the other party with two names’ and all walks of life, red and yellow black and white to rally behind and around the Constitution. Give citizens a place to go who are tired of the status quo progressive liberal ideology of the other party with two names.
After dropping out of the race for Speaker, Hager needed multiple ballots to defeat, of all people, Jason Saine in the race for Leader. He may prove himself to be a giant, but “highly popular” is not a moniker he has, yet, earned.
Not only has Mike Hager won the popular votes of the caucus but also the conservative votes as well, just so you know he only lost the Rino votes. FYI just ask Jason!
So, what’s the position of the GOP’s new House Speaker? That will tell the tale,
Good for Representative Hager. Hopefully he will prevail. This is what Thom Tillis acted like when he was first elected. This is what the people want.
About time an elected official used a novel idea of getting feedback from the other elected quorum than a handful of elite. I wish him success in this endeavor.