THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 26, 1994 TAG: 9411260093
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: Betty Gray
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Despite a drubbing by voters this month that left few Democrats in leadership positions in the state legislature, the party's Senate leaders seem prepared to continue their ongoing power struggle with Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker into next year's session.
For the second time, Senate Democrats have not invited Wicker to their caucus.
Wicker this week said he was unfazed by the exclusion.
``I hadn't even thought about it,'' he said. ``It doesn't bother me at all.''
Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, who holds the chamber's second-highest-ranking position, said he has left organizational work for the caucus in the hands of Senate Majority Leader J. Richard Conder of Rockingham. But he also said that he had not asked Conder to invite Wicker.
Efforts to reach Conder were unsuccessful.
Senate Democrats also did not invite Wicker to their caucus in 1992.
When issuing invitations to the caucus that year, Senate leaders told Wicker he would not be needed at the meeting, open only to senators and a few key aides.
``He was not invited. He's not a senator,'' Basnight said at the time.
Basnight's comments about a possible place for Wicker at this year's caucus were similar: ``Dennis Wicker is not a legislative leader, he is a member of the administrative branch,'' he said.
Wicker's most recent Democratic predecessor as lieutenant governor, Bob Jordan, who held office from 1985 to 1989, was invited to Senate Democratic caucuses.
Beyond that, however, the precedent is not clear.
Sen. William W. Staton, D-Lee, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1976 and from 1983 to 1992, said that although lieutenant governors were invited to caucuses while the legislature was in session, they were not normally invited to the Senate's organizational caucuses.
And Gov. James B. Hunt, who served as lieutenant governor from 1972 to 1976, could not remember whether he was invited to Senate caucuses, a Hunt spokesman said.
After the snub of Wicker was publicized in 1992, Basnight told Wicker that while he still would not be included in the caucus Saturday morning, he was welcome to join the senators for dinner that night.
At the time, a Wicker aide said the lieutenant governor-elect would not drive five hours from his home in Sanford to the Sanderling Inn just to eat dinner.
And he didn't. by CNB