THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9411300477
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Democratic party leaders in the North Carolina Senate 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 snubbed Wicker by not inviting him to their caucus, being held Wednesday in Raleigh.
Wicker, in an interview, said he was unfazed by the exclusion.
``I hadn't even thought about it,'' he said. ``It doesn't bother me at all.''
Sen. Marc Basnight, who serves as president pro tem of the Senate, that 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.
Senate Democrats also failed to invite Wicker to their caucus in 1992.
``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 Senate Democratic caucus were similar: ``Dennis Wicker is not a legislative leader, he is a member of the administrative branch,'' he said.
Under the state constitution, the lieutenant governor, although a member of the administrative branch, presides over the Senate and votes in that chamber in the event of a tie. For several years, Senate rules conferred the power to appoint committees and set the Senate agenda with the lieutenant governor, but in 1989, after the election of Lt. Gov. Jim Gardner, a Republican, the Democratic-controlled Senate stripped the office of those duties.
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 while 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 Jr., who served as lieutenant governor from 1972 to 1976, could not remember whether he was invited to Senate caucuses, a Hunt spokesman said at the time of the 1992 caucus.
After the snub of Wicker was publicized in 1992 Basnight met with Wicker and 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