THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501150095
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
Less than two weeks before the opening of the 1995 legislative session, Senate leader Marc Basnight appears to have beaten back a Republican challenge to Democratic control of that chamber.
Despite an announced challenge to Basnight's bid for a second term in the state Senate's second-highest office, the 47-year-old Manteo contractor is likely to hold the Senate Democratic majority together - assuring him of victory when state lawmakers convene Jan. 25.
Even as Senate Republicans announced that they would nominate their own candidate for the office of president pro tempore, many legislative observers and some Republicans admitted that their effort to wrest control from Basnight was largely symbolic.
In a caucus on Thursday, the GOP voted to nominate Senate Minority Leader Betsy Cochrane, R-Davie, for president pro tem.
Basnight was nominated for the office by Senate Democrats last year but the full Senate will not vote until the General Assembly opens.
House Republicans have routinely nominated candidates for speaker when they were in the minority, but Senate Republicans have not challenged Democrats recently.
If the GOP were able to pull off a coup, Cochrane, considered a moderate by many political observers, would become the first woman to hold the post in the Senate.
That possibility could potentially appeal to Democratic women or other Senate liberals who may disagree with Basnight's conservative views on some women's issues. But with women holding just three Democratic seats and liberals at odds with most Republican views, that scenario becomes very remote.
After the GOP caucus, Cochrane would not comment on the party's efforts to unseat Basnight but said she expected Republicans to play a ``significant'' role in the Senate in the 1995 session.
She said she hoped that if Basnight is re-elected, the GOP's most senior senators would be appointed to head some Senate committees.
Basnight said such a move would be ``unusual'' but didn't rule it out.
The GOP gained a dozen seats in the Nov. 8 election and, until Thursday, held 24 of 50 seats in that chamber. That number dropped to 23 after the state Board of Elections declared the race for one Senate seat a tie and scheduled a new election for March 28. For the past two months, Republican leaders have openly worked to either woo two Democrats to switch parties and usher in GOP control of the Senate or forge a coalition with a breakaway Democratic bloc.
But it has been difficult to find those Democrats, according to retiring GOP chairman Jack Hawke.
In response to a question in Sanford on Thursday, Hawke said he did not expect the current party numbers to change before the General Assembly convenes.
``We had them pretty close to announcing at first, but I'm afraid we're not going to make it there,'' Hawke told a reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal.
Basnight said Thursday he is confident that he will be re-elected and said efforts to oust him had been blown out of proportion by the state press.
``I was confident after the (November general) election,'' he said. ``And it hasn't changed any.''
``I don't know where all of you have been getting your information, because I have been talking to people and following up rumors and what you've been saying just isn't so,'' Basnight said.
On Friday, aides to Basnight said he has written commitments from the other 25 Democrats in the Senate to remain loyal.
Basnight, a conservative Democrat, first won a state Senate seat in 1984 representing Dare and parts of 11 other northeastern counties. Basnight did his homework and, with the help and encouragement of his mentor, Kitty Hawk oilman Walter R. Davis, won the favor of the Senate leadership.
Basnight was elected president pro tem in 1993. In that post, he appoints committees and their chairmen, oversees the Senate's daily agenda and presides over the Senate in the absence of the state's lieutenant governor, who serves as Senate president.
In the weeks following the Nov. 8 elections, some Republican legislators and many political pundits speculated that the GOP would concentrate its recruitment efforts on a group of about six conservative senators including Sens. Luther H. Jordan Jr. of Wilmington, John H. Kerr of Goldsboro, Charlie Albertson of Beulaville and Ed Warren of Greenville, among others.
Geography and money may have helped make this unlikely.
Some of the Senate's most conservative members and most probable GOP targets are also from eastern North Carolina, and benefited from millions of dollars for local construction projects and other regional programs, thanks, in large part, to Basnight.
In 1992, when he was campaigning for the Senate leadership post, Basnight campaigned for many of these potential GOP recruits and some of the GOP-targeted senators have received large campaign contributions from Davis and Basnight over the years.
For the past two years, Democrats have occupied 39 of 50 Senate seats and Basnight virtually controlled the fate of any bill in that chamber. But with a Democratic margin of only three of four votes, shifting coalitions of senators will have more power.
Basnight is also likely be under increasing pressure from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and his friend Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. for help in promoting their agendas. Even if Democrats retain leadership of the Senate, as they are expected to do, the chamber will be a more difficult place to manage in 1995 than it has been in the past. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Marc Basnight, bidding for a second term as Senate leader, is likely
to retain power.
by CNB