THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701200038
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 68 lines
Rank hath its privileges and nowhere is seniority more cherished than the North Carolina Senate.
Already the 50 state senators are adjusting their cuffs and practicing for their grand entrance Jan. 29, when the General Assembly convenes for another biennial session.
The senators privately consider themselves a mite more officerly and gentlemanly than the 120 buttoned-down barbarians who occasionally quarrel and even raise their voices across the marble halls in the House.
But in the Senate, the man who makes the earth move is State Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, who has just been re-elected for another term as president pro tem.
Even though Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker is technically president of the Senate, it is Basnight who gets the perks and privileges and all those special stickers that say ``Reserved for Senate Pro Tem'' and mean ``Don't Ever, Ever, Ever Park Here.''
Basnight, 49, ranks seventh in seniority among the 50 senators who will report for duty in the 1997 legislative session. But as a genuine barefoot boy with cheek from over there in Dare, Basnight has been trained by some great former Democratic pro tems: Henson Barnes and J. J. ``Monk'' Harrington are among Basnight's most recent mentors.
This year the most senior senator of in the predominantly Democratic upper house is Donald R. Kincaid, a 60-year-old Republican who runs an insurance business in Boone.
Kincaid has served 13 terms in the state Senate and three terms inthe House, but in the Democratic Senate that doesn't mean much if you're a Republican.
Basnight is still surrounded by friendly senior Democrats, including R.C. Soles, a Tabor City farmer who has served 11 terms in the Senate and 15 terms in the House.
Other heavyweight Senate Democrats include Aaron W. Plylerof Monroe, who has served eight Senate terms and 15 terms in the House.
Other seventh-termers who rank in seniority with Basnight include J. Richard Conder of Rockingham, William N. Martin of Greensboro and R.L. Martin, of Bethel.
Nearly every legislator in Raleigh shares the feeling that Basnight's political career will eventually take him to the governor's mansion or the halls of the U.S. Congress. Each year, under the coaching of some of the smartest parliamentarians in the legislature, Basnight has visibly grown in stature in the cloakrooms as well as on the Senate floor.
And Basnight has shrewdly rewarded his influential friends, putting them on committees and in special positions where they can look out for their own interests as well as those of the pro tem.
Several years ago, Beverly M. Perdue, a four-term Democratic senator from New Bern, was among those who decided that Basnight was too talented to settle for an aw-shucks, no-necktie image he developed on the laid-back Outer Banks.
A loyal clique in the Senate, including Perdue and such notables as then-Sen. Kenneth C. Royal Jr., a deputy pro tem, set out to show Basnight the difference between leading and ruling in a democratic society. As a student of government, Basnight was quick to learn.
On the Senate floor Basnight is now smooth as any Talleyrand and probably just as dangerous when crossed.
He has picked his lieutenants carefully, making sure that Sen. Frank W. Ballance Jr., of Warren County was selected as deputy pro tem.
The coming session of the new legislature will probably see Ballance emerge as the state's most powerful African-American politician. ILLUSTRATION: Marc Basnight
KEYWORDS: NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY