Rand departure will shake up Senate leadership

RALEIGH, N.C. — Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand helped pass seemingly every significant piece of legislation Democrats have crowed about over the past decade – from the lottery to probation reforms and the annual budget.

Rand protected fellow Democrats from issues they'd rather not discuss – like abortion and taxes – by blocking votes on Republican amendments that might prove difficult to explain to voters come election time.

He gave hundreds of thousands of dollars for colleagues' campaigns and kept the Senate Democratic Caucus on a policy track that has held majority in the chamber going on 110 years.

So it was a seismic surprise announcement that Rand was leaving the Senate he had served in since 1982 by year's end to head the state parole commission for Gov. Beverly Perdue.

In short, Rand was indispensable.

"Tony knew about how things worked. He knew where the bodies were buried," quipped Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston. "He knew how the agencies worked. ... He really, really knew what was going on everywhere."

Rand's departure will shake up the leadership structure within the Senate, possibly divvying up his responsibilities among two or three Democrats.

It also foretells the potential for a retooled leadership team under Senate leader Marc Basnight that might be more populist and liberal in political leanings than the business-oriented majority that has ruled the chamber.

"His departure will mean more of a diversification of the responsibility of running the Senate," said Sen. Doug Berger, D-Franklin. "It's going to a signal a new direction."

The 70-year-old Rand was a workhorse in the Senate, serving as the majority leader and chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee simultaneously since 2001 as the chief lieutenant to Basnight, D-Dare.

Rand was also a chief negotiator in each year's budget negotiations and was Basnight's "enforcer," solving problems between senators and interest groups with opposing views and persuade wayward party members to stay in line.

"He was a gatekeeper for an awful lot of things," said Steve Metcalf, of Asheville, a lobbyist and Democratic senator earlier this decade. "He protected the caucus."

Rand's departure, expected to become official by the end of the year, will require the other 28 Senate Democrats left behind to step up both in and out of the chamber.

One candidate already appears to be the front runner for the majority leader's post. Basnight endorsed Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, in a letter late Friday.

Nesbitt has a history in the Legislature as long as Rand, joining the House 30 years ago and serving as an Appropriations Committee chairman. He switched to the Senate five years ago.

A group associated with the conservative Civitas Institute ranked Nesbitt as the least conservative senator during this year's legislative session, based on his voting record.

Berger, who is backing Nesbitt, said Rand should be praised for keeping Senate Democrats in charge of the chamber at a time when legislatures in the South switched over to Republican control.

However, he said, like-minded lawmakers chafed under the power Rand had consolidated in the Senate. Some have suggested giving the rules committee post to someone besides the majority leader.

"One of the sources of tension was in part the multiple roles that roles that Sen. Rand has assumed responsibility for," Berger said. "Some of us felt some of those roles needed to be equally shared."

Republicans said the tension could be seen this year as Rand came up on the losing end of more bills and there were more reports of dust-ups in closed-door meetings of Senate Democrats.

Rand "increasingly found his views at odds with his more liberal Democratic colleagues and that may have led to this decision" to step down, said Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, who is unrelated to Doug Berger.

Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, disagreed with the assessment that Senate Democrats have shifted to the political left.

Bills that took a more liberal approach on hot-button social issues – including public school bullying and sex education – passed this year, because lawmakers needed time to feel comfortable with them, not because of some ideological shift, Clodfelter said.

"We'll continue to have healthy debate in the caucus," he said. "Sometimes one position will prevail, but we tend to come together in that debate."

Whoever replaces Rand also will be asked to raise the kind of campaign money necessary for Democrats to fund candidates in swing districts next year.

The party with the majority after the elections will get to rewrite district boundaries that will last for the next 10 years in redistricting. Rand has raised $888,000 for the party's caucus since 2005, according to campaign finance records.

The loss of Rand's Senate institutional and policy knowledge could be the most difficult to replace. However, Rand, who suggested he wanted to try something new, sounded like he thought the Senate wouldn't miss a beat with his departure.

"It goes on," Rand said. "It won't even stop."