State House tilting to GOP

If results stand, party has 1-seat edge over Democrats

If the unofficial returns are correct, Republicans are confident that they have secured a one-seat majority in the Arkansas House of Representatives, but they’ll have to wait until the rest of the votes are counted in District 95 to know for sure.

In the meantime, party leaders are puzzling over how to replace a Democratic speaker designee picked last spring.

“We’re plowing through new ground, and I’m trying to learn as much I can as I’m trying to develop a solution,” House Republican Leader Bruce Westerman said Wednesday at the Capitol. “It’s somewhat unprecedented.”

Democrats have controlled the state House since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. A waveof gains by the Republican Party in 2010 and again Tuesday night apparently secured the GOP a majority in the House for the first time in 138 years.

Democrats are still holding out hope that a recount will reverse the results in one contest.

According to unofficial results, on Tuesday night Republicans secured 50 seats, Democrats held 48 and a Green Party candidate, Fred Smith of Crawfordsville, gained a seat. Counties have until Nov. 16 to certify the election results.

The winner of District 95 between Republican Sue Scott of Rogers and Independent Mark Moore of Pea Ridge still wasn’t clear Wednesday evening because of problems with the machine that scans paper ballots in Benton County, secretary of state spokesman Alex Reed said.

Before the equipment malfunction, Scott was leading Moore 6,234 votes to 3,893, according to The Associated Press.

Benton County Election Coordinator Kim Dennison said Wednesday that a technician from Election Systems & Software, which produces the machines, was working on the three malfunctioning machines, and results could be in Wednesday night or this morning.

The winner in District 95 is expected to caucus with the Republican Party, and Green Party winner Smith, who formerly was a Democrat in the House, is expected to caucus with the Democrats, Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, said.

Today northeast Arkansas Democratic House candidate L.J. Bryant of Grubbs is expected to decide whether to ask for a recount after losing his race by 44 votes.

Unofficial numbers show that Republican John Hutchison of Harrisburg won the race with 50.22 percent. Westerman said Republicans feel confident that the District 52 vote tally is accurate.

“It was mostly electronic voting. We believe there is very little room for error,” Westerman said. “If they want to challenge it I guess they will challenge it, but we believe that the results are good.”

If the recount found that Bryant did win the race, neither Democrats nor Republicans would hold a majority in the House for the 2013 legislative session.

The House speaker is elected by a majority of members of the House and commonly is a member of the majority party. He controls the agenda for the legislative session, decides which committees will handle all legislation, chooses which legislators are recognized to speak and who serves as committee chairmen.

Last spring Rep. Darrin Williams, a Little Rock Demdard way to address power in a split chamber. Some states choose to have two House speakers or rotate control of the chamber week to week.

“Legislatures are all the same, and they are all different. They’ll figure that out within their own traditions,” he said of Arkansas. “They’ll have to hammer out some kind of power-sharing agreement.”

Storey said many other states don’t pick their speaker designee far in advance to plan for the next legislative session.

“That’s somewhat unique to Arkansas ... and that’s probably due to the really tight nature of term limits in Arkansas,” Storey said.

Gov. Mike Beebe said he isn’t planning to get involved in how the House decides to govern itself.

He said he wasn’t expecting Tuesday’s result.

“The House is really a surprise. It’s closer than I thought it would be,” he said.

He said such a close margin makes cooperation important.

“Under any scenario, it’s virtually a dead heat. They’ve got to work together. They absolutely have to,” Beebe said. “Part of my job is to encourage, persuade, plead, cajole to get them to work.”

Beebe is to present his fiscal 2014 budget to lawmakers Nov. 15, and he said the election results don’t change his plans for the 2013 legislative session. He said he’ll continue to focus on education, economic development and reducing the sales tax on groceries.

“They may have different views, but that’s not going to change mine,” Beebe said. “Am I willing to work with them? Absolutely, always happy to. It’s a democracy.”

On Wednesday morning, Beebe said he hadn’t spoken with House Republican leaders. That afternoon, Westerman said he hadn’t spoken with Beebe but is open to doing so before the session starts in January.

Beebe said he doesn’t believe the Republicans’ 2012 gains will be permanent.

“This wasn’t a big Republican surge. They may have gained majorities but the big Republican surge was in 2010. That’s where the huge number change was,” Beebe said.

ocrat, was selected as House speaker-designate on the last day of the fiscal session. House rules require members to elect a speaker on the first day of the legislative session. Typically, that’s the person who served as speaker-designee.

But, Republicans have said repeatedly that they plan to install Terry Rice, R-Waldron, in place of Williams.

Williams would be Arkansas’ first black House speaker.

There’s little if any precedent for rejecting a speakerdesignee.

“To my knowledge that’s never happened, and I would say that’s because there’s never been a party switch, so it’s a little bit of a Catch-22,” Westerman said.

Westerman said the Republican caucus would like to make the switch in time for Friday’s the organizational meetings.

At those meetings, members determine seniority, choose seats in the chamber and select what committees they want to serve on.

“We hope to be able to carry on with that,” he said.

Rice did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Williams said he has no plans to step down but will oblige if the majority of members vote to replace him.

“If they have a majority, then I support them if that is what they want to do,” Williams said. “I will not do anything to obstruct or hinder that process at all.”

If District 52 flipped to the Democrats, the House would be essentially split 50-50 with neither party holding a majority, Leding said.

Leding is running to be House Democratic leader, who leads the Democratic caucus.

Arkansas House rules have no provision to address who would control an evenly split chamber.

Tim Storey with the National Conference of State Legislatures said it is not uncommon for at least one state legislature in the nation to be evenly divided; but there aren’t any at the moment.

He said there is no stan-

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/08/2012

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