Tillis' recovery averts a firestorm

[caption id="attachment_21956" align="alignleft" width="150"] Paul T. O'Connor.[/caption]

by Paul O'Conner, The Insider, printed in The Wilson Daily Times, May 25, 2017.

Some might find this column tasteless, but there is no denying that the unexpected need to replace a U.S. senator last week would have set off a political firestorm in Raleigh.

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Thom Tillis collapsed while running a 5K race in Washington. Initial reports said he needed CPR as he was rushed to the hospital.

That was incorrect. Tillis, 56, had simply overdone his New Year’s resolution on exercise and dieting; by mid-afternoon he was back at work.

But what if North Carolina had needed a relief senator?

Under North Carolina law, Gov. Roy Cooper could appoint a temporary replacement if either of our senators left office. The last time it happened, after Sen. John East died in 1986, Gov. Jim Martin appointed U.S. Rep. Jim Broyhill who served for four months before losing to Terry Sanford.

By state law, any replacement must be of the departing senator’s party. Martin, a Republican, had an easy choice in his own party. But a Republican replacement would challenge Democrat Cooper.

And that sparks all kinds of fun options over which to speculate.

Cooper’s most obvious course would be to look for a reliably moderate Republican like Broyhill, but one not likely to be a strong candidate in 2018 when the temporary senator would have to run for the remainder of the departing senator’s term. Former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr comes to mind.

Or, Cooper could appoint someone certain to cause Republicans heartburn. Third District U.S. Rep. Walter Jones of Farmville is a maverick Republican, and he voted against the American Health Care Act just a few weeks ago. Such an appointment would probably doom President Trump’s AHCA in the Senate. National Democrats would likely pressure Cooper to appoint Jones.

If Cooper chose to get nasty, in a political sense, he could give Republicans convulsions by appointing former House Co-Speaker Richard Morgan, a pariah in his party certain to be opposed next year in a primary.

Counter-intuitively, let me suggest Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.

Think of the problems Cooper could solve for himself by shipping the most important and powerful, the smartest, Republican in state politics off to Washington. Berger may be too smart to take the job, but who turns down a chance to serve in the U.S. Senate?

Democrats would then run a viciously negative campaign against Berger next year, blaming him for everything the legislature has done.

But Cooper is too much of a Boy Scout to appoint Berger or N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore. The most likely choices: Orr, Jones or a moderate businessman with no ambitions in 2018.

Legislative Republicans foresaw this problem earlier this year. Maybe they knew Tillis was overdoing the healthy-living regimen. Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, filed House Bill 659 on April 11. It would force the governor to choose his replacement senator from a list of three candidates presented by the departing senator’s party executives.

While that approach would eliminate the kind of cross-party shenanigans noted above, it creates a different problem, one that already exists in the current law regarding the replacement of legislators. The power to appoint the temporary U.S. senator shifts from a person elected statewide to a committee of political insiders who may have never run for office, who may have all kinds of conflicts of interest and who certainly have only their party’s interests at heart.

And, before anyone asks why the legislature doesn’t simply grab the power to appoint a replacement, there’s the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring popular election of senators and giving governors the option to appoint temporary replacements.

Paul T. O’Connor writes for The N.C. Insider state government news service and has covered state government for 39 years.

http://www.wilsontimes.com/stories/tillis8217-recovery-averts-a-firestorm,85600