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Tuesday Late: It's on
posted at 2008-03-11 22:58 | Last modified 2008-03-11 23:07
Save the date
Well, that’s one public record Governor Mike Easley was quick to produce. Around 1:15 pm today, House Speaker Joe Hackney’s office asked the Gov to call the House into special session to consider Ethics sanctions against Wilmington Dem Thomas Wright. By 6:00 pm, the historic proclamation was drafted, vetted, prettied up, and released. The guts:
"The General Assembly of North Carolina shall convene for an extra session on Thursday, March 20, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in order for the House of Representatives, (i) under Article II, Section 20 of the Constitution of North Carolina, to judge the qualifications of Representative Thomas Wright to continue to serve the 18th House District of the House of Representatives, General Assembly of North Carolina, and/or (ii) within its inherent power to discipline its members, to impose any sanctions against Representative Thomas Wright of the 18th House District.
Not bad, given that they weren’t exactly working from precedent. That’s the real thing at top right - click on it to make it bigger.
Nuts and bolts
From what I’ve heard from folks involved, House party caucuses will likely meet the afternoon/evening before the session to talk strategy. The Senate will have to “convene,” but only for a ghost session: since the sanction against Wright will be run as a House resolution, neither the Senate nor the Governor will need to act to ratify it.
The rules apparently aren’t finalized yet, either, but at this point, it sounds like neither the House nor Wright will be permitted to have attorneys on hand during the session. That means it’ll be up to Wright on one side and Glazier and Stam on the other to make their own cases. The latter – a two-lawyer team – has to win the odds on that bet.
No comment as of yet from Wright’s defense attorney Doug Harris, or from Legislative Black Caucus chairwoman Alma Adams. Last session, Adams and the LBC supported Wright, saying the calls for his resignation were a “rush to judgment” very different from the House's treatment of its former Speaker, Jim Black. There’s no word yet on whether last week's House Select Ethics ruling changed anyone’s mind.
Radio redux
I did a live interview segment with Frank Stasio on The State of Things today, talking about whether House Speaker Joe Hackney would call a special session on Wright before the latter’s criminal trial. As of 11:30 am, half an hour before broadcast, Hackney’s spokesman Bill Holmes said there was no word on progress toward a session.
Then at 1:15, just after the show aired, Hackney’s spokesman Bill Holmes released the news that yes, a special session would be called March 20th. Dang it. By 9:00pm, when the State of Things rebroadcasts, the whole Wright segment would be hopelessly out of date.
So Frank and I re-recorded the segment this afternoon to include the session announcement. It actually worked out pretty well – it was better the second time, anyway. And if you didn’t hear the original broadcast, you’d never know…
If you want to hear the updated interview, it’s here.
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