Congratulations! We may have to come over and take some notes!
Well, congratulate us in January. Knowing the Democrat Speaker as I do, who has been in office since 1974 and Speaker nearly 2 decades, he isn’t going to gracefully stand aside and he may try to pick off some RINOs (despite claims we have all the members supporting the GOP candidate). RINOs being the most treacherous breed (essentially, I consider them to be Democrat agents), they may try to keep the Dem minority in power.
We won a majority in the Senate 4 years ago, but the Dems retained control because 2 “R’s” voted for the Democrat Senate Speaker (for reasons a bit complicated to go into at this time). The Speaker, also holding office as Lieutenant Governor (the only such setup in any legislative body in the country), had held the office since 1971 (the longest serving legislative leader of any state in U.S. history) and decided to turn Dem partisan after playing fair with us for years, and in his mid 80s, he was clearly feeble and incompetent, and was “presiding” at a time numerous members of the Senate were being indicted and sent to prison.
In any event, it took a Democrat member of that body, sick of seeing such gross incompetence (the party even refused to replace the 86-year old in a party caucus and renominated him again for an unprecedented 19th term as Speaker - which pushed the Senator over the edge), to finally break the logjam and elect a Republican as Speaker (although we had a one-seat majority, one single RINO was going to vote for the Dem, but when she rendered his vote moot, he irritatingly cast it for the Republican, and then switched to a “Jim Jeffords” Independent — and we voted him out on Tuesday, so no backstabbers will be in the Senate in January).
The Democrats were so outraged at that lady Senator, that when she won a narrow renomination this year, the state party stripped her of the nomination (claiming “Republicans voted for her !”) and replaced her with the loser. She tried to run a write-in candidacy, but it’s very hard to do. The GOP leadership may install her in the seat in January anyway since she was duly renominated and there was no opposition on the ballot in November. That’s the kind of bold leadership we need to see by our people. What we’re scared to do, the Democrats don’t hesistate for a moment.