N.C. lieutenant governor makes campaign stop in Goldsboro
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 27, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest talks about his role in government and his views on the current legislative session in an interview Tuesday. Forest, only the second Republican to hold the office in more than a century, is campaigning for re-election in 2016.
As lieutenant governor, Forest presides over the state Senate's daily sessions, but only votes in case of a tie. However, Forest said that when the Senate is not in session he is "all over the state."
Forest said the return to the campaign trail started last month and that he "will be back at it for a while."
Currently, the governor and lieutenant governor run separate campaigns and are elected separately. In the past that has led to one party holding the governor's office and the other party, the lieutenant governor's office.
Just this past week a bill was filed in the General Assembly that would ask voters to amend the state constitution so that the two would run as a team, starting with the 2020 election.
"Being in this role now for a while, you kind of see the advantages of that," he said. "I mean you look at the states where they do run together and there seems to be just a lot more working together within government when it happens.
"I think that is healthy thing. But we told those who wrote the bill that we would still like to see anybody be able to run in the primary on their own and on their own merits. I think that is really the way the system ought to work. It is a constitutional office and really shouldn't be an appointed office. And if the governor picked (his running mate), as the president does, then it becomes more of an appointment than elected office."
Forest said he would like to see the separate primaries stay and then for candidates for the two offices run as a team.
Forest predicts that the budget will be the biggest item lawmakers will tackle this session.
"There is some contention when you try to do tax reform things," he said. "We just haven't had anything that has been of serious contention yet that I consider a major issue. The budget will be. That is the thing that always keeps us there to August and September in the long session and it will be that way again this year.
"It (budget) is not as tight as years past. Our deficit this time around, which is really not a deficit, that gets misreported, too. It is a numbers game based on projections -- where we think we are going to fall, and where the numbers are going to hit. Based on our projections, we are $150 million or so short. That is one and a half percent of our general fund budget so it's very insignificant as far as what you would call a deficit. If you want to call it that."
Other top issues will be a long-term energy policy, attracting more aerospace industry to the state, education and agriculture, including a task force to look at food manufacturing, he said.
Those are issues that probably will not generate much public interest, he said.
"As far as the big things that are going to draw a bunch of crazy contention this year, I just don't see a lot of that going on," he said.
Forest called the apparent contentiousness between the governor and legislative leaders as "posturing" and just a sign of how separation of powers works.
Part of the problem was that the General Assembly had been in place for some time while Gov. Pat McCrory and he were "still learning where the lights switches were," Forest said.
Forest said things had settled down and that he no longer sensed that "same kind of tension."
"I think that is all in the past," he said. "There is a different spirit about the place -- kind of a different way of working. There is an ease now of how things are moving through the legislative process that was really not there before."
Legislators of both parties, unlike their counterparts in Congress, work well together and talk to each other, he said.
"It has got to be at least 90 percent of the (Senate) bills that go through are completely bipartisan," he said. "I mean they are 47 to 3 or 48 to 2. That is the vast majority. Then you get into, I would say, literally a handful of bills -- four or five things a session --that get significant debate and split party lines."