Still, Smith’s weak tally among fellow House Republicans may be as much an opportunity as a peril. He wants to win a full two-year speakership when the 2019-20 General Assembly meets in January.
If, this year, Smith can get the House out of its hammock, and nudge members into passing substantial legislation, not the customary soft-serve (naming highways, designating annual “day of” observations), Smith will have demonstrated focus and clout as House leader.
In that connection, it surely wasn’t a coincidence that on Thursday, the first regular House session of Smith’s speakership, the House overwhelmingly passed House Bill 123, a payday loan reform bill the relentless payday-loan lobby had blocked for more than a year. When Rosenberger left the House in April, he said he was under federal investigation. One area of federal curiosity is said to be a junket Rosenberger took to London. Among those on the trip were payday-loan lobbyists.
Besides being Smith’s first day, Thursday was also the first day the Ohio House had voted on any bills since Rosenberger resigned in mid-April. The House’s passage of HB 123 put some distance between Rosenberger’s old caucus and the payday-loan lobby.
Smith, in landing the speakership by such a tight margin, has to demonstrate legislative clout. That’s because someone else also wants to be elected speaker in January — Rep. Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry County’s Glenford. He was speaker from 2001 through 2004. There’s a four-letter word for anyone who underestimates Householder: Fool.
Footnote: The legally required but antique voting procedure the House used Wednesday works this way: Someone running for speaker must win a majority of the votes cast. If, after 10 roll calls, no one has won a majority, then a candidate who wins a plurality – the single largest number – on the 11th or later roll call becomes speaker. That's what Smith did on Wednesday's 11th roll call. It appears the legislators passed that 1853 law because till then a plurality wasn't enough to pick a speaker, and 1850's speakership had required 11 roll-calls, and might have kept going if the list of candidates hadn't changed. Eventual winner in 1850: John F. Morse, of Lake County's Painesville, a member of the Free Soil Party.
Correction: Last week's column said that, in the wake of Ohio's 1970s Crofters scandal, Republicans won just one statewide elected executive office (Secretary of State Ted Brown won re-election). But as reader Tom Spring, of Circleville, pointed out, Lt. Gov. John Brown, a Medina Republican, was also re-elected (Before 1978, Ohio's governors and lieutenant governors were separately elected, so John Brown was lieutenant to Democratic Gov. John J. Gilligan.) And Spring noted that the GOP also retained three Ohio Supreme Court seats in November 1970.
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