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HOUSE WITHOUT WINDOWS?

James H. Andrews

A paper delivered to the Chicago Literary Club

March 19, 2007

House without Windows?

James H. Andrews

A paper delivered to the Chicago Literary Club

March 19, 2007

The Illinois legislature is a curious phenomenon, a creature that I have spent some years trying to understand. As a political scientist, citizen of Illinois, and sometime observer and participant in life in the state capitol, I have tried to figure out how to describe and explain the institution and its behavior.

I don’t have any final answers, and I am especially hesitant to claim expert knowledge in the presence of Brian Duff and Bill Barnhart. I first met Brian and Bill in 1975 when Brian was minority whip, part of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, and Bill was covering the legislature for the Suburban Trib.

John Notz has also had first-hand experience with the legislature. He delivered a paper in 1990 about his experience in drafting and passing the General Not-for-Profit Corporation Act of 1986. The paper was entitled, “Sausage or Legislation,” with a question mark at the end. He recalled a remark attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: “The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they will sleep at night.”

John’s violation of the advice implicit in this remark encourages me to go on. I won’t talk about sausage tonight, but I’m afraid you are in for some talk about conditions under which legislation is made.

Let me move from the Germans to the French. In 1956, Nathan Leites and Constantine Melnik published a book called, “The House without Windows.” The authors used the term to characterize the French National Assembly, that country’s legislative body. They believed that the assembly was totally absorbed with itself and acted as if it were closed off from the public.

I have always loved that title, “House without Windows,” and the vivid picture it provides. I have tried off and on to fit the Illinois legislature, into that mold. But I always come back to the belief that the General Assembly is really a very open institution. And after all, we do know the famous story about Abraham Lincoln. As a member of the Illinois House in 1840, Lincoln and two other legislators climbed out a window of the state capitol to prevent a quorum. So we know there were windows, and at least one of them was open.

The Illinois General Assembly is sometimes more open than others. I worked as a staff member there for four years, 1975 to 1979, and think that that was probably the most open legislature in modern Illinois history. That was an unsettled time in Illinois politics, and in the country at large. The state had a renegade Democratic governor, Dan Walker, beholden to almost no one, and a host of legislators, Democrats and Republicans, who resisted gubernatorial and party control.

The windows were open in both directions. Those inside were looking out; those outside were looking in, rallying on the State House steps, going inside in large numbers, crowding the galleries and hanging out in the rotunda near the legislative chambers.

In one memorable scene, Phyllis Schlafly, the perpetual Goldwaterite from Alton, well-known in Springfield, showed up in the campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a continuing battle in those years. Mrs. Schlafly was passing out apple pie, that symbol of old-fashioned American womanhood.

On another occasion a troop of people in the rotunda were scooping up double-dip ice cream cones--to call attention to the fact that a number of legislators held other government jobs and collected two government paychecks, a practice known as “double-dipping.”

INTERN PROGRAM

A few years after “The House without Windows” was published (and before I was aware of the book), I was a postgraduate student at the University of Chicago. I earned a master’s degree in political science in 1961, and a few months later, applied for a postgraduate fellowship at the University of Illinois as a legislative staff intern.

The General Assembly had established the staff intern program in June1961. The Ford Foundation had undertaken a program to strengthen state legislatures throughout the country. It offered a grant to the University of Illinois contingent on a matching state appropriation. The legislation was sponsored by W. Russell Arrington of Evanston, a forceful Republican in the Senate, and Abner Mikva, an independent Democrat from Hyde Park in the House. Both favored a strong, well-informed legislature that would develop its own initiative and expertise on policy matters and reduce its dependence on the governor and lobbyists for knowledge, information, and staff resources.

The program’s immediate objective was to provide staff assistance for the House and Senate, which at that time had no staffs. The legislature’s needs for bill drafting and policy analysis were provided by several small agencies staffed by professionals: One was the Legislative Reference Bureau, which drafted bills. Then there was the Legislative Council, a commission of legislators that directed a professional staff of five who researched legislators’ questions and prepared occasional reports. And there was the Budgetary Commission, in which the governor’s office was a major player. In 1961 the legislature appropriated $3.6 billion. The budgetary commission had staff of three, so it was not a very effective instrument for legislative influence.

In managing the intern program, the university assigned a faculty member to recruit interns and create other experiences that would enable students to learn about legislatures, state government, and public service. The expectation was that after nine months in Springfield, interns would eventually go into government themselves or educate others--as teachers, journalists, or lawyers—and that the legislature would build a strong staff.

The program continues to this day, an enormous success. The legislature is now well-staffed and has access to good minds and expert knowledge. Former interns are scattered around the country, though most are probably still in Illinois. Many have served in public office, elective and appointive, at the bar, and in universities. The most prominent graduate is Jim Edgar, onetime aide to Senator Arrington, later head of the governor’s lobbying staff, member of the House, secretary of state, and governor of Illinois.

I was one of two people selected for the Illinois legislative staff internship program in its first year. The other was a young man with a fresh master’s degree in political science from Southern Illinois University.

THE SENATE

In the fall of 1961 I moved to Springfield. In those days the legislature did its business in one session that stretched over six months every other year. That year the legislature convened in January and adjourned June 30. It was my good fortune that Governor Otto Kerner called a special session that fall, so I was able to get a glimpse of the legislature in action. It convened on October 10, with 14 issues on the agenda, and adjourned November 22.

The other intern and I were assigned to the top leaders in each house. My colleague went to the office of Paul Powell, speaker of the House and a Democrat. I went to the Senate, to the office of the majority leader and president pro tempore, Arthur J. Bidwill of River Forest, a Republican. (The president of the Senate, lieutenant governor Sam Shapiro, had an impressive office, a limousine, a secretary, and a driver, but his duties were limited to presiding over the Senate.)

At that time Senate districts were apportioned on the basis of land area, not population. A constitutional amendment, pressed by Governor William Stratton and adopted in 1955, had improved popular representation in the House, but the Senate was drastically weighted in favor of downstate and rural interests. Senate districts varied in population from 54,000 to 384,000.

The legislature convened soon after I arrived in Springfield. On the first day, when the members had just arrived in the capital city, my professor urged the majority leaders to take me into the party caucus, so I could learn how things worked. I was pleased that he pressed the issue, and how I would love to have been there, but I was not surprised that the request was rejected.

I knew enough to know that a stranger, fresh from graduate school, with no party credentials, was not going to be admitted to a closed meeting. Maybe especially a student from the University of Chicago, whose president, Robert M. Hutchins, had been called before a Senate committee ten years before to answer charges that the university was a hotbed of communists and disloyalty to the United States.

So on session days for about six weeks (two or three days a week), I was stationed in the office of the Republican leadership. This consisted of two men, the majority leader and the assistant majority leader and whip. Each had a private one-room office, as I recall. The suite had a reception room, which was staffed by two women, highly capable and experienced—there were more during regular sessions—who dealt with visitors, the telephone, and correspondence. On most session days I sat at a desk there, talked with whomever was around, and watched what was going on.

I also observed the Senate in session, sometimes from the gallery, more often from the floor, on the edge of the Republican side of the chamber. I rarely talked to a Democrat, or to most Republicans either, though all were cordial. Senator Bidwill and Senator George Drach of Springfield, the whip, were welcoming and most friendly, though not given to reflecting on the institution or what was going on, at least in my presence.

Visitors to the office were mostly Republican senators and lobbyists. All in all, there were not many because of the limited agenda. A few lobbyists used the office to make phone calls and generally make it their base of operation on session days. Not many constituents came calling, as I remember, but that was a limited session with few decisions to be made.

WHAT I SAW

During sessions the chamber was usually an orderly place and fairly quiet. The 58 seats and desks were spaced out nicely, very much different from the House chamber, where there were three times the members and desks were crowded together. In the Senate there were no cries of “Mr. Speaker” or the equivalent “Mr. President” to get the attention of the chair. There was a dignity about the Senate as I remember it from those days.

I was not surprised by the elaborate courtesy often displayed on the floor, nor by the general good humor and friendliness across many obvious divisions: Republicans vs. . Democrats, downstate vs. Cook County, Chicagoans vs. suburbanites.

Some members didn’t pay much attention to what was going on except to vote when called on. Some, especially Chicago machine Democrats, rarely spoke on the floor, letting the minority leader, Mayor Daley’s man, take the lead. I don’t remember more than a few visitors in the chamber. Occasionally Dawn Clark, an assistant to Governor Kerner (later the Democratic nominee for governor) appeared to consult with someone. More often I saw George Tagge, of the Chicago Tribune, step from the press box on to the floor to talk to a senator. He was known as a Tribune lobbyist as well as reporter. At least one senator had a drink on his desk at the beginning of every morning session.

A good many Republicans were contemptuous of Democrats from Chicago, whom they saw as machine “yes-men” chosen in rigged elections. A number of the Chicago Democrats seemed to be suspicious of everyone. There were some wonderfully positive senators in each party, who moved easily among other members and across the aisle with humor and a desire to work things out.

One of my first lessons about legislatures was this: It is hard to tell the good guys from the bad. One day I’d think a senator was right, at the top of my list for “best legislator of the year.” The next day I’d think he was wrong. Even more confusing: The men I liked weren’t always the ones I agreed with.

As I watched that fall, I was surprised and sometimes shocked by something else: the occasional eruption of anger and strong feelings. I don’t remember yelling and screaming, but I do recall stubbornness, rigidity, an almost palpable disdain for opponents in the face of strong disagreement.

One of the watch-words of legislative life, I had always heard, was “to get along, go along.” Don’t make an enemy if you can avoid it; you may need his vote next time. So for a time I found some truth in the popular explanation for legislative behavior: that they are bad people, petty, self-serving, arrogant, with bad manners, different from the rest of us. But I couldn’t accept this. As a group, legislators are not a special breed, they are not much different from you and me. The issues that divide them are usually the issues that divide their constituents—who, of course, do not usually act on those issues, as legislators are often required to do.

I think the most ridiculous thing I saw during that session was the inability of the majority and minority to agree on when to reconvene after an adjournment. I cannot remember the details, or the issues involved. But somehow the parties could not agree on when to reconvene—it may be that they could not agree on adjournment either. In any case, for several days, with a weekend intervening, as I recall, Republicans and Democrats met at different hours of the day, maybe on different days of the week. The secretary of the Senate prepared two journals for those days. How the dispute was resolved I don’t remember.

Despite party divisions and some consistently ill-tempered colleagues, most of the 58 senators were united in a kind of camaraderie, though I saw less of this in 1961 than I did later. Senators spent a good deal of time together, especially in the last weeks of the June session, when they had to contend with the budget and the most controversial bills. They shared membership in a select group, and when not feeling pressured, often gave meticulous attention to niceties of procedure and good fellowship

Even in the most embattled times, many members evinced a sentimental view of legislative life and its rewards.

I was most struck by this at a lunch to recognize a senior member of the Senate. It was a campaign fund-raiser billed as a tribute. The senator’s wife and children were on the dais, friends from his district were there, and other legislators. I was there as part of the Republican team. As I looked around the room, I saw all those men who hung around the Senate and leaders’ office, those who had bought most of the tickets (at a very modest price by today’s standards, I’m sure).

When the guest of honor rose to speak, he talked about his humble origins, his political successes, his family, the friends who were present, and as he did so, he teared up, almost overcome by the emotion of the occasion. Smart guy that I was, I couldn’t believe his reaction. What I saw in that room was a crowd of lobbyists who wanted to thank the senator for past assistance and looked forward to a favorable reception in the future. The senator saw friends who shared his life and a career that had taken him far beyond his youthful expectations. I came to realize that both pictures were accurate.

WHO NEEDS STAFF?

During all this, I watched and listened. I was at their disposal, ready to go. But I don’t recall ever being asked to do anything.

That could mean that the special session agenda was so short that they already knew all they needed to know. It could be that other sources of information were adequate. Or they thought I didn’t know much, or couldn’t provide the kind of information or analysis they needed, or that I couldn’t be trusted to deal with them honestly or fairly or confidentially. Or that I did not share their views, and so couldn’t develop information or analyses that would bolster their inclinations or positions already held. My leaders and others in the party knew how to get along very well without any help from me. I eventually concluded that senators did not need any information or knowledge I could provide.

So how did members of the House and Senate decide what to do—to identify an issue, to address it, to introduce a bill, to take a position in committee, to vote in favor or to send a bill into oblivion?

By and large they did not use paper, and of course the computer was not available in 1961. Most did not have an office, a telephone, or a secretary. Their desks were on the Senate floor. What they did was talk to people. And people talked to them. Ideas and opinions came from friends, constituents, lobbyists, the governor, and other officials, and they talked to each other to assess a bill’s meaning, political implications, support and opposition. They did not want any staff research or analysis and did not need to know details of items on the agenda. For me this was a great discovery.

So it was a problem, even a delicate matter figuring out what to do with my time. A few weeks after we arrived in town my fellow intern in the House proposed a reorganization of the Speaker’s office. It was not well received.

Of course, Speaker Paul Powell had been around a long time. First elected to the House in 1934, Powell had been speaker twice before, in 1949-50 and 1959-60. Although the Democrats were in the minority by one vote in 1961, Powell was reelected speaker in 1961 with the votes of three Republicans.

The two Senate majority leaders, both lawyers and businessmen, had been around long enough to lead the chamber without any help from a staff intern: Senator Bidwill had been elected to the Senate 23 years before. By the time I showed up, he had been majority leader for a long time. Drach had been a senator for 10 years and whip for nine.

The Republicans were used to power. They had controlled both houses for most of the 1950s. The Republicans had controlled the Senate for more than 20 years and expected to do so indefinitely.

In 1961 the Republicans had a four-member plurality in the Senate, 31 members to the Democrats 27. There was one woman in the Senate, Lottie Holman O’Neill, from the western Chicago suburbs. She was the first woman elected to the Illinois legislature—in 1922. The new blood was also coming from the suburbs.

The Senate was run essentially by the Republican caucus. The usual practice was for the Republican members to meet in caucus every morning, then present a united front on the floor.

BIG ISSUES

As I look back, I should not have been surprised at what seemed to me a roller coaster of attitude and behavior. Two of the biggest issues that fall, and the most controversial, were unusually difficult, and both were presented and at first defined by the Democratic governor.

One issue was the sales tax. Governor Kerner wanted to raise the state tax on services from 3 to 3.5 percent to match a similar increase on the sales tax made in June.

The second issue was creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission, or FEPC. Both FEPC and the sales tax would affect private businesses, large and small, and drew strong opposition from powerful business and taxpayer organizations.

Most Senate Republicans were unwaveringly opposed to both initiatives, which in their view struck at the heart of their own and the party’s principles and values. Outside the Senate, Republicans were not united on these measures, but Senate resistance was strong.

The resistance had had a long time to solidify. Both the tax increase and “fair employment,” as it was called, had been subjects of hard-fought battles in the regular session that had adjourned just three months earlier. Legislators’ feelings on these issues were already raw. In addition, most legislators had full-time jobs elsewhere. They were not used to returning to Springfield for special sessions. It is not surprising that legislators returning to the State House in October were stubborn and rigid on these issues.

The governor had won on both issues in the regular session. The legislature had raised the sales tax half a percent. But it passed the Senate only after a bitter struggle. The Democratic senators voted for the increase. They were joined by four Republicans, just enough for passage. The Republican renegades represented districts that were home to state universities, which would be among the beneficiaries of the new revenue. In the fall, it was not hard to see the hostility against the deserters. But the governor won again, and the law was broadened to new classes of business at the 3.5 percent rate.

The Senate had killed FEPC bills regularly since 1945. But FEPC passed in the regular session in 1961. In the fall the governor sent the Senate the names of five people to be confirmed as members of the commission: two Republicans, two Democrats, and an independent as chairman.

The executive committee recommended confirmation of the independent and the two Republican nominees. But longtime opponents of FEPC mounted a vicious campaign against the two Democrats, and the Senate executive committee promised a thorough investigation of their background.

The targets were Ralph Helstein, president of the United Packing House, Food, and Allied Workers, and Earl B. Dickerson. Dickerson was the first African-American to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, in 1920. He helped build and headed the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company in Chicago. He was an Army officer in World War I and a founder of the American Legion. He had served on President Franklin Roosevelt’s committee on fair employment practices.

That Dickerson was an African-American was not mentioned in the opposition to his appointment, but he was regarded by many conservatives, including important Democratic senators, as a radical and a trouble-maker, and there were assertions that he had been too friendly to communist causes.

Helstein had fought communism in his union. He was not vulnerable on that issue. So the committee interrogation focused on his relationship with a mixed-race school in Tennessee where Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and other “agitators” had attended workshops.

FEPC chair nominee Charles Gray, director of industrial relations for the Bell and Howell company, told the press that the committee’s examination of Dickerson was a “travesty.” Gray had been confirmed, but the committee called him back. Gray refused to retract his words, but the Senate let his confirmation, and that of the two Republicans, stand.

The legislature created something called the “Interim Committee on the Governor’s Temporary Appointments to FEPC.” [Italics mine] It was composed of six legislators, three from each house, three from each party. This meant that future nominees would have bipartisan approval in advance.

So there was conflict, with strong emotions coming to the surface from time to time. Outsiders, including newspaper reporters and editors who should know better, frequently attribute legislative controversy and delay to pettiness and personality, and of course that is sometimes the case. But as these policies suggest, the stakes are often very high. Tax increases are always controversial, with good arguments and strong interests for and against. There are also deeply-felt, opposing positions on race and on government regulation of business, and, in those days, on the definition of “communist.” In 1961 these divisions were serious and deep, and reflected values strongly held—not just among legislators, but also among the people they represented.

AFTER LEGISLATORS GO HOME

After the legislature adjourned in mid-November, it did not did not meet again during my time in Springfield. A great quiet descends on the capitol when the General Assembly leaves town. We interns had been assigned for the whole nine months to the office of the Legislative Council. So after adjournment we joined the half dozen lawyers and other professionals in the agency’s research and writing projects. (For several years after our tenure, the intern program operated every other year, skipping the year when there was little or no legislative activity.)

While we were at the Council, however, we did prove our usefulness. The General Assembly had passed a bill during the special session to reapportion the state for representation in Congress. This was probably the session’s most important action, but I do not remember any controversy about it on the Senate floor. The two parties and two houses agreed on the plan before it came to a vote, assuring its safe passage.

The state had to reduce the number of Illinois congressional districts from 25 to 24 as a result of the 1960 census. There were of course no computers involved preparing the legislation.

After adjournment, my intern colleague and I compared the law’s written description of district boundaries with maps of the state. We pored over the maps, and much to our surprise, discovered what I remember as two or three small pieces of the state that were not in any district at all.

The law used boundaries of local governmental units to describe the congressional districts. The village of Stickney at that time occupied part of Stickney Township in Cook County, but not the entire township. And there were several patches of unincorporated land, which were not contiguous. In the confusion of these boundaries, and probably hurried adjustment during their negotiation, bill drafters had simply left some of that township in no district at all. Much of the land in that area was industrial, but if there were people living there, they were not going to be represented in Congress. So thanks to our careful work—we were very pleased with ourselves— the law was changed, and we restored the voting rights of whomever lived there.

USING RESEARCH, BUILDING CONSENSUS

In those months after the session I was also assigned to the School Problems Commission, the most successful of the numerous commissions the legislature established to operate between sessions. This gave me a view of how professional staff could strengthen the legislature. And how the state and relevant outside organizations could build consensus on tough issues before proposing legislation to the General Assembly.

The commission had been around for a long time. Its forerunner was a temporary commission on school finance and taxation established in 1945. At that time, the state was struggling with how to finance and improve a drastically decentralized state system of schools. Under the constitution, the legislature was responsible for education, yet there were then more than 12,000 separate school districts, financed mainly through local taxes on property. While committed to local control of schools, the legislature, in order to act at all, needed somehow to bring together the complicated, intermixed interests of community, region, population, and party, and tax-payers of many varieties.

The commission was a great success. All of the important players in school reorganization and finance worked together. State financial support grew substantially over the years, and the number of school districts was drastically reduced. Still, in 1961 many issues remained.

The composition of the commission remained about the same over the years. When I was there, the 17 members were legislators, appointees of the governor, and, ex officio, the state superintendent of public instruction and the governor’s finance director. Three members had served on the 1945 commission. The first chairman, a member of the House, was still chair.

Over five or six months I attended the commission meetings and hearings around the state. I also spent long days in the offices of the state superintendent of instruction. I reviewed hundreds of reports—these were questionnaires, sometimes filled out by hand—that had been submitted by every high school in the state. My task was to find out what subjects were being taught in high schools, the number of teachers, and graduation requirements. I worked under direction of the chair and the research director, a consultant who was also head of the government department at Southern Illinois University.

The commission chairman intended to use my findings to help identify schools’ financial needs and, in addition, to make a case for further consolidation.

This was a different part of the legislature than I had seen before. The assumption was that knowledge is power, and that reliable research and analysis could be used to develop policy, build consensus, and produce effective legislation.

Not surprisingly, when the Democrats won legislative and executive victories in 1958 and 1960, consensus on major changes was difficult to reach, and the commission’s influence declined.

RETURN TO SPRINGFIELD

After my time in Springfield, I returned to graduate school at Chicago, eventually joining the faculty of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, Urbana, then on to the political science department at Ohio State University.

In January 1975, on January 21, far away in Columbus, Ohio, I was not aware of all the excitement back in the Illinois House of Representatives. The House was trying to elect a speaker, and kept trying day after day.

The Democrats had won a majority the previous November, 101 seats to 76 for the Republicans. But the majority was divided. Clyde Choate, of Anna, the Democratic floor leader for a number of years, was the leading candidate for speaker, and he had the support of Mayor Daley. But a handful of Democrats from the Chicago suburbs, including a few loyal to Governor Dan Walker, an anti-Daley Democrat, held out and voted for a smattering of other candidates.

Finally, on the 93^rd ballot, near the end of January, the House elected a speaker. He was William A. Redmond, 66, of Bensonville in DuPage County. Redmond’s 89 votes came from 82 Democrats and seven Republicans. The other Democrats voted for Choate or other hold-outs.

Redmond had been a state representative for eight terms. But in 16 years he had never been part of the House leadership. In the House of Commons he would have been called a “back-bencher.” And in Illinois, in fact, his seat had been in the back row of the House chamber.

So it happened that, late in January, I received a call—from another former intern, then head of the governor’s legislative liaison operation—saying the new speaker was looking for a chief of staff. I met with Redmond in his home office and in Springfield, then about a week later I accepted the job and immediately moved back to Springfield.

A lot had changed. The Speaker created a new position for me: director of research for the House of Representatives. There was another new position, director of operations, with responsibility for personnel and other administrative activities. I headed a staff of 30 or 35 people, each assigned to one or several House committees. They analyzed bills, wrote reports, and carried out research for Democratic leaders and other members. They usually worked closely with committee chairs and sometimes other committee members as well. The analyses by appropriations staff were especially influential.

By this time the impact of the staff internship program was considerable. The majority and minority parties in each house had professional staffs, many of them former interns hired after their intern year, a number with law or master’s degrees. (Who said legislatures don’t need highly trained staff members? I hired the first with a Ph.D., a man from out of state, who worked for the House Democrats for several years and is now a senior faculty member at the University of Illinois. And my future wife, who had a doctorate in psychology, had a fellowship that placed her on the House minority staff in 1974-75.)

There were other major changes. The one man-one vote ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962 required redistricting in Illinois. But all attempts to do the job failed. So, following a constitutional mandate, in 1964 all 177 members of the House were elected at large. The Democrats elected their full slate of 118 candidates. Half the Republican slate—59 people—was elected.

This drastic change and subsequent redistricting cleared a lot of cobwebs out of the House. The new constitution of 1970 changed representation even more before I returned in 1975. (The so-called cutback amendment in 1980 made other more drastic changes.) By 1975 the Chicago suburbs were sending more members to the House. The members were better-educated, generally more open minded, and more comfortable with change than their predecessors 14 years before. They were accustomed to annual sessions, and many worked on legislative business full-time.

Redmond’s election as speaker was in reaction to these changes. He believed the House should operate fairly and openly. No backroom deals, with members in the dark. No life and death binding caucuses. Every member should have access to information on every bill, and to staff analysis and assistance. Members should have notice when bills were to be called, and what changes were proposed. Committees should be free really to examine and propose bills. Each member should have an opportunity to call his or her bills for a vote.

This meant more staff work. It also meant a more chaotic session. Members pressed their own proposals and projects, and the speaker tried to manage the unwieldy process.

I finally had to give up on using that wonderful image, house without windows, to describe the General Assembly. Though, as you can see, I was still tempted when I signed up for this paper a year ago.

Bill Redmond won reelection as speaker, twice, and served until the Republicans took over in 1981. The House and the legislature have changed considerably since then, but that’s another story.