Where's your 10-20%? - Granite Grok

Where’s your 10-20%?

Rep. Shawn Jasper is Speaker for a second term. He and Democrat Steve Shurtleff were the only nominees on the one and only ballot, with Jasper prevailing 214-165 before Shurtleff called for acclamation. Eight votes were scattered among other candidates. That accounts for all the reps present. Whatever divisions marked the GOP caucus last week were invisible today.

The Speaker’s remarks after the election were brief and contained no surprises. Among the statements: “we can’t let the ten to twenty percent on which we disagree drive a wedge between us.” Whether he meant ten-to-twenty-percent of bills or of attitude or of committee assignments, that horse may have left the barn awhile ago, depending on who you think “we” is.

I thought Rep. Mary Heath’s nomination speech for Shurtleff was interesting. “We need a leader who can bring us to the middle. We must address the divide among us.” One wonders what “the middle” looks like to her, after two years of Speaker Jasper holding the gavel.

So what ten-to-twenty percent of bills or policies will be out in the cold this term? The Speaker has already designated Rep. Dick Hinch for an encore as GOP majority leader, so if you liked 2015-16, then the next two years probably look pretty rosy.

On the other hand, if that ten-to-twenty percent reference leaves you a little suspicious, stay tuned. There will be work to do.

 

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