The good news: House Speaker Charles McCall scored big on election night. McCall, a Republican from Atoka, saw his GOP caucus grow from 77 to 82 on Nov. 3. Republicans added five seats to their numbers, picking off two Oklahoma City-area Democrats and three seats in rural parts of the state.
Shortly after the votes were tallied, McCall issued a statement which said he was encouraged by the election results. McCall also applauded the GOP’s historic supermajority status.
“Oklahomans want growth, freedom and conservative government, and their election of the biggest Republican majority in state House history will deliver it,” McCall said. “It was encouraging to make gains statewide, from picking up all rural seats for the first time in state history to adding representation in the Oklahoma City area.”
Now, the bad news: Even as the Speaker enters his third term as leader of the Oklahoma House and prepares for what promises to be a difficult budget year, that 82-seat majority could also cause McCall more headaches than he’s ever had.
Political experts say McCall’s 82-seat majority could also present new, bigger issues for the Speaker and his leadership team. The next session, University of Oklahoma political science professor Keith Gaddie said, could be a challenge.
“It’s generally conceded that the only thing worse than having a small majority is having a very large one,” Gaddie said. “Having such a large majority can present a real challenge for leadership. When you have so much of the actual chamber in a room, it’s hard to hold it together.”
James Davenport, a political science professor at Rose State College in Oklahoma City, said McCall’s biggest problem could come from the factions that develop within his own caucus.
“The challenge for the Speaker is that as his caucus grows, the factions within it can become more contentious,” Davenport said. “Most people are familiar with the divide between social conservatives and economic conservatives but there are also divides between rural and urban conservatives. And there are divides between conservatives who would like to be more aggressive in pursuing educational choice initiatives and those more supportive of the status quo.”
Trying to manage and guide a caucus that large, Davenport said, means the Speaker must manage the various factions within that caucus. In Oklahoma, history has shown that a large caucus can cause serious – and even politically fatal – problems for its leader.
About 30 years ago, in May of 1989, then-Speaker Jim Barker, a Democrat from Muskogee, had a 75-member strong Democratic caucus. Barker was serving his fourth term as leader of the Oklahoma House when his tenure was cut short by his own recalcitrant caucus. On May 17, House Democrats, led by a group known as the T-Bar 12, successfully ousted Barker as Speaker.
The vote – 75 to 25.
Cal Hobson, a former President Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma Senate, said Barker ran afoul of his caucus because of his heavy-handed leadership style. Hobson, a Democrat who served in the House at the time of Barker’s ouster, said when issues within the caucus are left unaddressed, or if caucus members feel as if they have been disenfranchised, those problems can fester and create real problems for the caucus’ leader.
“The various camps will begin to coalesce around each other,” Hobson said. “And since there’s no money to argue about next year they (individual members) will find other issues. They will also be lining up to see who the next Speaker might be, which also creates factions.”
Those splits usually fall along philosophical or geographic lines, he said.
“In Oklahoma you often see divides between urban and suburban lawmakers, rural lawmakers and those who live either east or west,” Hobson said. “As Speaker you are forever placating conservative rural lawmakers, trying to get them to go along with a handful of urban and suburban lawmakers who are pushing for more liberal policies.”
Hobson said the upcoming legislative session will present lawmakers with difficult budget and policy issues. In addition, the Legislature will have to address the always-political issue of reapportionment, the redrawing of legislative districts.
“What McCall has to do, which is very dicey, is that he has to do something on the budget,” Hobson said. “He will probably have to deal with budget cuts on education and health care and figure out a way to pay for Medicaid expansion. Plus, they have reapportionment. It could all be very difficult with such a large caucus.”
Davenport, the political science professor, agreed.
He said McCall will have to manage the factions within his own caucus and “try to prevent the minority party from taking advantage of any of these divisions.”
“However, it seems to me, from an outside perspective, the Speaker has done a good job dealing with these challenges so far and has been able to steer the chamber in the direction he wants it to go,” Davenport said.
That large caucus, he said, also means McCall is, in reality, negotiating with his own people, and the minority party isn’t that big of a problem.
“The Democrats are such a small fraction of the chamber that they will have very little influence most of the time,” he said. “Given that partisan affiliation guides a huge amount of behavior in legislative chambers, it will make it somewhat easier to move their agenda through the House.”
With such large numbers, Hobson said McCall and his team can afford to let some members vote against the leadership on important votes.
“Because you have such a big group, you can lose a lot of malcontents on every vote,” Hobson said. “Remember you only need 68 votes to pass legislation with an emergency clause. Having that large of a caucus gives the Speaker the benefit of being able to let some members off, by not having to vote the leadership’s way on difficult issues.”
In addition, Hobson said the GOP’s historically large caucus will give Republican House leaders a great deal of flexibility in drawing new legislative boundaries.
“A caucus that large will make some things easier,” Hobson said. “But right now, Speaker McCall should keep his political friends very close. He has a slew of eager-beaver freshmen and a big crowd of sophomores. There’s a lot going on and a lot to manage and he will never be busier.”