It has been assumed that since Bill O'Brien won the Republican vote for Speaker of the New Hampshire House that he would automatically become speaker once again. If this were true the best we could hope for was to spend 2 years in damage control and another two years after that cleaning up the mess he made.
But the fight need not be over. The final vote for Speaker of the House is a vote of the entire body. Democrats and Republicans of good will can still join together to form a coalition government, a government where merit is the guiding principle; where committees are chaired by both Republicans and Democrats.
It is a model that works and one that should be adopted to avoid another two years of partisanship. In 1992 Republican Ralph Hough was chosen as President of the Senate in a coalition. For the next two years we proved that leadership by merit was in fact possible. The parties caucused together over lunch in the office of the Senate President and we passed unprecedented legislation ranging from environmental protection and economic development to Living Wills and Investment Tax Credits.
If the Republican Leaders who favored Gene Chandler in the race want to really prove their Bi-Partisan reds. they will work with Democrats to form a coalition to defeat O'Brien in the final vote.
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