Politics can be a strange game and the game gets no stranger anywhere else but the North Carolina Senate. Freshman Senator Don Davis(D-Greene), the former mayor of Snow Hill had wanted to extend the authority to perform marriages to the mayors of cities and towns.
Everything had moved along smoothly until the bill was about to receive final approval in the Senate on 3rd reading when the Rules Committee Chairman (aka The Boss) Senator Tony Rand(D-Cumberland) pulled the bill from the calendar and sent it to the Agriculture Committee.
Apparently, conservative Senator Jim Forrester(R-Gaston) was planning to run an amendment to the bill that somehow would link it to the Marriage Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. While strategically a good move, tactically the plan failed when Senator Rand was notified of the amendment. He then ensured that there would be no embarrassing discussion of why this the amendment hasn't been heard by even a committee in the North Carolina Legislature when all of the other states in the South have already allowed a vote on it.
So after being arm twisted by Rand, Forrester pulled his amendment after making a futile statement on the bill. Rand then let the bill be voted on and it passed 35 to 9 with several conservative Republicans voting against it as a protest for for not allowing a vote on the marriage amendment.
More to come.
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