House GOP to vote for speaker Thursday

By Aaron Gould Sheinin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

House Republicans on Friday voted in secret to meet again next Thursday to make their choice for the next speaker of the House.

The GOP caucus met for nearly three hours in private and heard from Gov. Sonny Perdue as well as Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek), who earlier this week announced he would not seek the top job.

Perdue, invited by House leadership to address the caucus, said afterward that House members are "a little unsteady right now, but they'll regain that confidence."

Burkhalter, who has refused to speak to the media for the past week, slipped in and out of the caucus meeting through a rear entrance, avoiding reporters wanting to speak with him. A spokeswoman later said Burkhalter left to be with his son who is preparing for surgery on Monday.

The House has been in turmoil for more than a week since Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) announced that he would resign from the General Assembly on Jan. 1 in the wake of his attempted suicide in November and his ex-wife's revelations to an Atlanta television station that he cheated on her with a lobbyist for Atlanta Gas Light.

Burkhalter a week ago said he looked forward to assuming the role of speaker after Richardson's resignation, but Monday said he had changed his mind. He is a finalist to be named executive director of the Georgia World Congress Center. But, he reportedly told House members Friday that while he will not seek re-election as speaker pro tem, he expects to continue serving in the House as a rank-and-file member.

"He convened the meeting and basically indicated to us that he looked forward to working with us," said Rep. David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge), one of four announced candidates to be speaker.

Two of the other speaker candidates were at Friday's meeting: Rep. Tommy Smith (R-Nicholls) and Rep. Bill Hembree (R-Villa Rica). Ways and Means chairman Larry O'Neal (R-Bonaire) has been ill and was not at Friday's meeting.

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simon's Island) said the caucus needed Friday's meeting to clear the air. He supported the decision to do it behind closed doors. Caucus rules require all meetings to be open to the public, unless a majority of the leadership vote to meet privately. Several Republicans objected to that move, but following a secret ballot vote, the doors to the meeting room at the Georgia Tech Research Institute were closed.

"We're like a family and we had to get in there and air some things out," Keen said. "What impressed me was the real commitment this caucus has to continue the policies we've done in the past."

Keen said the Richardson saga amounts to "caucus politics, and it's internal." But he also admitted that such behavior can implicate the entire House.

"There is no doubt that when something happens with one individual that it reflects on all of us," he said. "That is politics. We know that. We recognized that in there."

Keen also said he personally asked Richardson in 2007 if the rumors were true that he was having an affair with the AGL lobbyist while he was also pushing legislation that would have benefited the utility. Richardson's answer? "No," Keen said.

Burkhalter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a week ago that he did not know about Richardson's alleged affair with the lobbyist. O'Neal, who is now running for speaker, told The Macon Telegraph this week, however, that it was "common knowledge."