Rand calls shots as Senate gets business done

Step into a session of the state Senate and it's clear who runs the show.

It's the graying, well-dressed man seated near the front, the one with the foghorn voice who springs to his feet to answer questions on the floor.

It's the man who leaves the floor to find lobbyists lining up at his door, the man who can get his friend, the governor, on the phone.

The Senate belongs to the people of North Carolina, but the power to set its pace belongs to Sen. Tony Rand.

The Fayetteville Democrat forms a tag team with Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat. Basnight, the state's longest-serving president pro tem, watches over the big-picture agenda. Rand manages most of the details.

Or as Rand puts it: "I make sure the trains run on time. He decides where the trains are going."

As chairman of a powerful committee and leader of Senate Democrats, Rand, 67, controls the flow of legislative traffic. With his OK, bills can fly through the Senate untouched. Others idle until they run out of gas.

Since 1999, Rand has ranked as the Senate's second-most effective member -- right behind Basnight -- in surveys of legislators, lobbyists and reporters. He has dropped no lower than third in his career since 1985. Being Gov. Mike Easley's go-to guy in the legislature has strengthened Rand's position as a power broker.

In committees, Rand often asks the pointed questions. His rhetorical flourishes in floor debates are a mixture of wisecracks, historical references and ornate turns of phrase -- such as "lest we forget" -- that sound as though he's reading from a Revolutionary War general's diary.

Rand is an expert at getting laws he wants by adding changes to bills at the last minute, filling in blank bills, or stripping bills of their original language to be replaced with his own ideas. When he wants something to happen, Rand can tell people on opposite sides to sit down and work out their differences so bills win the broadest support possible. Lobbyists stack up outside his office door, waiting to see him.

"Nobody has really ever played the game as well as Tony," said Christopher Scott, former president of the state AFL-CIO. "He's like Mickey Mantle in the outfield. He's the equivalent of Lyndon Johnson when he was majority leader."

Rand leaned back in his office chair and let out an explosive laugh while rejecting the comparison to Johnson.

"No!" he said. "Lyndon tried to steal every election he participated in."

Schooled by a master

Rand names an influence closer to home: Thomas White, the legislative power of his age. As a 13-year-old page, Rand got to know White, a man he called "a master of the game." Rand edited himself to call the game "the institutional process."

Rand works on most major bills and a lot of the little ones. He does everything from shaping the state budget to helping select the Senate chamber furniture.

The state budget, which legislative leaders are currently negotiating, is a partial reflection of his priorities. The 16-campus state university system, and UNC-Chapel Hill in particular, gets singled out in Senate budgets for more money and policy changes pushed by boosters. A prominent booster of the UNC Tar Heels, Rand pushed for a relatively new law -- slipped into a recent budget -- that grants in-state status to out-of-state students on full scholarships. Athletics departments, booster clubs, and private foundations are the biggest beneficiaries, with taxpayers picking up millions in additional scholarship costs each year.

The community college in Rand's district gets so much state money for special projects that Fayetteville Tech named its student center after him. Easley, one of Rand's longtime friends, was at the dedication in 2004.