It started with "Big Daddy" Jesse Unruh, the California Assembly speaker in the 1960s who coined the phrase: "Money is the mother's milk of politics."

The story of the rise of the big-money, high-powered legislative machines will not end when the prison doors clang shut behind former N.C. House Speaker Jim Black.

Black's fall is almost Shakespearean -- an elderly man trying to cling to power and, perhaps, hold on to his youth. But the story is about more than just human frailties. It is also a tale about how the big-money political culture has changed Raleigh.

Unruh created the first modern legislative machine, raising huge sums in political donations from special interests and then spending it on targeted legislative races. Today, about two-thirds of the nation's 99 legislative chambers have their own such political organizations, according to Alan Rosenthal, a public policy professor at Rutgers University.

During the era of one-party Democratic control, legislative politicking in North Carolina meant talking to the Rotary Club, putting up yard signs and handing out pencils or combs. But with the rise of Republicans in the 1990s, frightened Democrats set up machines in the House and the Senate and began spending large sums of money on television and radio advertising, direct mail, consultants, pollsters and other costs.

Plenty of temptation

In most cases, such political machines don't lead to corruption, Rosenthal says. But millions of dollars from special interest money flowing through the hands of local politicians does put temptation in front of people.

North Carolina once had a reputation for clean government, although it was always far from pristine, with plenty of old stories of money being exchanged under the table in brown paper bags.

In recent years, former Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps and former U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance, both Democrats, have gone to jail. Several lawmakers have been the subject of investigations.

One reader, a Chicago transplant, called Wednesday to say all the corruption charges made him feel at home.

Insiders disagree on whether North Carolina is becoming more corrupt or whether there is just greater scrutiny. Legislative politics have been put under a stronger magnifying glass in recent years -- by an aggressive Republican U.S. Attorney's office (with the help of the State Bureau of Investigation), by the news media and from interested citizens such as Joe Sinsheimer and Bob Hall, both of whom monitor campaign money, serving as watchdogs.

"Nobody knows the answer," said state Senate Majority leader Tony Rand of Fayetteville. "In my opinion, it does not lead one to the conclusion that there is a culture of corruption or the good old boy system, because one [Black] involved the quest for power within the system, one [Phipps] involved the quest for electoral success, and one [Ballance] involved enterprises back home."

Raleigh insiders believed Black was a shrewd political operator who knew how to game the system. Few thought he was crooked.

"I am still stunned and floored by it all," said former state Rep. David Redwine of Brunswick County. "It still doesn't make any sense to me. He was my boss. I worked with him on a lot of things. I never noticed a particular indication that he would ever do anything like that. He was a wealthy man. He didn't need that kind of money."

Black won't be the last

Ran Coble, a veteran legislative watcher, doesn't think the problems will go away with Black off to prison. Coble says the House is likely to be closely divided between Democrats and Republicans for at least the next decade, which means that intense and expensive political wars lie ahead.

"Institutional pressure and the political climate of North Carolina are putting the legislative leaders in a pretty big pressure cooker right now," said Coble, executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research. "Any leader is going to have to deal with it."

But temptation doesn't always equal corruption.

As Big Daddy Unruh once remarked: "If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, [kiss] their women, and then come in here the next day and vote against them, you don't belong here."