Thursday, February 19, 2009
Legislature / Politics / Woods Democrats Come to Naifeh's Defense
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:55 AM
click to enlarge
House Democrats rose one more time to the ferocious defense of the old lion Jimmy Naifeh today, accusing Republicans of lying about the size of his staff. Yesterday, Republicans bitterly complained in their caucus that the dethroned speaker has two aides, not one like all other representatives of his lowly status. This caused the AP's Eric Schelzig to write a story, which caused GOP flack Bill Hobbs to woof in a press release, which caused Democrats to counterattack today.
"They're lying about that," said their party's House caucus chair, Mike Turner. "If any person on the Republican side of the aisle tells you that Jimmy Naifeh's got a big staff, more than one person, they're lying, just flat lying, and you can tell them I said that, and they can take it up with me. They're lying."
Pith decided to check into this little matter, approaching the once-mighty Naifeh and his longtime gatekeeper, Reta Adams, on the House floor after today's session ended.
We asked Naifeh to respond to Republicans who are complaining about his large staff.
"Am I large?" Adams interjected. "Are they talking about me? I'm the staff."
"I don't know where they're getting all this," Naifeh said, insisting Adams now is his only staff member.
So we went to House GOP caucus chair Glen Casada, who was trying to hop on the elevator to go home, and asked him to explain what Republicans are talking about. "I could have sworn I saw two people in there in his office. Well, if that's the case and he's just got one staffer then we were in error. And that's good!" Casada said, plastering a big grin on his face.
This all came up yesterday as Democrats were passing a resolution honoring Naifeh as speaker emeritus. It was done on a voice vote at the request of Republican leaders, according to Turner. "Quite frankly, I don't think they wanted any more of this embarrassment" over partisan fighting, he said.
The House clerk says only five Republicans asked to be to recorded as voting no--Donna Rowland, Mike Bell, Richard Floyd, Stacey Campfield and Joey Hensley. Maybe Robin Smith should expel the rest of the House Republicans from the party.
Comments (0)