Business's man: house speaker Thom Tillis is North Carolina's most focused free-market legislative leader in a long time - maybe ever.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY - Cover story - Geographic overview

The Haw River sluices around mossy boulders as it flows through rural Alamance County north of Burlington. On the south side, under murals of bluebirds in skies of fluffy clouds, grandmothers in rocking chairs watch over squirmy toddlers in the nursery of New 1 lope Baptist Church, while in the sanctuary, Pastor Randy Hobbs preaches hellfire and redemption. It's another Sunday morning in small-town North Carolina. Only this isn't a town. Glen Raven is an unincorporated community of barely 3/000 people that grew out of the village that grew up around the mill John Q. Cant built between 1900 and 1902.

Grandson Allen Gant Jr. now runs it and 12 other plants, distribution centers and offices here and a half-dozen other places in North Carolina. About 800 Tar Heels are among Glen Raven Inc/s 2,500 workers worldwide. It's a company that clings to its family values, but not at the expense of innovation. Its space-age fabrics are shining successes in the gloaming of the American textile industry.

This is Thorn Tillis territory. "I'm a huge fan," says Wally Wallace, a senior vice president and corporate counsel. "I can hardly think of anything in my lifetime that has been more positive for the people of North Carolina--and ultimately the citizens of this state--than the road Rep. Tillis has led us onto." He's talking about the speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives, a key player in Republicans capturing both chambers of the General Assembly for the first time in 112 years.

Not that Tillis lacks detractors. Some 70 miles east of Glen Raven on a cold January night, most of Raleigh sleeps while he paces, gavel in hand, at the front of a crimson-carpeted chamber. Many Democratic legislators, believing the day's lawmaking done, have gone home. What follows will be known in some quarters as the Midnight Massacre. At 12:45 a.m., the House votes 69-45, overriding Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto of legislation that would halt deducting dues from the paychecks of nearly 60,000 members of the North Carolina Association of Educators. NCAE leaders believe Tillis orchestrated the move to kill the Democrat-leaning quasi-union and try to block its implementation in court, arguing that the late-night session was unconstitutional. Public-advocacy groups decry the vote as a mockery of open government, and Democrats accuse Tillis of poisoning the political well. "I don't trust anything he says," snaps House minority whip Deborah Ross, a five-termer from Raleigh. "He doesn't have a fundamental understanding or respect for the law. He sees his office as a delivery system for his agenda, as opposed to an office that's supposed to work for the good of all of North Carolina."

In the almost six years since voters in and around the Charlotte suburb of Cornelius dispatched Thomas Roland Tillis to Raleigh, he has inspired passion at both ends of the political spectrum. His has been a fast track, racing to a prominence few feel has peaked. Now in his third term, he vows he'll serve only four, which would make him a free agent in 2014. He became speaker, arguably the second or third most potent political position in state government, just four years after he got there.

In his office in the legislative building, Tillis, 51, plops on a couch, fidgeting with a red rubber band on his wrist. "Jobs * Economy," it's inscribed, his riff on the mantra that helped Bill Clinton defeat George H.W. Bush in 1992. "I got a thousand of 'em last year, and I pass 'em out. It's a pain thing: Any time you catch yourself thinking about anything else, you snap the band until the feeling goes away. He snaps the band. "I'm socially conservative, and I embrace virtually all aspects of the socially conservative Republican platform. But at the end of the day, being a free-market, limited-government conservative is the most important thing that drives me." Others have a shorter description: He's the most focused pro-business legislative leader in North Carolina in a long time, possibly ever.

"He doesn't have a job, he has a mission," says Lew Ebert, president of the state chamber of commerce. A Republican kingmaker agrees. "I don't think you can overestimate what a breath of fresh air Thorn Tillis is as speaker of the House," says Art Pope, CEO of Henderson-based Variety...