The consensus candidate: with democrats split, the new assembly speaker in New Jersey was an unlikely candidate. And the new governor picked him.

• Author: Diamond, Randy

Even in his wildest imagination, Albio Sires never thought he would become speaker of the New Jersey Assembly.

"I did not get a chance to even dream about this," he says. "No, never. I mean this happened too quickly."

A freshman backbencher in the chamber, his seat was closer to the door of the 80-member Assembly than to the speaker's podium.

He made only a few speeches and introduced only 19 bills in his first two years in office. His status as a member of the minority Democrats assured him that his legislation would die a quick death in a chamber where the speaker holds all the cards. There's a reason the Assembly speaker is called the third most powerful elected official in New Jersey, behind the governor and the Senate president.

The speaker decides which bills will live or die, determining which bills are referred to a committee for consideration and which are posted in the full Assembly for a vote.

"I quickly found that unless you are in the majority, it really doesn't matter what you say," Sires says. "You could have the best ideas in the world, and they are not going to go anywhere."

That all changed on Jan. 9 when Sires, an imposing figure at six feet four inches, stood for the first time behind the speaker's podium in the ornate Assembly chamber and got ready to pound the gavel.

But first he had to find the gavel. A nervous Sires wondered if former Republican Speaker Jack Collins had played a joke on him. But then he looked in the drawer and realized that Collins had left it. "I guess it's state property," he joked.

UNLIKELY CHOICE

Sires seemed an unlikely choice for speaker when Democrats took control of the Assembly last November for the first time in a decade.

Previous speakers had years of service in the Assembly. Albio Sires was just finishing his first two-year term.

Sires was virtually unknown outside the North Jersey city of West New York, where he has been mayor for the last five years.

He had also been a Republican for 13 of the last 15 years, switching his registration only two years ago.

When James McGreevey ran for governor the first time in 1997 against incumbent Republican Christine Todd Whitman, Sires supported Whitman.

But Sires's rise to power occurred because he fell into Governor-elect McGreevey's plan.

The Cinderella story for the 50-year-old Sires, the first Cuban-American legislative leader in the nation, began last Nov. 6 when Democrat McGreevey trounced his Republican opponent Bret Schundler in the gubernatorial race. The Democrats also regained control of the New Jersey Assembly for the first time in 10 years, gaining nine seats in the Assembly for a 44-36 majority.

McGreevey addressed cheering supporters at the East Brunswick Hilton. Among those smiling was Minority Leader Joe Doria.

Doria had served as speaker in 1990 and 1991. But Democrats lost control of the Assembly in 1992 because of voter outrage over then-Governor Florio's $2.8 billion tax increase.

Doria has held on as minority leader since 1992, waiting for his chance to be speaker again.

In the meantime, a messy decade-old feud between Democratic legislators, like Doria, who hails from the northern part of the state, and legislators from the south led by state party chairman Senator Joe Roberts, had prevented a unified Democratic legislative caucus.

FACTIONS AND FEUDS

A motorist can travel from the top of Northern Jersey to the bottom in South Jersey in less than three hours. But the Northern part identifies itself with New York City, while the southern part with its Philadelphia axis might as well be a separate state.

Roberts challenged Doria unsuccessfully for minority leader in 1997. Then three years ago, insisting that the wishes of Democratic south Jersey lawmakers weren't being given any weight by the larger northern faction, the 10 south Jersey legislators walked out of the Democratic caucus and formed their own sub-minority caucus.

With McGreevey's victory, Roberts wanted to be the new speaker. So did Doria.

But McGreevey had other ideas. He walked off the ballroom stage and asked Sires to come with him to a hotel room.

"He said to me, 'I have a really serious problem in the Legislature,"' Sires recalls. "'I have a Legislature that for 10 years has been basically divided. You have the north and the south. They can't seem to come to an understanding that we have to work together, and we have to put the differences behind us and move...