True anti-blue: our mover and shaker of the year stays the course to shift the state's direction.

• Author: Betts, Jack
• Position: COVER STORY

Bob Rucho was mad. For more than a year, he had worked on a comprehensive tax-reform bill that would change North Carolina's antiquated revenue system in dramatic ways--including an end to tax breaks for special interests, a proposal sparking heartburn in virtually every tax lobbyist in Raleigh. But Gov. Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis, both fellow Republicans from Mecklenburg County had backed away from his plan in favor of a compromise that included some of his ideas but didn't go nearly as far. So on June 13, a riled-up Rucho did an unusual and some would say rash thing: He resigned as co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. In a letter to the man who appointed him--Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger--he cited their "fundamental disagreement on the most effective model of tax reform," then unloaded on McCrory and Tillis, who he claimed lacked "the political backbone to fight special interest groups."

Picking a fight with the Senate's top leader might seem a way to wind up in a tiny office in the bowels of the Legislative Building. But Berger didn't bite. "I hereby respectfully decline to accept your resignation ... ," he replied, signing his letter: "Loyally, Phil." What could have been a nasty public split blew over. Rucho was soon back in the fold, supporting legislation--much of it shepherded by Berger--that shifted the direction of state government sharply rightward. Over the course of the 2013 long session, the General Assembly adopted a strong voter-ID requirement that also compressed the time for early voting, did away with regulations Republicans believed got in the way of business, slowed the growth of the state budget, approved vouchers to send children to private schools, restricted access to abortions and imposed a flat-rate income tax--the first significant tax reform in decades.

"Berger just poured oil on troubled waters," Republican political strategist Carter Wrenn says. "The issue was cutting taxes, and they had gotten all mired down in all these little special-interest things--sales taxes on tractors and such--and Berger got the issue back on 'how much are we going to cut?" Democratic strategist Gary Pearce, Wrenn's blogging partner on talkingaboutpolitics.com, named the Eden lawyer the GOP's MVP, "head and shoulders above the rest." Rob Christensen, the state's most influential political columnist, wrote in the Raleigh News & Observer that Berger had become "the new Marc Basnight, the most powerful figure in state government," referring to Berger's predecessor, a Democrat who ran the Senate--and whose influence reached far beyond that chamber--for 18 years. For the fundamental changes wrought by the latest session and those he has positioned himself to bring about in future ones, Phil Berger is BuswEss NORTH CAROLINA'S Mover and Shaker of the Year.

How did a 61-year-old small-town lawyer achieve such stature in only his second term as Senate chief? He's part of a Republican team, with Rills and McCrory, running the legislative and executive branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Pearce puts their performance in baseball terms. Berger, he wrote, "has been throwing heat all season," while Tillis "hobbled himself" by announcing this would be his last session as speaker--he's running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Kay Hagan--then getting pushed around by everyone. McCrory "looks like an outfielder who loses every fly ball in the sun. He's been a follower, not a leader, and a confused-looking follower at that." Politically, Berger staked out the right as his: McCrory; who had run on his record as Charlotte's moderate-Republican mayor, and Tillis, the "business Republican" embraced by the GOP establishment, couldn't quibble with his conservative stances without alienating their party's base.

And Berger, as it turned out, is a true believer. He "is no finger-to-the-wind politician," Wrenn...