A twist of fate in Indiana.

• Author: Ketzenberger, John
• Position: Indiana House Democrat gains speakership - Three of a Kind

Indiana House Republicans, stymied by a failed redistricting scheme, thought they had the foolproof way out. They were wrong.

A full Indiana House of Representatives awaited new Speaker John R. Gregg last November. Among the observers were the secretary of state, the Supreme Court's chief justice, Gregg's wife and two sons, 50 Republicans and 49 fellow Democrats. Hours of negotiations behind them, the players were ready for Gregg's swearing-in. But 3-year-old Hunter Gregg fidgeted in his mother's lap. Just as his father readied to walk to the speaker's podium, Hunter in a burst of impatience yelled, "No!"

It's a sentiment former Speaker Paul S. Mannweiler understands. The Indianapolis Republican watched on election night as his decisive 55-45 majority in the House melted into a 50-50 tie. For the second time in Indiana's 180-year history, the second time, in fact, in the last eight years, voters installed equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. The parties, which shared power equally the last time this occurred in 1988, with two speakers, two chairs for every committee and even equal amounts of office space, muddled through two sessions. The Democratic speaker was in the chair one day, the Republican took up the gavel the next day. It was this scenario that Mannweiler referred to when he introduced a tie-breaking plan in 1995.

This time just Gregg, a small-town Democrat from southern Indiana, strolled down the center aisle, and he had Mannweiler's new tie-breaking law to thank. Two sessions ago, after a failed and much-criticized mid-cycle redistricting proposal that would have avoided ties by reducing House membership to 99, Mannweiler took a different tack. He pushed a new law through the Indiana legislature that would, in case of a tie, give the speakership and organizational control to the party that elected the highest state office on the ballot. Last November that was the governor, and to the surprise of many pundits across the state Democratic Lieutenant Governor Frank O'Bannon defeated Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a highly regarded Republican. Mannweiler's law, ironically, would now benefit Democrats.

"Republicans were sure they'd have the governorship," says Mary Dieter, Indianapolis bureau chief for the Louisville Courier-Journal, of the fateful twist. Though Mannweiler insists otherwise, some believe that the 1995 redistricting plan that both the attorney general and a former supreme court justice said was unconstitutional, was an attempt to bolster weak Republican districts. Mannweiler's highest-office-on-the-ballot solution, dubbed "Plan B," successfully ended a two-week, Gregg-led Democratic walkout, but in the end left the GOP out of power in the House.

"THE RIGHT THING TO DO"

Leading up to the General Assembly's reorganization last fall, Mannweiler maintained he liked the tie-breaker. "I still think it's the right thing to do," says Mannweiler, who served as co-speaker with Democrat Michael Phillips during the 1989-90 General Assembly. "It will help us get past the problems we had then, including the inefficiencies of dual control."

Republicans in Indiana, used to legislative control, kept a tightfisted grip on the Indiana...