By Brian Murphy for WRAL News

North Carolina House Republicans elected state Rep. Destin Hall as the chamber’s next leader, handing the speaker’s gavel the 37-year-old in accordance with a long-agreed to succession plan.

Hall, who will become speaker in January when the new legislature is officially seated, replaces Tim Moore, who is serving his record fifth term in that role. Moore, 54, was elected to the U.S. House from the Charlotte-area 14th Congressional District this month.

In October 2023, top Republicans in the House threw their support behind Hall, making the House Rules Committee chairman the speaker-in-waiting. House majority leader John Bell, who was also in the running to be speaker, will replace Hall as rules committee chairman.

The voting was done by Republican members who will be in the body in January — 68 of the 71 were present. Hall and Bell said Tuesday that no other member ran for speaker.

“Being rules chair, I’ve always said, is kind of like being the speaker on training wheels. You get to do all of the work, but not on the glory,” Hall said.

Hall, a lawyer from Lenoir, lives in Granite Falls and represents Caldwell and Watauga counties. He was first elected in 2016. He graduated from Appalachian State and earned a law degree from Wake Forest.

“He’s energetic,” Bell said. “He’s got a legal background. He’s done a great job as rules chair. But he’s put a team around him that’s going to support him. Even though he’ll be brand new to the job, he’s very attuned and very ready for the challenge.”

In 2020, Hall became co-chair of the powerful rules committee — through which every piece of legislation must pass before getting to a vote on the House floor — and then became the committee’s chair.

He has been a leader of the House Redistricting Committee since 2019, another high-profile role given the volume of election map changes in the intervening years.

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The preceding article originally appeared on November 19, 2024 at WRAL’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Photo above courtesy of the Charlotte Observer.