By Andrew Stuckey for Chapelboro.com

The North Carolina General Assembly got the 2025 legislative session started earlier this month, and the leadership in both chambers and parties feature some new faces. House Minority Leader and District 54 Rep. Robert Reives spoke with 97.9 The Hill about some of those leadership changes.

“I think we are going to have a much more positive session,” said Reives, who was first appointed to the house in 2014, and has been elected six times since then. He has led the Democratic caucus since 2020.

Many who follow North Carolina politics were surprised when Sen. Sydney Batch from District 17 was elected by Democratic lawmakers to become the Minority Leader of the Senate, taking over for longtime senate Minority Leader Dan Blue. Reives said he is excited for the new leadership, even though he’s been close with Dan Blue for years.

“It’s seamless for us on the House side,” he said. “I had a special relationship with Dan Blue. Dan graduated with my mother at college. And Dan continues to be a special person to me. We had recruited [Batch] to run in the [House] district that, presently, Erin Paré represents [NC House District 37]. And she was able to flip that district. She was tremendous, and we have a good relationship… so in that sense, it’s no different.”

“Of course,” Reives continued, “we are proud to have the first woman to lead any of the four caucuses in the history of that chamber.”

But the Chatham County representative is particularly excited about Batch’s qualifications.

“What makes me happiest about her being the first in the history of our state, is that from the experience angle, from the talent she showed in the House,” said Reives, “she is definitely one of the most qualified people in either caucus in either chamber, to lead a caucus. And that is what is important: that the most qualified person always has the opportunity.”

In the House’s chamber, Republicans have a new speaker: District 87 Rep. Destin Hall, who replaces Tim Moore after Moore’s extended run as leader ended with an election to U.S. Congress.

“Will it be different? Absolutely,” Reives said of Hall’s leadership. “And that’s because of the people around. A lot of their success or failure is about the people who surround them. Speaker Hall is the youngest speaker we’ve ever had. So in that sense, he’s got to be different. But at the same time, he’s surrounding himself by senior leadership, experienced leadership that has a good reputation. There probably aren’t two republicans in the general assembly who have better relationships as a whole than [House Majority Leader] John Bell and [House Speaker Pro Tem] Mitch Seltzer.”

Reives is also optimistic that the work environment will be more cordial with the new leadership.

“I think he’s set himself up for a really good time,” he said. “And candidly, I like the fact that even down to their staff… their staff wants a more collegial atmosphere. Nobody likes working in any place where you walk in and you’ve got anger and division.”

Whether this new leadership leads to more bipartisan policy remains to be seen.

“I think we’re going to have a much more positive session,” Reives said. “We are going to continue to disagree on big issues, we are going to continue to disagree about policy. But I think you won’t see a lot of the antagonism, because the other more important part: Speaker Moore and Speaker Tillis had an experience in the minority, and they would tell you that their experience in the minority was bad. Nobody in leadership right now has ever served in the minority. So, I think that is going to help them be more gracious.

The North Carolina General Assembly next convenes Wednesday, Jan. 29. To listen to the full interview with Rep. Robert Reives, click here.

The preceding article was written by Andrew Stuckey and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Carolina Leadership Coalition. It originally appeared on January 17, 2025 at chapelboro.com 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 by Chris Seward for the Associated Press.