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LIGHTNING TOP 10: No. 4

State Sen. Tom Apodaca announced in December he would not seek an eighth term.

By Bill Moss, Published: December 23, 2015

Top 10: No. 4

Tom Apodaca went from hauling runaway felons to jail — sometimes hogtied in the backseat of his car — to the back bench of the state Senate. After helping the GOP gain a historic majority in the Legislature in 2010, Apodaca reached the high chamber of power, as second in command of the now dominant state Senate. “Apodaca was often the Senate’s closer in candidate recruitment, goading perspective candidates into running with one-liners like: ‘You can’t win if you don’t run’ and dispensing political advice always followed by a reminder that he’d never lost an election,” Senate president pro tem Phil Berger said of his Rules Committee chairman and good friend. Sometimes with bluster, often with wit, Apodaca stood at a front corner desk of the Senate and traffic copped the legislation that the leadership had blessed. In ways that were visible and hidden, Apodaca worked on legislation and projects that boosted his Senate district and all of Western North Carolina, including the location of WCU’s engineering school at Biltmore Town Park, the recruitment of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. to Mills River, guiding of the coal ash cleanup bill through the Legislature and persuading Duke Energy to convert its Lake Julian power plant from coal to natural gas (while encouraging it to drop a high-voltage line through his home county). Then, after 13 years, Apodaca said he would bow out. An exhausting 2015 legislative session — and the realization that he had achieved what he went to Raleigh to accomplish — triggered his decision in December to retire. Over his seven terms, Apodaca had proved to be a natural and had become the most powerful legislator from Hendersonville in memory. His departure leaves state Rep. Chuck McGrady — a fast-riser himself — as the senior member of the county’s legislative delegation — indeed its only incumbent. In November, state Rep. Chris Whitmire, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, announced he was retiring from the state House after two terms to take a job in the private sector.