Raleigh lawyer to lead state Senate Democrats

From wire reports

RALEIGH — Leadership of the state Senate’s Democratic caucus will be passed from one Raleigh lawyer to another.

Dan Blue Jr., the Senate’s minority leader since 2014, will leave the post and will be succeeded by Sydney Batch.

Blue is the managing partner of Blue LLP. He represents individuals and businesses in civil litigation, administrative, estate, and public finance matters.

Batch is a founding partner of Batch, Poore & Williams. Her practice include family law, child protective services and appellate law, and she is certified as a child welfare law specialist and a parenting coordinator.

Batch was elected minority leader at a private caucus of Senate Democrats on Monday night.

Blue, 75, was a trailblazer in the General Assembly. After joining the N.C. House in 1981, he became the first — and, so far, only — African American to be elected its speaker, holding the position from 1991 to 1995.

After unsuccessfully running for the U.S. Senate in 2002, he returned to the N.C. House in 2006 and moved to the N.C. Senate in 2009. He took the minority leader’s post in 2014.

Batch was elected to the House in 2018, only to lose her reelection bid in 2020. She filled a Senate vacancy in 2021 and was reelected in 2022 and this year.