Senator McCoin May No Longer Be In Office, But He Is Man Working on Budget Commission's Report, Dec. 30, 1922

M’Coin Is Putting in Shape Report of Budget Commission. . . Henderson Man Checking Up and Supervising Work on the Document. . . Not in Assembly. . . State Losing Services, for Time, of Hard Worker and Good Fighter

Raleigh, Dec. 29—Shaping up the report of the budget commission, R.S. McCoin of Henderson, one of the commission’s senate members, is here for a couple of days. He isn’t sitting in judgment but is merely checking up and supervising the clerical work. The budget commission will finish its hearings next week, returning to the city with the legislature. Mr. McCoin is not a member of the assembly for the next term, and was the member of the commission handiest to the capital. This may seem a trifle meticulous, but “Mac” is the chap who is considered by divers institutional heads as about the hard-boiled budgster in the business in these parts. An explanation, therefore, which did not explain that the work he is doing on the report is not connected with the recommendations the commission will make is due him and those affected.”

It can be said in noting the passing, for the time at least, of McCoin, of Vance, as a legislator that the state of North Carolina is losing the legislative services of one who is a horse for work and a tower of strength to a program once it has been agreed on. In every worthwhile fight in the last three legislatures his high, thin voice has been lifted up in plain speech. He believes what he believes and is ready to get up at any hour of the night and go to the mat with anybody in defense of any view or opinion.

That doesn't mean that he is especially conversational, either; for he isn’t given to extending himself at random.

His retirement leaves vacant not exactly a leadership, because he stirred up quite a bit of opposition and won his points by driving them home rather than by taking everybody along with him from the outset, but a good bit of room for the exercise of leadership. Varsar, of Robeson, who is coming back for his second term, will probably expand to fill some part of the space at the top. Lunsford Long, of Halifax, if he ever should fancy the job of Senate Big Boy, could annex even more of it. Finance and appropriations, save as they affect education, however, interest Senator Long very little, and to constantly head the procession one must spout a lot of figures. Perhaps that is why Luns hasn’t gone in for drum-majoring.

From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Dec. 30, 1922