This, from John Hood:

On Friday, a very conservative Republican legislator from the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina announced that he was switching parties, to the Democrats, and would vote for the current Democratic Speaker, Jim Black, to continue to lead the North Carolina House. In a Jeffords-like move, now-Democratic Rep. Michael Decker could reverse one of the Republican Party’s pivotal legislative gains in the November elections, as the GOP recaptured a slightly 61-59 majority in a legislative chamber they first won in the 1994 Republican Revolution. Rumors of a high-level legislative post, a job in the Democratic administration of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, or at least a boost in Decker’s post-retirement pension as a legislator are among the possible causes of the switch.