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Author: Lynn Bonner; Staff Writer Edition: Final June 30, 2005 David Hoyle, a leader of the state Senate Finance Committee, is the eminently quotable, photographable and recordable state senator explaining why Senate Democrats are fighting to reduce the income tax rate for the wealthy. Hoyle of Gaston County is the chief Senate negotiator with House leaders on the stopgap taxing measure needed to avoid a government shutdown. He hits his points, and he doesn't have to force it. It's as if he's been waiting four years to trounce the temporary tax he never wanted.In 2001, he fought the increased personal income tax on the wealthy for the same reasons that he talks this year about getting rid of it: It looks bad to company owners looking for places to locate industries. Hoyle, 66, gets to talk to lots of company owners. He is a real estate developer who is a director of a Fortune 500 company, chairman of the board of a Gaston-based bank, and partner in more than a half-dozen other businesses. A few weeks ago, he played golf with the president of Toshiba. Hoyle, who is married and has two adult children, got an early start in politics. He was active in the Young Democrats Club and, at 26, ran for mayor of Dallas in Gaston County; he served two terms. But it was through his business ventures that he formed his views about government. Hoyle helped start a business in 1960, after he graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, that manufactured building products. The experience developed "my strong feelings for government staying out of the way of business with too many regulations," he said Wednesday. "I learned how government could interfere." In a trivia quiz The Wall Street Journal ran Wednesday, Hoyle was the correct answer to a question taken from an article on business incentives. (Who said: "It's out of control, like we're addicted and can't kick the habit.") But the multiple-choice selections misidentified him as a Republican. Now in his seventh term, Hoyle is elected from a solidly Republican district -- and sometimes he sounds like the Republican businessmen he counts as his friends -- but he says he has never considered changing parties. Each session, Hoyle pushes business bills that irritate other Democrats. He has tangled with members of his own party over payday lending, car dealer franchise laws and billboard regulations. He is the main sponsor this year of a reworking of workers' compensation laws that brought trial lawyers to battle stations. "David has a good heart, and if you can talk to him before he's gotten dug in on something, he frequently would be supportive of doing the right thing," said Wib Gulley, a former Democratic senator from Durham. "Unfortunately, sometimes, I think he would get a particular view of a bill, like payday lending or the income tax for wealthy taxpayers, and he would settle on his position and it wasn't easy to talk with him." N.C. FREE, a pro-business political information service, has named Hoyle its No. 1 Senate champion of business five sessions in a row. "The fact that you have an ally like David Hoyle who also happens to be in the inner circle of the Senate leadership is of great value," said John Davis, N.C. FREE's executive director. He is in the innermost of the inner circles. While in Raleigh, he and Senate leader Marc Basnight share an apartment. Hoyle's business insights are valuable in the Senate and for the state's business climate, Basnight said. Recently, The Shaw Group, the company on whose board Hoyle sits, announced it was expanding in Charlotte. "He understands that without employers, there are no employees," Basnight said. "He's a Democrat. Kind of strange to believe sometimes, but he believes in those principles. He believes in business. And I do, too."
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