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Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican and his party’s leader in the Senate, wandered into the legislative press room today to offer comments on two stories involving other senators.

Sen. Jim Forrester was quoted in a Statesville Record and Landmark story this way:

"The (state) Senate is as liberal as I've ever seen it," Forrester said at the monthly meeting of the Iredell County Young Republicans on Tuesday night in Mooresville.

"Slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies are running Raleigh," Forrester added.

[snip]

Forrester pointed to two current state senators as an example of the left-leaning agenda in state government.

He said state Sen. Julia Boseman — the first openly gay person ever elected to the North Carolina General Assembly — "took a bunch of money from a big lesbian group."

Forrester said a male senator is rumored to be gay and is currently fighting off charges that he shot another man. Boseman and the other senator, both Democrats, have each said they do not plan to run for re-election.

"And I say good riddance to them," Forrester said. He said that neither of the two legislators showed any support for bills Forrester proposed to ban same-sex marriage in the state.

Click here for the full story.

Update: Forrester has since apologized for the remarks. (Click here.) 

“I don’t agree with the remarks that have been attributed to Sen. Forrester,” Berger said. “I have not talked to Sen. Forrester about that. You probably need to talk to him about whether he should apologize or not.”

When asked specifically about the comment “a male senator is rumored to be gay and is currently fighting off charges that he shot another man,” a less than oblique reference to Sen. R.C. Soles (who has never said that he is gay but is the only N.C. state senator on trial for shooting someone), Berger didn't address the point specifically.

“There were a number of things in that story that I was surprised to see in print,” Berger said. “You’ll need to talk to Sen. Forrester about what he meant about whatever comments that he made.”

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Berger was also asked about Soles, a long-time senator who plead guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with a shooting at his home last year. (Click here for that story.) 

He said the penalty seemed light and that the rules that applied to every day citizens didn’t apply to powerful Democrats. So, I asked, he doesn’t think one of his clients in Rockingham County could cut the same deal.

Prefacing his reply that it might be a bit “snarky,” Berger said: “I think if folks knew the penalty for shooting someone was $1,000, you’d have folks lining up to pay $1,000 in order to shoot somebody.”