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Sen. Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat and the president pro tempore of the senate for the past 18 years, says he will resign his senate seat effective Jan. 25.

Basnight won re-election Nov. 2. Democrats lost their majority in the state Senate for the first time since reconstruction.

Basnight has coped with an unnamed and unidentified motor-neuron disease for the past several years. Although he is able to work and commute, the disease has slowed his speech.

Basnight said if he were still pro tempore, his ability to speak would not be as important. But, he said, the job of the minority party would be to debate and provide effective, vocal opposition to Republican policies with which they disagreed.

“Not being able to debate, that worries me,” Basnight told reporters this morning. “I believe it would be wrong to just sit here and not represent the people who voted for me.”

Update: Video of part of Basnight's announcement below. A few more nuggets are below that.

Basnight 010410 from Mark Binker on Vimeo.

Update: here are some nuggets from Basnight’s chat with reporters earlier:

• He’s engaged to be married. He said the bride to be is Sue Waters, a librarian at Manteo High School and a musician. Basnight’s first wife, Sandy, died in 2007.
• Basnight said he made his decision to step away from his seat during a post-Christmas drive through the South, visiting historic sites in Mississippi. He was less than complimentary of the state. “Don’t go to Jackson, Mississippi,” Basnight said, adding, “However they have chosen to govern, it has not been good for their people.”
• Basnight claimed there were only two points during his 18-year tenure as president pro tempore that he ever forced votes on bills. One occasion, he said, was the vote that created the lottery. The other, he said, banned smoking in bars and restaurants.
• Basnight said he plans to step away from public life and not serve on any boards and commissions.