COLUMBUS: For seven years, House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, has led a charmed legislative life.

He worked hard, chose his issues, friends and mentors carefully, and reached out to important contributors across the state without losing touch with the powerful business community back home in the Dayton area that played such a pivotal role in launching his career.

When he became the youngest speaker in Ohio history, Husted was fortunate to have a large majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Ohio Senate and Gov. Bob Taft, who put the lazy in laissez faire.

As he entered his second term as speaker, the political landscape changed. A Democrat, Ted Strickland, was governor, and the Republican majority in the House was a slim 53-46.

Husted didn't seem to mind. In the past 16 months, he has worked in a bipartisan manner with Strickland, matching the governor in political acuity and at times even trumping the administration on policy.

Husted is credited with suggesting a higher education chancellor report to the governor as a Cabinet member. Recently, he played a key role in reining in the governor's ambitious plans to sell bonds and increase the state's debt for an economic stimulus package by finding short-term cash, including a raid on tobacco settlement funds that ended up in court.

Now, however, Husted finds himself in a unique and most uncomfortable position.

For the first time, there is open tension between the two leaders over the critically important and highly controversial electric re-regulation bill.

The friction between Strickland and Husted has strained the speaker's relationship with Republicans in the Ohio Senate and weakened his position in his own House GOP caucus.

There is a lot at stake — profits, political careers, scary electric outages, scarier yet voter outrage, even business revolt — in attempting to craft legislation to regulate the $14 billion electric utility industry in Ohio.

Agreements, called rate stabilization plans, that have frozen rates for electric utilities in Ohio will begin to expire at the end of this year. When those contracts are gone, the state could experience the skyrocketing increase in electric bills felt in other states, where utilities were free to operate as if a competitive market existed when one did not.

So for the past eight months, Strickland, Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, and Husted have been working on legislation that, in concept, would protect the average consumer, keep energy bills down for businesses, stimulate investments in renewable and advanced energy and, oh, yes, keep the public electric utilities happy and profitable.

And until about 10 days ago, Husted again seemed to have the upper hand with the governor.

While the Ohio Senate moved on the governor's initial September proposal in a matter of weeks, Husted and the House slowed the process down, holding hearings over several months, and painting Strickland as an impatient whiner whenever he pushed for movement on the legislation.

Husted placed an emphasis on investing in renewable and advanced energy concepts for environmental and economic reasons, touting the jobs that a green revolution would create.

Everything changed within 24 hours, beginning April 10.

Husted unveiled an outline of the House's plan that, in essence, weakened the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio's authority to regulate electric utilities while giving the companies the long-sought autonomy to act with few restraints and sell their power on the open market.

Governor threatens veto

The next day, Strickland made two moves that turned the tables on Husted.

Strickland promised to veto the bill as written. He also pledged to immediately sign stand-alone legislation on the alternative and renewable energy issues, a step that focused all the ensuing attention on electric bills and utility profits.

And unfortunately for the hugely talented Husted, he was in the position of defending utility profits.

The speaker responded to the veto promise by stating he would send a bill to the governor's desk and Strickland could do as he wished with the measure.

In the past, this strategy would have worked, but Strickland is not Taft and the Republicans are not as confident as they once were.

All lawmakers are paranoid to a degree and the level of career anxiety in the House and Senate is directly proportionate to the breadth or narrowness of a majority at any given time.

Public perception vital

Democrats need to pick up only four seats to take control of the House this year, so members of Husted's caucus are understandably concerned about public perception and their own political hides.

Husted didn't help his cause when the House Public Utilities Committee, chaired by Stark County's John Hagan, R-Alliance, once again demonstrated a complete disregard for the public's feelings and held a Monday hearing on the bill that lasted until after 3 a.m. Tuesday.

Around that time, Republicans introduced an omnibus amendment that only a few members had reviewed.

Anyone with a decent sense of democracy is sickened whenever lawmakers pull out an omnibus amendment of unknown origin that, in essence, rewrites entire sections of law without debate or surface deliberation.

Democrats walk out

Democrats walked out of the committee in protest, a move that in past years would have been criticized as petulant, but not this time. With electric bills at stake, businesses arguing that energy bills could force them to move or close down and the utility industry in full lobby mode, the Democratic action was deemed justifiable.

Husted scheduled a floor vote on Tuesday afternoon and then postponed action until later that evening. By Wednesday, he was still trying to count to 50.

Refusing to back down, Husted wanted to use yet another omnibus amendment at a scheduled 9 p.m. House session to pass the legislation.

But there were other forces at play against him.

The governor's veto promise emboldened the opposition and they went on the attack not against the bill, but against Husted, something the speaker had yet to witness during his tenure.

There occurred a series of — to put it politely — miscommunications between various interest groups and parties.

For example, some House Republicans believed there was a deal between Husted and Harris that the Senate would not object to any changes in the bill, which meant the House version would hit the governor's desk.

The Senate sponsor and one of the upper chamber's intermediaries on the measure, Sen. Robert Schuler, R-Cincinnati, said there was a ''goal'' to avoid a conference committee, but never any pledge.

Husted's effort to line up allies, other than the utilities, also went from smooth to rocky as lawmakers and others actually read the bill rather than the synopsis provided by the speaker on April 10.

Ohio Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander initially embraced the speaker's proposal, but then retracted her statements after seeing the actual legislation and realizing it was not what she expected.

By the end of last week, Migden-Ostrander was upset that she was being left out of the process and concerned that consumers were going to face rate shock.

Alan Schriber, the PUCO's chairman, was allowed to review the bill, but was not given a copy or allowed to take notes.

Bill criticized

The way Schriber and others were treated may have prevented leaks, but it also allowed critics to allege the bill the chairman and others read initially was not the legislation that was actually introduced.

In his own House, Husted faced hurdles.

Husted faces term limits in the House and only token opposition in his race for the Ohio Senate. He was asking lawmakers to support a bill that the governor would surely veto and there were not enough Republicans in the House for an override.

There was another political consideration prompted by the veto.

Republican lawmakers were not prepared to waste a vote on the re-regulation bill that could come back to haunt them in future elections, should electric rates soar, and then two or three weeks later be asked again to support a bipartisan compromise.

Not when the vote was considered pro-utility and anti-consumer.

So Husted pulled the plug Wednesday and vowed to come back this week to try again.

He should use a little bit of that electricity everyone is worried about to shed some light on the process for the sake of consumers, companies, utilities, his own members and Democrats.

And considering he was in no hurry from October to April, a few weeks of open discussion can only help build bipartisan support for an energy bill.

Husted, for the first time in his charmed legislative career, is realizing he has no other choice.