O'Neal offers for Speaker: "Calm down, get a consensus, get back to work"

State Rep. Larry O'Neal, R-Warner Robins, will run for Speaker of the House, he said this afternoon.

O'Neal, who has been fighting the flu most of this week, said he emailed his colleagues in the House today to tell them "that I intend to seek the speakership."

"What we need the most right now is somebody to calm things down. ..." said O'Neal, chairman of the House's tax-code-writing committee, Ways and Means. "We can't have any distractions. We're facing (an economic) situation I've not known in my life time, and I'm a pretty old guy."

Update: A longer version of this story is available on the main site.