NORTH CHARLESTON — Twenty-four hours after being elected speaker of the S.C. House, Bobby Harrell sits in his office amid the sprawl of North Charleston’s Rivers Avenue.

He is an insurance man and entrepreneur today — not especially cognizant of being perhaps the most powerful man in South Carolina.

His 12 years in the House give the former Ways and Means chairman the experience to run the House: presiding over sessions, shepherding legislation, fixing problems.

But with the gavel and traditional purple robe come even more responsibility: party-building, fundraising, candidate recruitment, and being at — or near — the top of the Republican Party in South Carolina.

The married father of two has challenges ahead of him. For now, he’s celebrating his son’s college graduation and his daughter’s 13th birthday. He looks forward to warm days at his family’s Surfside Beach vacation home.

But always on the horizon is the work, work, work of being speaker.

Harrell looks relaxed, sitting in the glass-walled conference room of his State Farm office. In fact, he looks more relaxed than he has any right to be.

“The last couple of months, I have felt like I maintained more focus on this campaign than on just about anything that I can remember,” says Harrell, 49, leaning back in white shirt, red tie, khakis and brown loafers.

The race to become speaker is over. Harrell took 118 of 119 votes in Thursday’s anti-climactic election to succeed Canada-bound Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville. He takes over June 21.

It was the moment he had worked for, the moment he had thought about. What came next — even immediately next — was something of a mystery.

“I knew whoever was elected would be sworn in as speaker-elect, would get to say a few words — and then they would return to their seat.”

Harrell won’t spend much time seated. He has to begin to consider another part of being speaker. A less public — but equally crucial — part.

If Harrell’s experiences are an indication, he’ll establish a goal, and woe to those who underestimate his ability to meet it.

Just ask his wife.

LOFTY AMBITIONS

In the summer of 1977, Cathy Smith was working as a children’s activity director at a condo in Myrtle Beach.

One of her young charges was 9-year-old John Harrell. He and his older brother, Bobby, then 21, and their parents were living at the condo for the summer. Bobby Harrell was selling shoes during the day, busing tables at Cagney’s restaurant at night.

“I saw her, and said, ‘I’m going to date her; she’s gorgeous!’• ” Harrell says now.

But their first encounter was anything but romantic. Harrell and a buddy were swimming in the condo pool, wearing cut-off jeans — an apparent no-no.

“Her first words to me were, ‘Get out of the pool in those cut-off jeans!’• ” Harrell says. “My first words to her were, ‘Yes, ma’am!’ and I’ve been saying it ever since.”

Goal established, goal met.

Fast forward to 1991. Harrell decides to run for the House of Representatives.

Goal established, goal met.

Not that he knew what to expect.

“We laugh about it now, but in our naivete, we thought it would be two nights a week,” Cathy Harrell says, not the nearly full-time gig it has become.

Her husband was worried about the effect on their children. Charlotte was born three months before that Republican primary.

“The children adjusted well,” Cathy Harrell says. “They knew their father was a public figure.”

After winning a tough Republican primary that summer, Harrell had a cakewalk against a Libertarian candidate in November. Weeks before the election, he drove to Columbia to meet with then-Speaker Bob Sheheen, D-Kershaw.

“I told him I was confident I was going to win and I wanted him to put me on the Ways and Means Committee,” Harrell says.

It is unheard-of for a freshman to be placed on the powerful budget-writing committee.

“He said he would consider it. I’m sure when he closed the door, he fell on the floor laughing.”

Goal established, goal ... not exactly met — at least not yet.

Harrell ended up on the Judiciary Committee instead, a pretty plum assignment itself — freshman or not.

Two years later, Harrell got his spot on Ways and Means, after the Republican takeover of the House in late 1994.

READY TO LEARN

Now, Harrell says he has two new goals, both of which are more of the democracy-in-action kind of goals, rather than strategic, personal ones.

“My first goal is to pull the House together and make sure everyone’s opinion matters — both sides of the aisle, all races,” Harrell says. “The overall goal is for all of us to work together to raise South Carolina economically and get us at or above the national average in income.”

When told that sounds an awful lot like the message of Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, Harrell quickly points out, “I’ve been saying that since before Mark was elected governor.”

Harrell’s relationship with Sanford is — interesting.

Harrell’s father, longtime highway commissioner Robert Harrell Sr., was one of the candidates Sanford defeated to win the 1994 Republican primary for the U.S. House. In a tough runoff against front-runner Van Hipp, though, the elder Harrell threw his support behind Sanford.

But the relationship between the new speaker and the governor has been strained of late. As chief architect of the $5.8 billion state budget, Harrell and Sanford have clashed.

Asked about Harrell’s rise to speaker, Sanford is aloof.

“I’m hopeful of a good relationship with Bobby,” Sanford says, adding that he hopes Harrell will “look for a way to work with the governor.”

Harrell is more concerned now with learning the job of being speaker. He is not only parliamentarian and party leader, he is also the head of a multimillion-dollar government agency.

Wilkins has promised to help with that, Harrell says. He already has suggested “being even-handed, slow to react negatively, always be fair to everybody.”

But before the real work sets in, the Harrells are looking forward to some time at their Surfside Beach home.

Her husband’s favorite thing, Cathy Harrell says, is to “sit at the edge of the beach with his feet in the water at sunset and think, and have his family with him.”

Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com