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 experience: presiding over sessions, shepherding legislation, fixing problems.

But with the gavel and traditional purple robe come more responsibility: party building, fund raising, recruiting candidates and being at - or near - the top of the Republican Party in South Carolina.

The married father of two has challenges ahead. 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.

"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.

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 said.

"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 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," says Sanford, adding that he hopes Harrell will "look for a way to work with the governor."

Harrell is more concerned now with learning the job.

Harrell is not only parliamentarian and party leader, he also is 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."