North Carolina Republican Sore Losers Fight To Wreck The Incoming Democratic Administration

Señor Trumpanzee says he will find a nice little job for McCory

This year, 5 governors sought reelection nationally and only 1 lost: North Carolina's spectacularly failed chief executive Pat McCrory. Trump won 2,339,603 (50.6%) to 2,162,074 (46.7%) and a mediocre and unpopular Republican senator, Richard Burr, was reelected 2,371,192 (51.1%) to 2,102,666 (45.3%) but Democrat Roy Cooper edged out McCrory 2,281,155 (49.0%) to 2,276,383 (48.9%). Just over 90,000 Burr voters didn't vote to reelect McCory and over 58,000 Trump voters turned their backs on the governor as well. The state legislature-- which has basically been declared illegitimate by a Federal court because of racist gerrymandering and ordered to redrawn 28 General Assembly seats and schedule a special election next November-- is fully controlled by the Republicans. The state Senate is made up of 34 Republicans and 16 Democrats and the state House has 74 Republicans, 45 Democrats and one independent. so because they didn't get the electoral outcome they preferred, Republicans in the state legislature used a special session to deal with victims of a hurricane to mount a frontal attack on democracy itself. A willingness to abandon the rule of law like you might expect from some 5th rate banana republic means businessmen will look askance at the state where no investments can be seen as really safe.

Wednesday the Republican legislators got to work, dismantling democracy and the rule of law in their state, proposing sweeping changes to state government, including proposals that would diminish the governor’s authority to make appointments.

Lawmakers want to hobble the incoming Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, before he takes office Jan. 1 by making his Cabinet appointments subject to approval by the state Senate and cutting his ability to appoint members to UNC schools’ boards of trustees and the state Board of Education.

Another proposal in the mix would equally divide election boards between the two major political parties, ending control by the governor’s party.


Yet another provision would cut the number of employees who serve at the governor’s pleasure from 1,500 to 300, reversing an expansion approved for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory at the start of his term.


“I think to be candid with you, that you will see the General Assembly look to reassert its constitutional authority in areas that may have been previously delegated to the executive branch,” House Rules Committee Chairman David Lewis told reporters earlier in the day, adding that legislators will “work to establish that we are going to continue to be a relevant party in governing this state.”

House Democratic Leader Larry Hall of Durham said Republicans were trying to “nullify the vote of the people” in electing Cooper, who defeated McCrory last month.

Cooper said on Twitter Wednesday evening that the General Assembly “should focus on higher teacher pay, better wages for working North Carolinians and repealing HB 2.”


Lewis, a Dunn Republican, said some of the appointment and election board changes were prompted by Cooper’s election.

“Some of the stuff we’re doing, obviously if the election results were different, we might not be moving quite as fast on, but a lot of this stuff would have been done anyway and has been talked about for quite some time,” he said.

Those are the prime culprits. If you want to communicate with them by phone, e-mail or twitter...

Dean Arp- 919-751-3007, Dean.Arp@ncleg.net, @deanarp
Jerry Tillman- 919-733-5870, Jerry.Tillman@ncleg.net, @jerrytillman
John Bell- 919-715-3017, John.Bell@ncleg.net, @JohnBellNC
Phil Berger- 919-733-5708, Phil.Berger@ncleg.net, @SenatorBerger
Tim Moore- 919-733-3451, Tim.Moore@ncleg.net, @timmoorenc
Harry Brown- 919-715-3034, Harry.Brown@ncleg.net

With the election of Democrat Mike Morgan to the state Supreme Court last month, the Republican legislators have also been contemplating a court-packing maneuver to negate the Democrats 4-3 advantage. Trip Gabriel, writing for Wednesday's NY Times noted that "a bill was filed to add party labels in State Supreme Court elections. It was seen as a response to the election of Mr. Morgan, who some observers thought won because voters mistakenly thought he was a Republican."

There are at least 9 state senators and at least 19 state Reps who will have to face a late August primary and then a new election in November in the redrawn districts. What the court ruled specifically was that the North Carolina General Assembly had packed too many minority voters into a small number of districts, thereby diluting the impact of their votes, a commonly used Republican trick that has been surgically employed in Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania to deprive African-American voters of their constitutionally-guaranteed rights. The General Assembly is appealing and that appeal is likely to wind up with the U.S. Supreme Court. Hypocritical sleaze bag David Lewis, referred to above, whined that "This politically motivated decision, which would effectively undo the will of millions of North Carolinians just days after they cast their ballots, is a gross overreach that blatantly disregards the constitutional guarantee for voters to duly elect their legislators to biennial terms." These are the state senators impacted:

• Angela Bryant (D-Rocky Mount)
• Don Davis (D-Snow Hill)
• Minority Leader Dan Hill (D-Raleigh)
• Floyd McKissick (D-Durham)
• Ben Clark (D-Raeford)
• Gladys Robinson (D-Pleasant Garden)
• Paul Lowe (D-Winston Salem)
• Joel Ford (D-Charlotte)
• Joyce Waddell (D-Charlotte)

So you probably noticed that all the special elections are for Democrats. Obviously once the districts get redrawn, there will also be Republicans forced into special elections. And it's the same story in the House-- 19 Democratic seats have to be redrawn to lessen the concentration of minority voters. It's likely the Republicans in the legislature will work diligently to do all they can to spread out minority voters in such as way as to jeopardize as few Republicans as possible. Perhaps, though, the behavior of the Republicans right now will jeopardize their reelections in 11 months.

The talk of a Republican coup comes from an editorial in yesterday's News and Observer, accusing GOP legislators of engaging "in high-handed partisanship to strip the governor’s office of appointive power and rearrange the line of authority in the judicial system to ensure more power will reside with Republican judges... [T]hose leaders intend to repudiate the will of the people who elected Roy Cooper, who beat GOP Gov. Pat McCrory. They want to weaken Cooper, by making Cabinet appointments subject to their (Senate) approval, something that could hold up those appointments for weeks or months. They want to curb his appointive power for the state elections boards in each county, where the three member boards with two members of the party of the governor and one in the opposition party would change to two members of each party. That’s as blatant a partisan slap as it gets.

Smack! Smack! Smack! That’s the sound of Republican leaders slapping the people of North Carolina right in the face with this high-handed maneuvering. The people elected Cooper as governor, meaning they wanted him to have the powers that have long resided with the governor, but GOP leaders-- as they did with unconstitutional redistricting, HB2, etc.-- showed they could care less about the opinion of the people. And consider they’ve set up North Carolina to have 100 years of partisan back and forth that is destructive to professional, not to mention progressive government. Now, when Democrats take the legislature again, they’ll strip Republicans of power... Republicans, with McCrory obediently going along, have laid waste to Democratic initiatives, including improvements in public education and environmental regulation, and they remain in veto-proof control of the General Assembly. So these actions were excessive and unnecessary, and a thumb in the eye of the citizens of the state.