A 'Coup'? A 'Power Grab'? There's Some Serious Political Drama in North Carolina Right Now.

By Amber Phillips, The Washington Post

15 December 16

 

orth Carolina is a state divided. Its incoming governor and attorney general are Democrats, but its legislature is overwhelmingly Republican. And true to North Carolina headline-grabbing politics, there's a knockdown, drag-out fight about who gets to control the levers of power before anyone is even sworn in.

In the waning hours of Republicans' hold on government in North Carolina, they are proposing bills aimed at significantly curbing Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper's power. In a last-last-minute special session, Republicans introduced a series of bills late Wednesday that would:

— Require the governor's Cabinet appointments to be approved by the state Senate.

— Limit the number of members the governor can appoint to powerful board of trustees at the University of North Carolina school system and the state Board of Education.

— Significantly cut the number of positions who work directly for the governor, from 1,500 (a number Republicans approved when they had a Republican governor) to 300.

— Divide members of the Board of Elections, typically appointed by the governor, between parties in a way that gives Republicans control during election years.

Two bills also aim to change the state courts' partisan makeup. They would:

— Make North Carolina just the sixth state in the nation with a partisan state Supreme Court elections, as opposed to a nonpartisan one. (The last state to make its top court elections partisan was Pennsylvania in 1921.)

— Add an extra layer to appeals cases so that all cases have to go through the full court of appeals, which is controlled by Republicans.

Obviously, Cooper won't be there to veto all this; the man he defeated, Gov. Pat McCrory (R), is still governor for a few more weeks.

As you can imagine, Democrats in North Carolina are apoplectic. Cooper held a news conference Thursday in which he called what's happening "unprecedented."

"This is about thwarting the governor's ability to move us forward," he said. "We look bad when legislation gets passed in the middle of night."

Rep. Darren Jackson (D) accused Republicans Thursday of “using hurricane relief as a reason to come back to Raleigh to do a lot of things because you lost an election by 10,000 votes.”

“This ain’t right,” House Democratic Leader Larry Hall of Durham told the Raleigh News & Observer. “You can’t make it right. The people of North Carolina aren’t being treated right. We owe them more.”

And North Carolina Democratic Party spokesman Jamal Little's statement is worth including in full for its fieriness:

This is an unprecedented, shameful and cowardly power grab from Republicans. After losing the Governor’s office, the GOP-controlled General Assembly is attempting to hold on to the power that voters took away from them. Make no mistake, the legislation we are seeing today are attempts from Republicans to usurp power from Governor-elect Roy Cooper after losing the election. Republicans should be ashamed of these unprecedented power grabs that have no place in our democracy.

If Democrats say power grab, Republicans say it's within their right to do as much. Here's what House Rules Committee Chairman David Lewis (R) told reporters Thursday:

“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.” He said legislators would “work to establish that we are going to continue to be a relevant party in governing this state.”

And yes, they said, maybe the fact they'll have a Democratic governor next year is lighting a fire under them to get this done. But these reforms were long overdue, they argue.

Here's @RepDavidRLewis's response when we asked if action was prompted by @RoyCooperNC's win: https://t.co/JetW1kHOmS #ncpol #ncga pic.twitter.com/Fe2iSY92tL

— Colin Campbell (@RaleighReporter) December 15, 2016

Adding to Democrats' dismay is the fact many were caught by surprise. At the request of McCrory, GOP legislative leaders convened a special session this week to approve $200 million of disaster recovery aid for Hurricane Matthew and wildfires. There had been rumors for weeks that they would also use the time to pack the state Supreme Court with GOP appointees, but that never came to fruition.

But then, on Wednesday, as the special session for hurricane relief aid was coming to a close, GOP lawmakers convened another immediately on top of it and wouldn't say what it was for until the bills dropped.

Democrats are having some déjà vu: The last time GOP lawmakers called a high-profile special session, they ended up ramming through one of the state's most controversial laws in recent memory, a bill limiting what public bathrooms transgender people can use and municipalities' ability to pass anti-LGBT-discrimination laws.

The national backlash to that bill contributed to McCrory's upset. (He conceded earlier this month, but not before calling the election into question via unproven widespread voter fraud.)

Now it's Democrats' turn to use every tool they have. They're declaring this special session unconstitutional — but notably, their objections are on a procedural point of order, not on the bills themselves.

That's because the state legislature is probably acting within its rights. It does have the prerogative to limit the number of political appointments the governor can make, said UNC constitutional law professor Michael Gerhardt, who spoke to The Fix before all the bills were introduced.

The concern, Gerhardt said, is how lawmakers are powering through these changes in such a blatantly political way: A Republican legislature convening a special session to limit an incoming Democratic governor's power.

Perhaps more importantly for North Carolina, what's happening now doesn't bode well for relations between the two groups, which were already expected to be contentious. Cooper ousted McCrory by some 10,000 votes out of more than 4 million cast, and Republicans in the state legislature have a supermajority capable of overriding Cooper anytime they want.

“The concern for a lot of people is we have a legislature intent on keeping the score politically,” Gerhardt said.

North Carolina politics could be taking its cue from Washington, too.

President Obama's legacy has been stymied in the courts, thanks to lawsuits brought by more than two dozen GOP state attorneys general and sometimes even Congress itself.

“It could well be that people will take a page from that,” Gerhardt said. “They look at what happened at the federal level and think, 'Maybe we need to do it at the state level.'”

But, much like Washington, how you view what's going on in North Carolina is probably through the lens of politics. Gerhardt added: “If you're a 'big D Democrat,' [this] worries you. If you're a 'big R Republican,' maybe it worries you, maybe it doesn't.”