It’s not exactly a secret that Democrats had a rough election season, but the party fared surprisingly well in North Carolina. While the GOP ticket won the Tar Heel State by around 3 points, Democrats scored some significant victories in North Carolina this year, winning the races for governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general and state superintendent of public instruction.
What’s more, Democrats even won enough legislative seats to break the Republicans’ veto-proof majority in the North Carolina General Assembly. All things considered, the state’s election results represented a bright spot during an otherwise dreary cycle.
In theory, GOP officials in North Carolina should take this opportunity to pause and take stock of what went wrong. In practice, however, Republican policymakers had a different approach in mind. NBC News reported:
North Carolina Republican lawmakers voted to override a gubernatorial veto of a bill that strips the state’s incoming Democratic officials of key powers. The GOP-led state House of Representatives on Wednesday voted along party lines to override outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of legislation that is ostensibly geared towards hurricane relief, but also weakens the authority of statewide offices Democrats won in last month’s election, including governor and attorney general.
In other words, Republican legislators saw the voters’ verdict and recognized that they were soon poised to lose power. Instead of honoring the will of the state’s electorate, they scrambled to complete a brazen power grab — thumbing their noses at democracy in the process.
In one of the most dramatic examples, the authority to appoint members of North Carolina’s election board will now shift from the governor’s office to the state auditor’s office. Why would Republicans make such a move, given how little sense it makes? Because a GOP candidate won this year’s auditor’s race.
The party wasn’t even subtle about its motivations. The New York Times reported:
State Representative Tim Moore, the departing Republican speaker of the House, said openly before the vote that the bill was meant to help his party win future elections. “This action item today is going to be critical to making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket and move this country in the right direction,” Mr. Moore told the Trump ally and conservative podcaster Stephen K. Bannon on Wednesday.
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who’s poised to step down after two terms, described the undemocratic veto override as “shameful,” which seemed more than fair given the circumstances.
