Ignore leftist crying about GOP *power-grab* from Stein & Jackson. (They did it FIRST.)

The few remaining newsrooms of money-bleeding drive-by media outlets are in an absolute tizzy.  A damper has been placed on their celebrations of their favorite candidates’ election victories.  Those mean, mean, mean ol’ Republicans who have controlled the General Assembly since 2010 have approved limits on the powers of the governor and the attorney general.  Democrats Josh Stein and Jeff Jackson won those positions on November 5.

The drive-bys are moaning like this is unprecedented and bordering on fascist third-world dictator behavior.  It’s too bad they won’t *fact-check* this *power-grab* nonsense like they do just about everything that comes out of a Republican’s mouth.  If they did, they’d find that Raleigh Democrats were the first to demonstrate to the political world and the state-at-large just how this neutering of Council of State positions worked.

The year was 1988.  Republican Jim Martin was elected to his second term as governor.  This was only the third time since Reconstruction that a Republican candidate for governor had something to celebrate on Election Night.

Up through 1988,  the lieutenant governor pretty much had all the power senator Phil Berger has now. Democrats had overwhelming majorities in the General Assembly.  There had not been a GOP lieutenant governor since Reconstruction.  Outside of the governor’s office, the GOP was not much of a threat to the Democrat stranglehold on state government.  So, Democrats and their media friends were fine and dandy with a powerful lieutenant governor on Jones Street.

The 1988 election changed that thinking.  Former congressman Jim Gardner (R) upset state senator Tony Rand (D) in the lieutenant governor’s race. Once this race was finalized, Raleigh Democrats realized they had a problem.

As things stood, it appeared a Republican lieutenant governor was about to be put in charge of a senate chamber overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats.

So, Democrats went to work stripping the position of lieutenant governor of its power and basically sitting Gardner in the corner.  That’s how we got the strong senate president pro tem position (not elected statewide) that we have today.

Republicans have won three more lieutenant governor races since then.  The GOP took over the legislature in 2010. But there hasn’t been any effort to restore the lieutenant governor position to its pre-1988 status.