Legislative abuse is the norm in NC
Published 3:23 p.m. Thursday
The GOP’s recent “sore loser” law in North Carolina has alarmed many observers with its threat to the separation of powers. Their legislative imperialism is far outside the American tradition. But, as so often happens in the South, this abuse that seems aberrant to most Americans in fact reflects a longstanding regional pathology. North Carolina Republicans are following a long history of legislative overreach that has always limited democracy in the state.
In retaliation for a slew of electoral losses, NC Republican legislators passed a bill to eviscerate Democratic officeholders. That piece of legislation, now law, removed many established powers from the lieutenant governor’s and public superintendent’s offices and prohibited the Attorney General from taking positions in court that were at odds with legislative leaders. A follow-up bill would leave the AG—Democrat Jeff Jackson—so diminished that he had effectively zero independent powers. These sore-loser laws further the NCGOP’s long-term project of concentrating all the power in the hands of a legislature in which they believe they have gerrymandered themselves into a permanent majority.
Outrageous? Yes. But these power grabs echo hundreds of years of legislative abuse that have defined North Carolina’s political institutions. The legislature has constantly sought to amass power at the expense of the other branches of government. In the state’s original 1775 constitution, the governor was selected by legislators without input even from the propertied men who were allowed to vote. Governors served a single one-year term—a tenure so short as to guarantee their impotence The intent was to create a government in which the governor was a figurehead bereft of any power over the affairs of state.
For the next 200 years, legislators continued to extend their authority over the full landscape of state government. The governor was essentially a permanent lame duck. When Governor Charles Aycock (himself a white supremacist) wanted to stop the legislature from severely cutting Black schools, his only recourse was to threaten to resign from office. Fifty years later, rural conservatives in the legislature blocked Governor Kerr Scott’s entire agenda after liberal Frank Porter Graham lost a Senate race. Even when governors finally received the veto power in the 1990s, legislators gave themselves an insurance policy by requiring only 60% of members to vote to override a veto, as opposed to the 2/3 required under the US constitution.
This legislative chauvinism has always reflected an undemocratic vision for North Carolina. Dominated by conservative white men, the legislature has always attempted to concentrate power in a dubiously Democratic legislature. Legislative arrogance has always been paired with broader limits on democracy. In the Early Republic era, North Carolina’s grandees ensured that for every new western county, a new county would be created in slaveholding eastern North Carolina—making sure that slaveholders would always control the legislature. Literacy tests so strict and diabolically absurd that officials asked future Supreme Court Justice Henry Frye to count the bubbles in a bar of soap would disenfranchise Black people for generations. And today we have the sore-loser laws.
The fact is this: Today’s reactionary legislative power-grabbers have far more in common with North Carolina’s historic governing class than the moderates who ran the state from 1960-2010. We have typically been ruled by men devoted to concentrating power in a conservative legislature. Today’s power grabs violate a good American tradition, but they vindicate a bad North Carolina tradition. A tradition that is in urgent need of immediate change.
In retaliation for a slew of electoral losses, NC Republican legislators passed a bill to eviscerate Democratic officeholders. That piece of legislation, now law, removed many established powers from the lieutenant governor’s and public superintendent’s offices and prohibited the Attorney General from taking positions in court that were at odds with legislative leaders. A follow-up bill would leave the AG—Democrat Jeff Jackson—so diminished that he had effectively zero independent powers. These sore-loser laws further the NCGOP’s long-term project of concentrating all the power in the hands of a legislature in which they believe they have gerrymandered themselves into a permanent majority.
Outrageous? Yes. But these power grabs echo hundreds of years of legislative abuse that have defined North Carolina’s political institutions. The legislature has constantly sought to amass power at the expense of the other branches of government. In the state’s original 1775 constitution, the governor was selected by legislators without input even from the propertied men who were allowed to vote. Governors served a single one-year term—a tenure so short as to guarantee their impotence The intent was to create a government in which the governor was a figurehead bereft of any power over the affairs of state.
For the next 200 years, legislators continued to extend their authority over the full landscape of state government. The governor was essentially a permanent lame duck. When Governor Charles Aycock (himself a white supremacist) wanted to stop the legislature from severely cutting Black schools, his only recourse was to threaten to resign from office. Fifty years later, rural conservatives in the legislature blocked Governor Kerr Scott’s entire agenda after liberal Frank Porter Graham lost a Senate race. Even when governors finally received the veto power in the 1990s, legislators gave themselves an insurance policy by requiring only 60% of members to vote to override a veto, as opposed to the 2/3 required under the US constitution.
This legislative chauvinism has always reflected an undemocratic vision for North Carolina. Dominated by conservative white men, the legislature has always attempted to concentrate power in a dubiously Democratic legislature. Legislative arrogance has always been paired with broader limits on democracy. In the Early Republic era, North Carolina’s grandees ensured that for every new western county, a new county would be created in slaveholding eastern North Carolina—making sure that slaveholders would always control the legislature. Literacy tests so strict and diabolically absurd that officials asked future Supreme Court Justice Henry Frye to count the bubbles in a bar of soap would disenfranchise Black people for generations. And today we have the sore-loser laws.
The fact is this: Today’s reactionary legislative power-grabbers have far more in common with North Carolina’s historic governing class than the moderates who ran the state from 1960-2010. We have typically been ruled by men devoted to concentrating power in a conservative legislature. Today’s power grabs violate a good American tradition, but they vindicate a bad North Carolina tradition. A tradition that is in urgent need of immediate change.
Alexander H. Jones is a Policy Analyst with Carolina Forward. He lives in Carrboro. Have feedback? Reach him at alex@carolinaforward.org.
