The bullying politics of revenge continues in Raleigh
Published March 13, 2015
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, March 12, 2015.
Anybody still holding out hope that the bitter partisan politics of revenge, bullying and raw power grabbing on display in Raleigh during the last four years was on the wane can’t have much hope left after watching the Senate leadership this week.
The Senate not only voted to change the election districts in county commission races in Wake County and city council contests in Greensboro, they refused to even allow debate on the Senate floor about allowing people in those communities to have a say about the changes in their own local elections.
The political arrogance and overreach is breathtaking, even for the crowd currently in charge in Raleigh— and that’s saying something.
The Senate approved plans by Senator Trudy Wade to change Greensboro elections and Senator Chad Barefoot to change districts for the Wake County Commission with both senators using the same justifications, that power in the current system in both areas has become too concentrated and the districts needed to be redrawn to better serve all the people of Greensboro and Wake County.
Putting aside the irony of Senate leaders complaining about an undemocratic concentration of power, the justification is absurd on its face.
The bills to change the elections didn’t come after a popular uprising in either area. No mass of voters in Greensboro or Wake County came to the General Assembly demanding a different way to select their local leaders.
No, what happened is that votes in both areas elected Democrats and the Republicans in control of the General Assembly simply can’t have that, especially in two of state’s largest urban areas. So after losing the elections, they used their supermajorities in Raleigh to change the rules of the elections the next time the voters go to the polls.
As brazen and appalling as the abuse of power seems, taken in the context of the last few years it’s not all that surprising. There’s been a war on urban areas of the state since the Republicans took over the House and Senate, from attacks on the water system in Asheville to attempting to change who runs the Charlotte airport.
They have already changed the elections in school board races in Guilford County and Wake County and they abolished the privilege license fees cities charge businesses, costing cities millions of dollars. They don’t like the urban areas and they certainly don’t like the way the elections in cities are turning out these days.
And not just liberals are complaining about the heavy-handed tactics. Governor Pat McCrory, a fellow Republican, said recently that the General Assembly should stay out of local issues. The next day, Senator Barefoot introduced his bill to distort the Wake County Commission races for Republican advantage.
Senate Republicans don’t listen to their own governor. They don’t listen to anybody. And they are not too interested in what the people of North Carolina think either.
That was made clear during the debate on the Senate floor about the Wake County and Greensboro power-grabbing proposals. Democrats offered amendments to both bills to put the changes up for a referendum, to let the people affected by the proposal actually have a say in it.
But in both cases, Senate leaders wouldn’t even allow the subject to be debated, much less voted on by the entire Senate. Instead they used a parliamentary move to kill the idea.
The people can’t vote on changes to their own elections and the people they send to Raleigh can’t even talk about whether they should have that right. Senate leaders know best.
The episode brings to mind the quote from Senator Tommy Tucker a couple of years ago when he famously told someone expressing a contrary point of view, “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”
Senate leaders just told the people of Raleigh and Greensboro the same thing this week. They know better and they’ll decide who runs your school board and city council and don’t really care what you or the people who represent you in the Senate think about it. You need to be quiet.
March 13, 2015 at 3:56 pm
Matthew Cobb says:
"They refused to even allow debate on the Senate floor about allowing people in those communities to have a say about the changes in their own local elections" Seriously guy? I was in the chamber, they debated those bills for 3 hours!
