A closer look at Republican bill to strip some Democrats in North Carolina of power

Editor's note: After this story was published, Gov. Cooper and Gov.-elect Stein filed a lawsuit challenging legislation that erodes the incoming governor’s powers and those of other top Democrats elected to statewide office last month. Cooper and Stein are focusing their challenge on a provision that would prevent Stein from picking his own commander of the State Highway Patrol.

In a vote along party lines this week, Republicans in the North Carolina House completed an override of Gov. Roy Cooper's veto of a bill that moves power away from newly elected Democrats. Among them, the incoming governor and attorney general. The bill also includes Hurricane Helene relief. For more, WFAE's Marshall Terry is joined by Bryan Anderson, a journalist who writes the Anderson Alerts newsletter in Raleigh.

This interview was edited for clarity.

Marshall Terry: So, Bryan, this bill takes away power from the incoming governor, attorney general, and also the incoming lieutenant governor and state school superintendent. All of them are Democrats. What specific changes does it make to those positions?

Bryan Anderson: There are a lot of changes in this bill. It's a sweeping 131(-page) piece of legislation. So just a few of the major highlights of them, for Josh Stein, the governor-elect, he currently can appoint members to theSstate Board of Elections under existing appointment authority. The new law changes that to strip him of that power and put it in the hands of Republican Auditor-elect Dave Bullock. So essentially what that means is the State Board of Elections would transfer from Democrat control to Republican control.

Now for Jeff Jackson, the incoming attorney general, it says that he can't participate in lawsuits, that undercut actions taken by the General Assembly. So if there's a law that Jeff Jackson doesn't agree with, he would sort of be forced to defend it. Now for the incoming Lt. Gov.-elect Rachel Hunt, she's eliminated on energy issues and chairing key committees. The bill also eliminates the Energy Policy Council and finally, Superintendent-elect Mo Green, he would no longer be able to appeal decisions made by the charter school's review board.

Terry: Now, this isn't the first time we've seen this power shifting and Cooper has sued in the past. Do you expect to see litigation about these changes?

Anderson: Oh yeah, I bet anything that there's going to be a lawsuit, it's just a matter of time before it's filed. We are going to see a legal challenge that's not a question. The real question at stake is if it's filed in state court and it makes its way up to the state Supreme Court, which is now in GOP hands will they side with Democrats on it? And it's going to be an interesting pathway forward to see whether you file a federal lawsuit for Democrats where you think you might have a better shot or whether you hope you can get a conservative Supreme Court to side with you.

Terry: Now for a bit of context here, this override was completed by a lame-duck General Assembly in which the GOP had just enough votes to override vetoes without any help from Democrats but that's about to change, right?

Anderson: Exactly. Republicans had their supermajority broken in the State House. So come 2025, it's no longer enough for all Republicans to be in agreement because they'll no longer have 72 members, they'll have 71. With that said, Republicans have said they have a functional supermajority come next year, and that's because they can still pass laws if just two Democrats are absent from the floor at the same time, assuming all Republicans are present there as well. So it's going to be a very tough task for Democrats to have all their members together and you can't afford for one Democrat to cross party lines or two Democrats to be absent. So the supermajority is broken, but it's certainly not going to be an easy task to stymie Republicans.

Terry: But some Republican members of the House initially voted against this bill. So what changed their mind this time around to vote in favor of the override?

Anderson: Well, there were three Republicans who voted against the original bill and voted for the override. Those were Mike Clampett, Karl Gillespie, and Mark Pless. I tried to speak with each of them after their vote, but Clampett and Gillespie didn't want to comment or share their thoughts on why they had changed their mind and explain that shift. Mark Pless, told me that he had spoken with federal leaders and state leaders, and through those conversations, Pless told me that he got the sense more federal help is coming, it's going to be a matter of weeks. And he felt confident that resources will get to western North Carolina even if they won't necessarily get to western North Carolina through this bill.

Terry: Yeah, so the bill does have Hurricane Helene relief attached to it, allocating about $227 million from state reserve funds. But some are accusing Republicans of using that relief as just a smokescreen for the power grab part of the bill. And that's just a small fraction of the need. What's the legislature going to do next session to help western North Carolina?

Anderson: The legislature says there's definitely more to do. They don't want to hurt their chances of maximizing the amount of federal dollars they can get, so that's why they say they're taking a cautious approach, but more money to come potentially, February of next year or even later. But the big issue I have heard with the current bill is it's not actually providing money out the door to western North Carolinians. The major funding $227 million isn't actually going out the door. That's basically being transferred from the state savings reserve over to a Helene fund. So it's not actually being spent and Republicans say, well, we've already allocated money that's still not spent. But essentially this bill does not have major relief for actual people going out the door. So more to come, but certainly a lot of frustration from Democrats and Republicans alike currently.

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