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‘Anatomy of a Purple State,’ rural North Carolina keeps the state purple

Political Expert Chris Cooper spoke at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva about "Anatomy of a Purple State" on Oct. 11.
Lilly Knoepp
Political Expert Chris Cooper spoke at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva about "Anatomy of a Purple State" on Oct. 11.

North Carolina has long been considered a “swing state” or a “battleground state.” At present, the Tar Heel state is governed by a Republican majority in the legislature and a Democratic governor. About 2.4 million voters in the state are registered Democrats, edging out the roughly 2.2 million who identify with the GOP, however the largest group of voters in the state are the Unaffiliated. This mix is just part of what makes the state “purple.”

In his new book, “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer,” political expert Chris Cooper explained that the state is considered purple - a mix of blue urban areas and rural reds- because of its history as a Southern Democratic stronghold, influx of new voters and its strong rural character.

“North Carolina has been pretty consistently purple for a long time,” Cooper said. “We were never quite as Democratic as our Southern neighbors before and we're not quite as Republican as our Southern neighbors are now."

In the book, Cooper, who is Robert Lee Madison Distinguished professor and director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University, digs into the state’s history, current data and tips on how to stay up to date on state politics.

“Part of it is that the books about North Carolina politics have been a little dated. There's some really good stuff out there but nothing really since the big Republican take over in 2010 that fundamentally changed the nature of State politics,” Cooper said. “We spend a whole lot of time looking at national politics but I think if you really want to affect change, you need to be thinking about the state level.”

“We spend a whole lot of time looking at national politics but I think if you really want to affect change, you need to be thinking about the state level.”

The purple nature of the state impacts all levels of politics because of the competition at play.

“That makes the politics in our state so cut throat, so no holds barred, right? If you're in power in North Carolina, you might lose it soon because we're so purple. So how do you react to that if you're in power? Well, you wield as much power as you can before you lose it,” Cooper said.

The rurality of North Carolina is the biggest reason for this difference. Cooper says the state has the second most rural voters in the entire country after Texas. This makes campaigns, legislation and representation different from other states.

Because of the rural expanse of the state, campaigns have to spread out to reach voters outside of the city centers to win, forcing political operatives to employ a very different strategy in NC than in other states.

For example, in neighboring Georgia, candidates can focus on the city of Atlanta because of its high population, Cooper explained.

In North Carolina, rural has not always meant Republican. As recently as 1992, the urban counties were actually slightly more Republican than the rural counties. In 2000, Buncombe County voted for George W. Bush, Cooper said.

“It's actually been a really recent shift to the overly red, rural areas and urban blue areas. One thing I wanted to do was highlight just how recent that is and how much that's fundamentally changed the nature of North Carolina politics,” Cooper said.

The rural nature of the states also impact who runs for office and who wins. The higher cost of being a rural elected official who has to regularly travel to the state capital impedes representation by women, Cooper wrote.

“It's just so much more of a heavy lift for somebody to get to Raleigh and get back on an irregular schedule for low pay, because of all sorts of other gender norms in society - unequal gender norms - that tend to run counter to female representation. We see it in North Carolina. We see it in other states too. The farther you get from the state capitol, the less likely you are to be represented by a woman,” Cooper said.

When the U.S. Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, the Republican-controlled state legislature was able to redraw voting districts and make other changes to election law.

Under the prior rules of the VRA, the state could not make changes to election laws in counties that are within the formula established by the VRA without the approval of the federal government. Without federal oversight, state lawmakers were able to redraw many districts, prompting a slew of lawsuits.

“So, all these voting changes that we've seen, whether they think they're good or bad, they've definitely happened because of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and section 4 in particular,” Cooper said.

These changes have also allowed redistricting, explains Cooper, which has particularly been interesting in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. The district has been somewhat of a mirror to national shifts in policies.

It was once known as the “turnstile district,” Cooper says because of its competitive nature.

“Then all of a sudden, we see this sort of massive redistricting effort in 2011 that carved the city of Asheville up overnight, and NC-11 went from the most competitive to the most Republican District in the entire state of North Carolina,” Cooper said.

The change led to the election of Republican Mark Meadows, now former chief of staff for former President Donald Trump; Republican Madison Cawthorn, an infamous young representative, who most recently was allegedly involved in a car crash with a state trooper in Florida.

“So that movement from this almost hyper-competitiveness, right? Smack in the middle of the country. Really, moderation by any explanation, to what we saw with Meadows and Cawthorn is a massive transformation. And I think it represents what's happening in a lot of the rural South,” Cooper said.

Beyond analysis, Cooper’s book also includes “anatomy lessons” and advice on following local politics such as a list of media offerings that can keep readers up to date on North Carolina politics. Cooper said he hopes this part of the book is a “living document.”

“What I don't want is for somebody to read this book or skim this book and then have that be the last time they think about North Carolina politics, right?,” Cooper said. “I wanted to give people some guides to be able to follow along right as things change, as people come and go in our state, as new things happen so that they can keep up. I hope to sort of give you an architecture, a sort of anatomy lesson, about where you need to start, and then you have got to fill in the details over time.”

Lilly Knoepp is Senior Regional Reporter for Blue Ridge Public Radio. She has served as BPR’s first fulltime reporter covering Western North Carolina since 2018. She is from Franklin, NC. She returns to WNC after serving as the assistant editor of Women@Forbes and digital producer of the Forbes podcast network. She holds a master’s degree in international journalism from the City University of New York and earned a double major from UNC-Chapel Hill in religious studies and political science.