The Big Government Conservatives are at it again. This time, Senator Trudy Wade’s bill revamps the Greensboro City Council against the wishes of the city’s leaders. It was another naked power grab and more evidence of the GOP’s authoritarian instincts.
This redistricting is especially egregious, as Mayor Nancy Vaughn succinctly explained: “You double-bunk six sitting council members who are Democrats and you take a seventh and put them in what looks like a heavily Republican district. You leave the only sitting Republican City Council member unscathed and take away the vote of the mayor, the only person who is elected by the entire city — I find it hard to justify that.”
That’s because it’s not justified. Ever since they came to power the GOP has been stripping away local control and micromanaging local government. These are Big Government Conservatives still drunk with power.
They stole airport authorities from Asheville and Charlotte. They tried to steal control of Asheville’s water supply but the courts stopped them. They restructured Buncombe’s County Commission in 2011 and the Lee County Board of Education in 2013. They did the same to Raleigh’s county commission earlier this year. In Rutherford County, Republican Majority Leader Mike Hager has a bill to strip power of appointment from the school board and give it to the General Assembly.
These bills aren’t about good government. They’re about exercising raw power. The Republicans used to be able to point to the abuses of Democrats but not anymore. Democrats never did anything like this. As the saying goes, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Greensboro Senator Trudy Wade and Wake Senator Chad Barefoot said constituents complained that they didn’t have fair representation. If that’s a reason for redistricting then the GOP should throw out their legislative and Congressional districts since I could send a parade of people who feel like they aren’t fairly represented due the the GOP gerrymanders. Their excuses are just deception.
Conservatives supposedly believe that government decisions should be made as close to local communities as possible. But the Republicans in Raleigh quite obviously aren’t real conservatives. They’re anti-democratic authoritarians, more interested in power than in governing. If they can’t win the public debate, they’ll squash public dissent. With no checks on their power, corruption can’t be far behind.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The entrenched liberals are howling because they rigged the game THEIR way, and they think it is an OUTRAGE that someone should interfere with that.
They’re hypocrites. The News & Record’s Allen Johnson complained that the bill would “change the council’s makeup and elections by force, without a vote by the citizens who would be directly affected.” But that’s a hypocritical objection, because that’s also how the previous council makeup was created.
In fact, it’s worse than that, because the voters voted, and their vote was disregarded. As an earlier N&R article reported, “the current council system was adopted by the council after voters rejected a similar system by referendum.”
https://archive.is/6wXfy#selection-3065.54-3065.160
The old Council has five single-member districts and three at-large districts, plus the mayor. It was designed by the Democrat-controlled Council, THEMSELVES. You can guess who it favors.
There is an inherent conflict of interest with having politicians draw their own districts. They will inevitably attempt to predetermine election results and protect their own interests. Even when the resulting districts don’t look like Elbridge Gerry’s Massachusetts salamander, the process disenfranchises voters to protect the interests of the politicians.
The new law (HB-263) establishes eight smaller single-member districts (up from seven in the earlier SB-36 draft), plus the mayor, and it diminishes the power of the mayor. Single-member districts have the advantage of reducing the cost of campaigns, which might help attract some better candidates, and they prevent politicians from one section of the city from dominating the council.
At the very least, Greensboro voters will now only get campaign literature clogging up their mailbox with wasted paper from the candidates running for one council seat, rather than four. That’s an environmental benefit, if nothing else.
Why would you want Raleigh to make any decisions about local politics. With your reasoning Washington should reduce the number of our state legislators.
District 27 is meeting, pondering, interviewing and planning to challenge Wade. Funny how a 3rd rail politician can make mischief when she is allowed to ‘sneak’ in, basically, without a challenger. A very expensive lesson for dedicated Dems. Were we ever asleep at the helm.
District 27 is too often ignored as an important part of our party. Look what happens!
I don’t feel adequately represented. So why doesn’t someone fix the gerrymandering mess in NC? This kind of power grab is unprecedented and it runs counter to everything the GOP says it stands for. All the concerns about supermajorities have come to pass.
Thomas is so very right about what is going on. The NCGOP is only about exercising spiteful power now, and maintaining electoral power in the future. And the only ways they have purposefully and cowardly chosen to do those two things is by extreme gerrymandering, meddling in local elections matters, and denying voice and voting access to those who might not be warm to the Repubkican agenda and message.
As for Barefoot, nothing would make me happier than to see him thrown out of his Senate seat. He’s my Senate rep, a fact that makes my skin crawl. From his doing what Berger demanded be done to skew future Wake County Commissioner elections toward the GOP side via gerrymandering from “on high,” to making campaign claims (especially re: his caring about and leadership on public education) and running campaign ads vs. his opponent’s husband that are outright lies, to his and his extended family’s role in ramming NC’s marriage amendment into existence, he does nothing but disserve his constituents.
I was so pleased that the federal courts and ultimately the SCOTUS essentially found the NC anti-SSM amendment to be unconstitutional. It was indeed a pleasure envisioning Chad and his mother-in-law (Tami Fitzgerald of the so-called but clearly misnomered North Carolina Values Coalition) commiserating on that ruling……..
All the big talk about voting won’t scare these incumbent authoritarian republikans one bit because their affiliates control the multinational corporation Boards, the US. media, the majority air-wave content and the electronic voting machines; consequently, they can explain away any and every outcome that occurs at the ballot box – as we’ve seen repeated improbable republikan election victories, that defy historically accurate exit polls, written off as ‘a national republikan sweep’ – even though it is unprecedented for vote totals to defy exit polls! It’s past time to demand that the Board of Elections institute voting machine ‘paper trails’ for vote count verification or we will soon be faced with authoritarian, one-party, pro-corporate republikan rule on both the state and federal level; this is the favored outcome of rampant, unchecked ‘corporatism’, which – as we are currently witnessing, has wrested control of our federal government through disingenuously labeled ‘free trade agreements’ – such as the TPP, TISA, and the TTIP.
Word to Chad Barefoot: Come election time Wake voters are coming for your seat dude. Hope the game was worth it to ya dude.
If we vote we win simply vote out NCGOP