North Carolina Exceptionalism

by | Sep 8, 2014 | Editor's Blog, NC Politics | 11 comments

It seems the Democratic narrative about the GOP take over of North Carolina is getting under John Hood’s skin. In an op-ed piece in the News & Observer, he wrote that liberals have a fairy tale view of North Carolina that he calls North Carolina Exceptionalism. He says that liberals mistakenly believe that North Carolina became an economic powerhouse that outperformed our neighbors because of progressive policies. Mr. Hood argues that, in fact, North Carolina did not significantly outperform our neighbors in economic measures such as GDP and per capita income and that current GOP policies are putting us on a path to prosperity.

Mr. Hood misses the point. The progressive story is not about GDP. It’s about values and priorities.

Democrats in North Carolina made a conscious decision to invest in people. They did it with broad support from the business community. Our neighbors to the South spent their energy trying to protect a social system that should have died a hundred and fifty years ago but was preserved through the Jim Crow laws that defined the South throughout the first half of the 20th century.

But even after the civil rights movement disrupted their way of life, they fought to keep as much money and power concentrated in as few hands as possible through low taxes and low wages. In North Carolina, we chose to diversify our economy and try to lift people out of poverty. To do that, we invested in a knowledge-based economy to supplement our agricultural and manufacturing sectors. 

To make sure that it worked, we built state university and community college systems that are still among the best in the country. In the 1990s, we made serious investments in early childhood education and public schools. Our children saw better outcomes, reflected in steadily improving graduation rates and test scores.

Democrats also enacted measures that protected our environment and made tourism our largest industry. They took a balanced approach. When developers overreached, Democrats reeled them in, protecting ridge lines in the mountains and waterways that emptied into our sounds and oceans. Then, they built the roads, bridges and highways that made those areas accessible to people from both in state and out.

While our GDP might not have been significantly better than our neighbors, our quality of life was. Until 2012, our median income was significantly higher than all of our southern neighbors. Our poverty rate is lower and our high school graduation rate is higher. We have lower infant mortality and we live longer. From 1979 to 2007, North Carolina’s average income grew by a far greater rate than other Southern states and the income was distributed more equitably. And between 2000 and 2010 we grew significantly faster than any other Southern state besides Georgia. People were coming here because North Carolina was an attractive place to work and live, not because of low wages and low taxes, though neither were too high.

Under Republican rule, we’re starting to lose some of those advantages. Our median income is down, our poverty rate is rising and, for two years in a row, our infant mortality is up.

Not everything the Republicans have done is bad. As Mr. Hood points out, the GOP has modernized our transportation funding formula, made positive steps toward updating the teacher pay schedule and, yes, even forced our university system to take a hard look at itself. But that’s not what caused the liberal outrage or caused businesses to become wary of the state.

No, the anger erupted when the GOP passed the most restrictive voter laws in the nation in an attempt to keep people who disagree with their agenda from voting. It came from the GOP shifting public funds into private schools at the same time they were seriously underfunding public education. It came with restrictive abortion laws and putting discrimination in our constitution through banning marriage equality.

The nation was shocked, then amused when legislators introduced a bill to allow a state religion. Businesses became uneasy when they passed bills to ban Sharia Law and drug test welfare recipients despite obvious constitutional problems. And we became a laughingstock when Republicans rolled an anti-abortion bill into one to allow motorcyclists to ride without helmets.

The anger came from rejecting a Medicaid plan that would have provided health care to 500,000 citizens and would have created tens of thousands of much needed jobs–at no cost to the state. It came from kicking 170,000 long-term unemployed people off of unemployment insurance even though there were no jobs to be had.

As for their so-called tax reform, the GOP did little more than give their wealthy benefactors a huge break while shifting the tax burden to the middle class at a time when median household income is lower than it’s been in more than 30 years. We can have a serious debate about broadening the tax base, but not when the middle class is still struggling and the labor force is shrinking. They’re not reforming the tax system. They’re just depleting our revenue stream.

But what is most disturbing is that Mr. Hood and the conservatives believe that the deep South states are an enviable model. Other than GDP, we’ve outpaced our Southern neighbors on virtually every measure of quality of life. And unlike them, we’ve consistently been ranked one the best places to do business in country. 

As for his fairy tale, I believe in North Carolina Exceptionalism. I grew up in a state that smart and creative people wanted to move to instead of move from. I grew up in a state where people took seriously improving education and reducing poverty. I grew up in a state where protecting our natural resources was as important as exploiting them. I grew up in a state that didn’t look like South Carolina, Alabama or Mississippi because our elected leaders made better choices. As I’ve said before, I grew up ten miles north of the South Carolina border. I don’t want to live there.

11 Comments

  1. Robert Ziegler

    The people voted them in, now they have to vote them out!

  2. Lucia Messina

    Thanks for the thoughtful and well written article. I hope that NC Democrats win big in November. As for SC ,it is not all bad news…we have chances to win a few new seats. SC is our kissing cousin, so I am working for both.

  3. Vicki Boyer

    As I have said, South Carolina is not our competition.

    Too often, our new overlords have looked to Southern states for a model to follow, completely unaware of the facts of life in the internet age–Corporations no longer look to the ‘best’ state in a region, but the best of all the states. Our competition is Utah and California. And in the Knowledge Economy, education is the key to our economic future.

  4. MJ Schwartz

    When public and private “good” became separated in the GOP mindset, well, we can see what happened. When the free market became their real god, well we see the results. Time to turn back this smelly tide!

  5. Troy

    I’m wondering why John Hood decided to drive around including James Holshouser in his stellar examples of Republican governors? Is it perhaps because Governor Holshouser was a self-identified Lincoln Republican? Perhaps it was because he believed in education, his advocacy for raising teacher salaries, and investment in infrastructure across the State?

    As the first Republican governor to hold that office in the 20th century, why would Hood choose to ignore those things except that what Holshouser stood for doesn’t fit the tale he wishes to tell. Things more in line with what is best for the people as opposed to what is best for corporations. Things which as a purveyor of all things Republican, John Hood is firmly against.

  6. Richard Anderson

    As a Mississippian, I looked with envy and amazement at NC. I came here 12 years ago and I’m dismayed to see the GOP striving to turn us into Mississippi.

  7. Wide Awake Independent Carolinian

    Mr. Hood probably has a hood and a robe under the seat of his Mercedes. He seems to think that regression is the key to prosperity…..it worked for the old confederacy……why not go back to that…….entitlement mentality is the pervasive mindset of the NCGOP/TP…….

  8. Mick

    While you might have also mentioned some other examples of nationally-ridiculed NCGOP foolishness, such as the “How to control sea level rise by ignoring it” law and the “How to legally drop a possum” law, your blog was square on.

    The skewed GOP mindset sees the business and private sector playing THE dominating role in NC’s future advancement, while viewing the roles of public education, university research/ outreach, and local community action as bit players.

    I’d be the first to recognize the importance of private enterprise to the state. But this new GOP refuses to see that, unless guided, and at times, limited by the public (government) to do otherwise, segments of the corporate/business sector can become a truly negative factor and a drain on NC resources and progress—-whether that’s as a polluter (e.g., Duke-E coal ash waste and eastern NC hog farms), a wage depressor, a job-cutter, a tax evader (e.g., this week’s series in the N&O on the NC construction industry), a union-buster/demonizer, or a government subsidy parasite.

  9. jwwilliamson

    About John Hood … I recognize flop sweat when I see it.

  10. James Protzman

    The only thing that matters in Mr. Hood’s twisted world is money. You either have it or you don’t. And if you don’t, well that because you’re either unlucky or a lazy welfare cheat. The free market will sort the winners from the losers, and things like “values” are nothing but liberal talking points.

    • Thomas Mills

      That’s their philosophy in a nutshell, James.

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