At a time when the country needs less partisanship, Republicans in the NCGA are pushing bills to increase it. Bills sponsored by GOP legislators would make elections partisan that are currently non-partisan. Those include judicial, municipal and school board races. The GOP is also proving once again that it’s the party of heavy-handed big government.
As if our country is not divided enough, the GOP is trying to exploit divisions and drive wedges all the way down to the local level. It’s an attempt by Republicans to increase control of local governments and the judiciary by politicizing issues that should be less partisan. Forcing party orthodoxy has ominous overtones, especially when the GOP is in the process of discarding its conservative principles for more populist authoritarian ones.
Republicans have used Big Government tactics to redistrict local boards and commissions to give them a more Republican electorate. Forcing these elected bodies to become partisan just increases the chance that they’ll have more divisions and less room for common ground. It’s an attempt to increasingly politicize our public institutions.
In North Carolina, the fastest growing segment of voters is unaffiliated. These voters are rejecting the partisanship of both parties and looking for more balanced solutions. However, state laws make it difficult for nonpartisan candidates to get onto partisan ballots. Increasing the number of partisan contests will force public service oriented people who are less partisan to choose a party and decrease the diversity of viewpoints on local boards and in the judiciary.
We should be looking for ways to unite the state, not to divide it. Republicans, though, believe they have a partisan advantage to exploit all the way down to municipal government. Even if they’re right, that advantage is probably temporary. They should let local people determine the structure of local government instead of imposing the will of the legislature on people purely for partisan gain.
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 >
Thomas, great accurate article. Over the last couple of years, we have seen most Republicans in the NCGA push forced partisan bills and forced redistricting on a local level with the belief and expectaction that it will further increase their power and influence on a local level. The fact that they are trying to pass a statewide bill, like Sen. Rabin’s SB 94, that would make every state wide and local position that is now non partisan become partisan, is no surprise. They have tried to pass a statewide bill like this before. The party of “small government” apparently are hypocritical and are really all about big government when they are in power. Lee County experienced that first hand in 2013, when the Republicans in the NCGA, forced the city council and school board to become partisan against their will. Even though both groups fought hard against the change the Republicans in the NCGA passed the bill. Wake County experienced it also, when the Republicans in NCGA took it upon themselves to redistrict and change the commissioners and school board seats to make them more Republican and “partisan” against this wishes of both effected parties. All that changing local elected positions to partisan will do is bring all the nastiness, pettiness, and meaness of partisan politics from the federal and state level down to the local level to poison our local communities. Local campaigns and decisions of local governments will highly likely become more about party ideological beliefs and agendas and less about what is best for the people and communities. That is not acceptable to me as a citizen because we deserve better from our elected leaders. I am tIred of partisan nonsense and expect our governments local, state, and federal to do what is best for all and do the common good.
Jay, great comments. Really enjoyed the reference and quotes from Washington’s farewell address. Washington’s farewell address was ahead of it’s time and is very fortelling in it’s content. It is sad that we can see the similarities of his words of concern to our current situation in NC.
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” George Washington’s Farewell Address | Saturday, September 17, 1796
Surveys of public opinion on key issues important to the American electorate show that government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich ignores the will of the people consistently.
Our Republican legislators choose their voters; they bestow the franchise upon those who have signaled their inclination to vote Republican; the voters do not choose their representatives. Gerrymandering has created a thoroughly corrupt government in Raleigh, and racist voter suppression maintains a malign status quo.
The spigot of special interest money, enabled by five conservatives on the Supreme Court, has become a torrent. And Republican legislators dance to the tune of only the rich and the richest corporations. The country has never seen such unprincipled leadership. There are no profiles in courage in Raleigh or in Washington – only palace eunuchs, obsequious handmaidens to our billionaires and oligarchs.
They stand for nothing in the public interest; they stand only for reelection with fistfuls of NRA dollars and Koch syndicate money. They utter cynical platitudes from the stump about “the people” while the money rolls in from the polluters, thugs, and corporate villains.
Surely, the Republicans will stand up for the Stars and Stripes when they find a Russian stooge under the thumb of a KGB spy living in the White House! A sexual predator should never be elected to stand in for Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Kennedy. True Patriots will never stand for the ridicule of our veterans, our prisoners of war, our soldiers in the field. The White House would never become a gift shop on Pennsylvania Avenue as a backdrop to display the wares of the President’s daughter’s fashion line or his Secretary of Education’s line of soap products. That is a line that must never be crossed. Oops, we crossed it last week. The Republicans have become Yes men to criminals in the public arena, and they don’t have an ounce of remorse.
If we would put Party before Country, that party should stand for something decent. Last week they decided that crazy people need more guns, that crimes committed by Republicans should not be crimes, that the nation needs more pollution. Oh! How the money rolls in! Ho ho.
As is often the case, you have expressed the reality beautifully. Thanks.
That sir, is one of the most direct and accurate summations of our current political climate that I’ve read anywhere. Bravo.
Well said, Mr. Ligon!
From a distance it appears sometimes that the GOP-led NCGA runs itself like a giant, dysfunctional Homeowners Association gone rogue than a deliberative legislative body working on solving the problems of the day and making North Carolina a better state for citizens to live, work and play.
The role of the NCGA is not to be a giant, centralized planning board, but in fact a place where citizen elected leaders study and work on the long term problems and solutions for North Carolina.
Respectfully, I ask that they give power to the local governments to innovate and lead.
For better or for worse they have certainly pursued this path with education so why not loosen the reins on municipal and county units of government as well? Allow the locally elected officials to manage the affairs of their localities. If a town wants partisan elections let the town and/or city decide for itself instead of unilaterally imposing it by legislative will.
“Respectfully, I ask that they give power to the local governments to innovate and lead. ”
That isn’t in their power to give because that is not how the system and structure of state government is set up in the North Carolina constitution. Local governments aren’t permitted that kind of autonomy. You want it, you change the governing document.