NC’s Constitution is a Great Document. But Its Favoritism Toward the Legislature is Putting Our Democracy at Risk.

by | Jul 9, 2021 | Politics | 10 comments

History’s burden is particularly heavy in America’s Southern states. You could even say that the Old Confederacy is haunted by what its white people have done to its Black people, by the legacy of a slave society never fully redeemed. The state of North Carolina is feeling the weight of past mistakes in a profound way during this era of democratic regression. Its constitutional structure, revised over the centuries but consistent in a damaging way, serves as the vessel for the rise of an authoritarian state.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” goes Lord Acton’s phrase that has become a cliche. But for all its triteness, this aphorism holds truth in a state whose constitution gives inordinate power to a single branch of government. The legislative branch in North Carolina has held almost all of the power ever since the former province’s establishment as an American state. There is a dire lack of check-and-balance accountability in our governmental architecture, and it is enabling a right-wing legislature to use its pervasive influence as the sharpest edge of the wedge in an assault on liberal democracy.

North Carolina’s slanted institutions have dubious roots. In the early 1770s, colonial elites felt aggrieved at the infringements of Royal Governor William Tryon on what they perceived to be their rights. In fairness, lower-class whites in the backcountry shared these resentments, but it was the slavocracy in Eastern North Carolina that reified their anger in the form of a constitution that gave almost no power to the governor. In its 1776 iteration, the state constitution created a governorship elected by the legislature with a one-year term. He (and I choose that pronoun intentionally) was essentially a figurehead.

The preponderance of power would instead rest with the legislature. And the fact is that our legislature has never been particularly democratic. For the first several generations of North Carolina, a fight raged over redistributing seats from the slaveholding and wealthy east to western counties that were the homes of poor whites. When that inequity was mostly rectified, democracy was compromised again by gerrymandering, a blight that has reached its nadir in the era of Project RedMap and the relentless efforts of GOP cartographers to eradicate Black and Democratic Party influence on the government of a 50-50 state.

Combine the exorbitant power our constitution affords to the legislature, with the invidious force of gerrymandering, and you have a system of government conducive to authoritarian rule. Legislators have all of the influence on redistricting, local bills that have neutered democracy everywhere from Asheville to Sanford, and the fountain of liberalism, UNC-Chapel Hill. They have created a system that makes their majority control all but impervious to voters; thus, they have guaranteed ruling authority over the state. And they can use that power to effect untrammeled abuses on what is supposed to be a democratic polity.

What legislators don’t have, they are trying to take away. The state Senate’s budget contains further attacks on the authority of our Democratic governor and attorney general, and that merely comes on the heels of years of infringements on the other branches. If voters had honored the tradition of a veto-less governor when a constitutional amendment to create a veto came up under Governor Jim Hunt, Governor Cooper wouldn’t even be able to stop these assaults on his powers. We have a nearly all-powerful legislature that clearly thirsts for absolute authority unimpeded by any checks and balances whatsoever.

The founders of North Carolina had much wisdom–part of which was creating the University of North Carolina. But their myopia in the area of checks and balances is costing us dearly nearly a quarter-millennium after they mistakenly gave the legislature too much power. North Carolinians who want to live in a democracy shouldn’t just accept this inequity machine. Just as Republicans put constitutional amendments on the ballot to cap income taxes and mandate voter ID, democracy advocates should seek to shore up the executive and judicial branches if they do not want their fellow citizens trapped under the depredations of a legislative cartel.

10 Comments

  1. Thomas

    I’m grateful that someone is raising this problem publicly. Regardless of which party is in power, the General Assembly’s control of state government reduces public policy to a least-common-denominator political game. Unfortunately the NC Constitution puts the General Assembly firmly astride any effort to change things.

  2. Andy Stevens

    Hmm, the author discounts the fact that for 140 years or so Democrats alone controlled state government. I wonder if he consider those the “golden years” of governance.

    • cocodog

      Must be the meaning of the label Democrat or Republicans has never changed? Or would it be historically accurate to say the Republican and Democratic parties of the United States didn’t always stand for what they do today. The best example would be the Trump Republican party. Republicans in the past would never have stood for armed resurrections and destruction of capital property.

  3. adamclove

    Governor Cooper has ruled this state for a year and a half via executive order, put tens of thousands out of work, destroyed hundreds of small businesses, and you have the unmitigated, laughable gall to bitch and moan that he’s too weak? This is the most ridiculous, out-of-touch thing I’ve read all year, and that’s saying a LOT. The children of this state will be forcibly masked in the Fall for the second school year running, despite being at almost zero risk from any variant of COVID, all on Cooper’s executive order say-so, yet YOU think it’s a threat to “oUr dEmOcRaCy” that he can’t decide completely on his own how much of other people’s money to spend.

    What’s it like to be such a craven, boot-licking hack?

    • cocodog

      Gee, do you think Cooper cost as many jobs and revenue as the Republicans with their so-called bathroom bill? North Carolina suffered financial hits ranging from scuttled plans for a PayPal facility that would have added an estimated $2.66 billion to the state’s economy to a canceled Ringo Starr concert that deprived a town’s amphitheater of about $33,000 in revenue. Now there was a piece of iconic legislation.

      • adamclove

        Yes, I absolutely think that locking down the entire state for months on end, prohibiting restaurants and bars from doing business at all, and then only with very limited hours for months after that, prohibiting in-person instruction at schools, forcing parents to find alternate childcare arrangements, again, for months on end, and instituting curfews was without question a bigger hit to the economy than losing one PayPal facility and a canceled Ringo Starr concert. NC’s average unemployment rate in 2016, the year the bill passed, was 5.1%. The state’s average unemployment rate for 2020 was 6.1%.

        Boneheaded government overreach is always detrimental to the prospects of working people, regardless of which party is responsible.

        • cocodog

          PayPal canceling a 400-job project in Charlotte, was not the only loss occasioned by the bathroom bill. There was CoStar backing out of negotiations to bring 700-plus jobs to the same area, and Deutsche Bank scuttling a plan for 250 jobs in the Raleigh area. Other companies that backed out include Adidas, which is building its first U.S. sports shoe factory employing 160 near Atlanta rather than a High Point site, and Voxpro, which opted to hire hundreds of customer support workers in Athens, Georgia, rather than the Raleigh area.

          One of the major responsibilities of government is to take measures that save lives and property. The side effects are occasionally damaging to some folk’s interests.

          “Public necessity” as that concept was defined during the San Francisco Fire, involved government sponsored destruction of private property to create a fire break preventing the spread to other parts of the city that housed hospitals and elderly care facilities. During the Covid outbreak responsible governors, like Cooper, stepped up to offer responsible leadership that was lacking from Washington. The shutdown slowed if not prevented the spread of a deadly disease and the deaths of many folks.
          The bathroom bill was not motivated by a noble purpose, nor was there a threat to public safety. The existing laws adequately addressed any threat to public safety. So, what motivated the Republicans to pass this economically damaging legislation?

          • adamclove

            Each example you cited involved hundreds, not tens of thousands of jobs. Wiping out hundreds of businesses and putting tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people out of work for a virus with a survival rate in excess of 99% cannot be argued to be in the public interest by anyone other than the most devoted partisan. The only justification for any of that was in the name of preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed, but that was never even close to happening. Now, Cooper openly states that perpetuating the State of Emergency is purely for the purpose of sucking off Washington’s teat indefinitely.

            The goal posts get moved, moved again, and moved again, and Democrats only cheer it on.

            You people don’t WANT to get back to normal.

  4. Dennis Wingo

    Perhaps this is because your favorite political ideology is not currently dominate? I have noticed that constitutional fidelity is directly proportional to your ideology’s ability to control it. Thus it does seem apparent that your desire to color this article with a stars and bars brush is somewhat self serving.

    • cocodog

      How enlightening, NC is littered with 10s of thousands of failed bars and restaurants and lost jobs that were driven out of business by a governor who followed common sense guidelines established by creditable medical experts to protect folks against a deadly disease. A disease, according to Republicans that only killed off less than one percent of its victims. I would place that analysis right up there with Trump’s cure for Covid, high doses Of HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE with zinc and a shot of bleach.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!