North Carolina was the dress rehearsal for MAGA

The state offers lessons for the country.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, Republicans in North Carolina launched an assault on our democracy. In the race for a supreme court seat, the party tried to change the rules after the fact to overturn the will of the voters. Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin sued the State Board of Elections in an attempt to nullify Justice Allison Rigg’s victory. A ruling by the state Supreme Court almost made their effort successful.

Only the intervention of a Trump-appointed federal judge saved our democracy when Judge Richard Myers wrote, “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”

It seemed like common sense. A principle so basic that no one should need a federal judge to explain it. But in North Carolina, by 2025, even the obvious needed defending.

It won’t happen again, because, in 2026 or 2028, Republicans won’t have a State Board of Elections standing in their way. While the state and country were focused on the outcome of the Riggs-Griffin race, the legislature stripped control of the SBOE from the governor and gave it to the newly elected Republican state auditor.

Within days of taking control of the SBOE, Auditor Dave Boliek fired election professionals and replaced them with GOP political operatives. Since then, the board has used mob-like pressure to force county boards of election to bend to its will. The legislature is trying to push through legislation that includes an additional 25 political appointees and grants the auditor the power to investigate election results in any county at his discretion.

What’s happening in North Carolina right now isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the culmination of a twelve-year experiment in stress testing democracy’s guardrails. And what Republicans learned in Raleigh, they’re now applying in Washington and in states across the country.

North Carolina was the prototype for the reactionary populism that became MAGA. In North Carolina, we had Trumpism before Trump.

In January 2013, Republicans took control of North Carolina state government for the first time in more than a century. They moved quickly to upend state agencies and purge them of Democratic influence. They slashed and burned, often with no obvious intent to rebuild.

In the legislature, Republicans introduced legislation so brazen that even some of their own members seemed shocked. They introduced bills to create a state religion. They allowed guns on campuses and in bars. They flattened the progressive income tax, shifting the burden from the wealthy and corporations onto the middle and working class. They ended teacher tenure and banned Sharia Law. They put limits on abortion and drug-tested welfare recipients. They began solidifying their power by making nonpartisan school board elections partisan, stripping authority from local governments, introducing voter ID bills, reducing early voting days, and ending public financing of judicial campaigns.

Republicans moved with breathtaking speed. Democrats were paralyzed and unable to muster any effective response. The press was overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up with the flood of stories coming out of Raleigh or offer the context needed.

For Republicans in control of the legislature and governor’s office, enacting their agenda was the easy part. With veto-proof majorities, they had little to stop them. Governor Pat McCrory, a former mayor of Charlotte, was elected as a business moderate but he was no match for the seasoned legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly. They overrode four of his six vetoes.

As their policies shifted the state hard to the right, they changed the rules to lock in their power. Extreme gerrymandering effectively gave Republicans veto-proof majorities in the legislature and nine of the state’s 13 US House districts, even as Democrats won a majority of the Congressional votes and half of the legislative ones cast in the state.

North Carolina state Representative David Lewis, chair of the Redistricting Committee, famously said, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats.” A North Carolina lawsuit, Rucho v. Common Cause, validated gerrymandering for partisan gain and set the stage for the national redistricting wars ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In August 2013, Republicans passed a “monster” voter suppression bill that enacted a strict voter ID provision, ended same-day registration, restricted early-voting days, and expanded the power of observers to challenge voters at the polls. While the courts struck down the bill, asserting that it targeted African Americans with “surgical precision,” many of the provisions have been enacted since. Today, we see the spirit of the bill in the SAVE Act being debated in Congress.

More than a decade before the Trump administration pressured the University of Virginia to fire its president, the UNC Board of Governors abruptly fired UNC President Tom Ross, a highly respected administrator. They offered no reason for his dismissal other than his registration as a Democrat. The move began an ongoing effort to impose ideological changes on the university system and became a prelude to the broader assaults on higher education nationally.

In March 2016, North Carolina Republicans launched the culture wars that would rage throughout the next eight years. HB-2, the famous “Bathroom Bill,” quickly elevated a local ordinance to a national uproar.

In the short term, the tumult benefited Democrats as corporations and entertainment events boycotted the state. In the long term, it set off a backlash against the transgender community that echoes today. The seeds of Trump’s infamous ad tagline “Kamala Harris is for they/them; President Trump is for you” originated with the Bathroom Bill debate that began in North Carolina.

When, in November 2016, Attorney General Roy Cooper won the narrowest of victories, McCrory cried voter fraud and tried to stop the counting. He was rebuffed by his own board of elections. The system held, but the episode exposed what might have happened if people of lesser character had been in charge—a preview of what would unfold nationally four years later.

Before Cooper took office, the Republican legislature had their eyes on the state board of elections. They tried to remove it from the governor’s control, but the state supreme court blocked the measure. Republicans weren’t finished. They put an amendment on the ballot two years later to give the legislature control of the board of elections, but the voters rejected it.

While the courts battled over the Supreme Court race in 2025, the North Carolina legislature tried again. Before Josh Stein could even be sworn in as the new governor, Republicans in the legislature moved control of the state board of elections from the governor’s office to the GOP-controlled state auditor’s office—giving Republicans control of the election machinery. With a newly Republican-majority supreme court in place, the power grab succeeded.

The five member state board of elections now has a Republican majority. The new chair served as president of the Civitas Institute, an organization that spent millions to elect Republican legislative candidates. The new executive director served as legal counsel to the Republican speaker of the House. The new advisor to county boards of elections served as executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party.

The institutions meant to protect our rights—the state supreme court, the Board of Elections—are being captured by those who would use them as partisan tools. In 2013, Republicans began attacking democracy from the legislature. By 2025, they’re working to capture the very institutions meant to stop them.

This institutional capture represents the final stage of a twelve-year strategy. What began as a storming of the gates in North Carolina has settled into a coordinated elimination of dissent. National Republicans have followed suit. While establishment Republicans held Trump in check during his first administration, January 6 unleashed him.

But North Carolina also offers a roadmap for resistance. To navigate this new Trump era, those who oppose it should look to North Carolina, both to understand the destruction of checks and balances and to chart a path forward. Through it all, the state is still standing. Democrats have battled Republicans to a standstill. The playbook for fighting back has been twelve years in the making.

The first lesson is to never give up. Before the Women’s March, pink pussy hats, or No Kings rallies, Moral Mondays energized the opposition in North Carolina and drew national attention to the state. Initially, the protests gave people a sense of hope and unity, showing they’re not alone. They spurred homegrown organizing efforts like Down Home NC and the New Rural Project that have multiplied across the state, reaching into rural communities and exurban counties where narrowing electoral margins have delivered results.

Rely on the courts. The federal courts protected the Allison Riggs victory. Lower-court judges often offer rulings more in line with the Constitution than the partisan warriors who inhabit the state’s appellate courts. They can slow or stop the pace of radical maneuvers.

Take the long view. The Democrats have a plan to take back the supreme court that began in 2024 but will not be complete until 2028. Holding a seat in 2026 is the next step, and winning two of the three seats up for election in 2028 will give them the power to reverse the damage done by the Republican justices.

Run everywhere. Democrats have filled the ballot in almost every contested race, giving voters a choice and candidates the opportunity to make their case for an alternative to Republican rule. They’ve also forced the GOP to defend their policies and actions. They might not win every seat, but they whittle down margins.

Nominate candidates with broad appeal and core competencies. While Republicans chose culture warriors as their standard bearers, Democrats nominated serious candidates with records to run on. Roy Cooper won two statewide races with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket; Josh Stein has won three. In 2024, Democrats won five of the ten council of state seats with candidates who focused on their accomplishments and broad solutions instead of divisive social issues.

Finally, understand the moment. Now is not the time for transformative agendas. Now is the time to counter populism and authoritarianism. None of the 2024 Democratic candidates who won in North Carolina pushed controversial policies. Josh Stein focused on his success combatting fentanyl, cutting taxes for workers, raising teacher pay, and job training while highlighting his bipartisan support.

Though we didn’t know it at the time, North Carolina was a dress rehearsal for MAGA. Republicans learned exactly how to dismantle democracy while claiming to protect it. They learned how to gerrymander ruthlessly, suppress votes systematically, weaponize culture wars relentlessly, capture institutions methodically, and strip power strategically.

Most importantly, they learned that the guardrails don’t have to be torn down all at once. They can be worn away.

The fight we’re in may last for decades. Those pushing back against the populist authoritarianism should look to North Carolina. The story here shows how far Republicans will go, but it also shows how to resist. In the battle for the soul of the nation, North Carolina has been ground zero.