Republicans relying on past grievances to justify power grabs is not a success

House Speaker Tim Moore (left) and Senate Leader Phil Berger speak at a news conference in the Legislative Building. (right) (Photo: Lynn Bonner)

When challenged on their authoritarianism, North Carolina Republicans’ most common ploy is to rekindle grievances from decades ago. The party is led by a group of representatives who have suffered for years from the insignificance and disrespect of Democrats in eastern North Carolina, and these people still enjoy regurgitating Democratic misdeeds to justify their own wrongdoing.

This disappointment has recently emerged in the case of the cruel “Helene Relief” law. North Carolinians must understand that, despite the real excesses of previous Democratic majorities, the assault we are now witnessing on democracy is unprecedented and inexcusable.

The old Democratic Bulls had an occasional – and deplorable – habit of increasing their own power at the expense of political rivals. The most notorious example of this corruption occurred when Republican Jim Gardner transferred the lieutenant governor’s office from Democratic to Republican control and Senate Democrats stripped him of his authority.

However, this completely inexcusable abuse was different in nature from what modern Republicans have inflicted on the offices held by Democrats. First, the Democrats withdrew legislative Powers informally delegated to the lieutenant governor throughout the state’s history. Gardner did not have the constitutional authority to appoint committee chairs or lead the Senate. The sole purpose of his office, then as now, is to preside over Senate meetings and resolve tie votes.

Unlike the Gardner affair, the Helene Relief bill is an act of aggression against the other branches of government. This does not diminish the role of an office within a branch already controlled by legislative decision-makers. The bill reduces the powers of executive offices on their own terms and transfers much of those powers to the legislature, which has no constitutional right to exercise those powers.

In particular, the bill effectively turns the AG into a puppet of legislative leaders—an egregious intrusion into a constitutional office that reeks of autocracy. This bill breaks the guardrails of democracy.

The second difference that makes Republicans’ excuses unjust is that past Democratic outrages were committed by a party that bears almost no resemblance to today’s Democratic opposition. In the heyday of its majority, the NC Democratic Party was far more conservative and “Southern” than the largely urban party that Republicans like to torment today. David Hoyle, the head of the legislative branch, was a pro-business conservative whose policies were decidedly right-of-center. Even the more moderate members of Marc Basnight’s Senate caucus opposed House efforts to raise taxes on the rich after Wall Street destroyed the American economy. Throwing stones at a party led by Sydney Batch — a lawyer from the wealthy suburbs of Raleigh — because old-school Southern Democrats misbehaved decades ago is utter nonsense.

After all, the Republican attack on democracy was much broader and more comprehensive than any of the isolated abuses committed by Democrats in the ’80s and ’90s. As right-wing blogger Brant Clifton has observed, Senator Phil Berger is spreading his tentacles across state government. He governs the legislature without opposition. His son sits on the Supreme Court. He has key staff in the new treasurer’s office. He is trying to shift the administration of elections from the elected governor to a hardline partisan operational and legislative factotum that just won the comptroller’s office. Berger clearly wields more power than his predecessor Marc Basnight ever did, and his constellation of influence increasingly resembles the autocracy of Depression-era Louisiana demagogue Huey Long.

I doubt any progressive in North Carolina would defend what Democrats did with the lieutenant governor’s office 35 years ago. This is so clear that it is rather uninteresting. It is important to understand that even the most egregious abuses in the increasingly distant past were nothing like what right-wing politicians are doing in North Carolina today. We are witnessing a vigorous attempt to replace the separation of powers with unfettered rule by a few legislative mandarins. It is a major challenge to our state’s long and shaky path to true democracy.