A gubernatorial veto of a bill that deprives the state’s incoming Democratic leaders of important authority was overridden by Republican lawmakers in North Carolina.
In a party-line vote on Wednesday, the GOP-led state House of Representatives overrode outgoing Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of legislation that is supposedly intended to aid hurricane victims but also undermines the power of statewide positions that Democrats won in last month’s election, such as governor and attorney general.
The bill will now take effect after the Republican-controlled state Senate overrode Cooper’s veto last week, though legal challenges are anticipated. Given that the GOP is expected to lose its legislative supermajority after the 2024 elections, Democrats have denounced it as a power grab.
Notably, the legislation transfers the power to select candidates for North Carolina’s election board from the governor’s office—which will be occupied by Democrat Josh Stein next year—to the auditor’s office, which will be occupied by Republican Dave Boliek following his victory against incumbent Democrat Jessica Holmes.
For years, Republicans in the legislature of North Carolina have attempted to take over the board that manages elections in the battleground state, but the courts have blocked their attempts. Democrats are ahead 3-2 on the board right now.
The GOP now has the three-fifths support in the chamber needed to overturn Cooper after three Republicans from the western North Carolina state House who initially opposed the bill backed the veto override on Wednesday.
In an interview prior to Wednesday’s vote, state Representative Mark Pless, one of those Republicans, expressed disappointment that the plan lacked sufficient resources to assist his constituents in rebuilding their neighborhoods following Hurricane Helene.
“I want my people taken care of in the mountains,” he said to NBC News before to the vote. His assessment of the measure was, “I just don’t think it does what we were told it would do.”
In addition to achieving a number of other Republican demands, such as compelling counties to process ballots more quickly and reducing the time voters have to correct ballot problems, the 131-page law transfers $227 million into a disaster relief fund.
Additionally, the law will forbid the state attorney general from adopting stances that conflict with those of the legislature.
As Stein did with the state sabortion bill last year while in office, this will stop Jeff, the new Democratic Attorney General, from declining to defend laws approved by the Legislature.
Over the course of two days in November, the measure—which was drafted behind closed doors and offered as a committee substitute that prohibited revisions in committee—passed both of the Republican-controlled legislative chambers.
“The bill, to be clear, is a power grab, not disaster relief,” Stein stated during a meeting by the Democratic Governors Association in California last weekend. “It s petty and wrong headed.”
The action was described as “wrong, disgusting, and emblematic of the Republican Party ‘desperate attempts to consolidate power at all costs instead of trying to improve North Carolinians’ lives'” by Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison in a statement.
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