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. Republicans are in danger of losing their congressional supermajority, therefore Democrats have criticized them for taking this action after the 2024 election and before the new year.
“Western North Carolina small businesses and communities still wait for support from the legislature while Republicans make political power grabs the priority,” Coopers stated in a press release. “Shameful.”
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. “I just don’t think it does what we were told it would do.”
In a speech from the Senate floor in Washington on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, R-N.C., urged Republican senators to override Cooper’s veto.
“I understand there are provisions in there that have to do with … a legitimate disagreement about the scope and the role of the executive branch,” Tillis stated. “But this is not the time for us to rethink whether or not we should be sending every signal we can to the people of the North Carolina that help is on the way.”
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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