If there’s one thing the GOP supermajority in our legislature loves more than mismanaging our finances and taking peoples’ rights away, it’s weakening the powers of the Governor’s office. It’s been one of their top concerns since the minute Governor Cooper was elected—but while most of their power grabs get settled in the court system, there’s one that my race will have a huge effect on.
When the 2020 pandemic hit, Governor Cooper’s executive orders were one of our best defenses against COVID. Because the Governor took decisive action, our state had some of the least COVID deaths in the entire South. Because Roy Cooper was our Governor, there are thousands of North Carolinians alive today who otherwise might not be.
But all the GOP could see was that a Democrat had wielded power, so they changed the way executive orders work.
They changed the rules to give the other nine members of the Council of State a veto over the Governor’s executive actions and the authority to override his initiatives. It didn’t matter that the voters elected Governor Cooper knowing the powers of his office and with the expectation that, in a crisis, he would act. All they cared about was ensuring that as much power as possible was consolidated in their own hands.
That means that having a majority of Democrats on our Council of State next year is absolutely crucial. The individual offices on the Council of State are incredibly important in their own right, but holding a majority of them will also decide whether or not our next Governor is able to actually lead us in an emergency.
The math on that is that this November, we need to keep all the seats on the Council that are currently held by Democrats, and we need to flip at least two of the seats we don’t currently hold. In other words, my race could easily be the deciding factor on whether or not the Council of State can uphold the Governor’s executive authority.
