GOP Wonderland: Inside North Carolina's Conservative Makeover
Last edited Tue Sep 24, 2013, 01:27 AM - Edit history (2)
RALEIGH, N.C. — She was the self-described "new sheriff in town," and Bev Perdue promised, a thousand years ago in 2008, to change the way North Carolina did business. As a woman and a Democrat, she embodied the quantum electoral shift that was occurring across the nation, one powered by the nascent Obama coalition. The nation's first African-American president had just edged out a stunning win in this Southern state, and Gov.-elect Perdue had ridden the surge, along with Sen.-elect Kay Hagan. With its diversifying electorate, its thriving cities, and both legislative chambers and the Governor's Mansion in Democratic hands, the state seemed on the verge of a new, more progressive — and, yes, if you want go there — bluer era.
Cut to: The new sheriff's being run out of town on a rail, along with the Democrats running the General Assembly. The state is once again subject to single-party hegemony, but it looks a lot different. Now the only progressives who can be claim to be doing anything meaningful in the state capital are the ones who jammed it in protest every Monday this summer as they watched conservative legislators dismantle as much of their legacy as fast as possible.
The Republicans, too, are out to reshape the way the state does business, but in a much more radical way. They have the keys to the entire kingdom: They own a supermajority in the Legislature and have a compliant ally in Gov. Pat McCrory, Perdue's Republican successor. As such, they essentially govern unchecked and unopposed, exerting their will on everything from taxes to abortion to voting rights to the social safety net to more arcane matters like denying the city of Raleigh the use of state land for a public park.
In this new climate, Barack Obama didn't win the state the second time around; he lost to Mitt Romney by 2 points. And Hagan's reelection next year is in deep jeopardy. "We're pushing legislation we've always dreamed about," says Claude Pope, the chairman of the state Republican Party. North Carolina didn't just step back from its once-imminent purple-to-blue transformation. It now glows scarlet-fever red.
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Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/gop-wonderland-inside-north-carolinas-conservative-makeover/279889/
Mirror: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/where-the-gop-s-wonderland-is-real-20130919
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