The other day I mentioned Jacob Grumbach’s book, Laboratories Against Democracy, in regard to what he had to say about Tennessee being the most anti-democracy state in the union based on his State Democracy Index. But Tennessee isn’t the only state that has had serious enough back-sliding to wonder how far down the path towards fascism they are headed. The Wisconsin legislature has dragged its state down that dark path and so has North Carolina’s. Grumbach use the example of how North Carolina Republican legislators, in 2016, responded to the loss of the gubernatorial election by immediately passing a law limiting the power of the governor, to take effect just as the newly elected Democrat took office. (Wisconsin’s legislature did something similar.) His 2018 index shows the worst backsliding after Tennessee to be North Carolina, with dishonorable mentions for Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio and Georgia. (I suspect an update would prominently feature Florida.)
Backsliding has been accelerating in several states besides Florida and Tennessee. North Carolina, a purple state, is one of them. And, as in the case of all the worst of the states headed down the fascist path, gerrymandering is at the heart of it. Statewide, North Carolina is a healthy swing state. Elections are close; look at these presidential results since 2008:
2008
Obama- 2,142,651 (49.70%)
McCain- 2,128,474 (49.38%)
2012
Romney- 2,270,395 (50.39%)
Obama- 2,178,391 (48.35%)
2016
Trump- 2,362,631 (49.83%)
Hillary- 2,189,316 (46.17%)
2020
Trump- 2,758,775 (49.93%)
Biden- 2,684,292 (48.59%)
And let’s look at the gubernatorial elections on the same days, which shows a pretty independent-minded electorate:
2008
Bev Perdue (D)- 2,146,189 (50.3%)
Pat McCrory (R)- 2,001,168 (46.9%)
2012
Pat McCrory (R)- 2,440,707 (54.6%)
Walter Dalton (D)- 1,931,580 (43.2%)
2016
Roy Cooper (D)- 2,309,157 (49.0%)
Pat McCrory (R)- 2,298,880 (48.8%)
2020
Roy Cooper (D)- 2,934,790 (51.5%)
Dan Forest (R)- 2,586,606 (47.0%)
Yesterday, The Nation published a piece by Laura Flanders that demonstrates the most recent democracy backsliding in North Carolina and, again, it’s all about the gerrymandering at the root of all electoral evil. “When it comes to gerrymandering,” she wrote, “few states have honed the craft as well as North Carolina, but on April 28, the new Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court took things to a whole new level. Reversing a ruling handed down by a Democratic majority on the same court last December, the justices not only threw out a verdict that held that state legislative and congressional voting maps were illegal gerrymanders drawn to give Republicans an advantage, but effectively wrote the entire judiciary and the governor’s office out of reviewing district maps altogether… The court also reversed two other decisions— one that found a voter ID law to be discriminatory against Black voters and another that restored the right to vote to formerly incarcerated people with felony convictions. As a result of these rulings, North Carolina Republicans, who currently also hold a veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly, now enjoy virtually unchecked power not only over how maps are drawn but also how the state’s elections are held and even who gets to vote… a devastating blow to democracy, according to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. ‘Our constitution is supposed to be a check on the power of the legislature. But these Republican justices have surrendered that role, taking power away from the people and giving it to an out-of-control gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the legislature,’ Stein said in a statement.”
Stein has a very present reason for concern. He’s the Democratic nominee for governor next year— and his most likely opponent will be a neo-fascist Republican, Mark Robinson, a MAGA crackpot. Yesterday, CNN gave another example of just how cracked this particular pot is. Robinson, wrote Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, “has a long history of remarks viciously mocking and attacking teenage survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for their advocacy for gun control measures. In posts after the shooting, Robinson called the students ‘spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,’ ‘spoiled little bastards,’ and ‘media prosti-tots.’ Robinson, whose political rise as a conservative Internet personality started when a clip of him speaking at a city council meeting in April 2018 went viral, as he was speaking against a proposal to cancel a local gun show after the Parkland shooting. He also began attacking the Parkland survivors after they launched the ‘March for Our Lives’ movement that called for new gun control measures, comparing the students to communists.”
This is just the kind of extremist that North Carolina wouldn’t normally elect to office— and just the kind extremist the state Supreme Court just rigged the rules so the state can elect him— along with a state legislature as willing to rubber stamp his fanaticism as Florida’s is to rubber stamp DeSantis’.