Rushing to the right, NC GOP goes against public opinion on big issues – abortion, guns, school funding | Opinion

If a democracy is defined as elected representatives expressing the will of the majority of the people, North Carolina is something other than that.

Sheltered by their gerrymandered districts, confident they will not be checked by a state Supreme Court with a new Republican majority and emboldened by a Democrat’s defection that gave them a veto-proof majority, Republic state lawmakers are going to extremes in defiance of popular opinion.

In a recent run, they ended the need to obtain a handgun permit from the local sheriff despite a rise in mass shootings. They’re on the verge of offering private school vouchers to all families despite the state’s traditional commitment to public schools.

They’ve opposed a court order to increase funding for public schools. They’ve ignored widespread public support for ending gerrymandering.

Now, in a blatant finale of sorts, Republicans emerged from months of closed-door meetings to pass a 12-week abortion ban and set up obstacles to early abortions. They’ve acted despite a February Meredith Poll showing that more than half of North Carolina voters (57 percent) want to see the abortion limit kept where it is – at 20-weeks – or expand abortion rights further. Only 15 percent want to restrict it to 15 weeks or less.

“There is clear evidence that the General Assembly is not in alignment with North Carolinians on a number of issues, such as abortion rights, gun control and gerrymandering,” said David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor and director of the poll.

Another measure of the disconnect is the gap between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Cooper has been elected statewide twice. In a recent High Point University Poll, registered voters gave him a job approval rating of 52%, while 30% said they disapprove. Yet over a four-year period, a popular governor has vetoed 47 bills passed by Republicans who say they are carrying out the will of the people.

In 2016, an op-ed by University of North Carolina politics professor Andrew Reynolds drew widespread attention by concluding that by objective measures, heavily gerrymandered North Carolina was no longer a “fully functioning democracy.”

Reynolds, who advises nations around the world on establishing democratic principles, wrote: “If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.”

Arguably, the situation is even worse today. Cooper’s veto power has all but disappeared. The state Supreme Court has cleared the way for extreme gerrymandering. And Republican lawmakers are even more experienced at turning an extreme agenda into law.

Susan Roberts, a Davidson College political scientist whose research includes the role of interest groups, said lawmakers and the voting public are becoming increasingly detached. “I don’t think they know what all their constituents are thinking,” she said. “I think they are making assumptions based on partisanship and gerrymandered districts.”

She added, “People don’t feel like the government is listening to them.”

John Aldrich, a Duke professor who specializes in American politics and behavior, told me that the combination of political polarization and gerrymandering encourages extremism by making primaries as or more important than the general election. Lawmakers, he said, “have as much to fear from not trying to be too extreme in a primary election as they do from being too extreme in a general election.”

One-issue voters on guns, abortion or school choice, he said, have more clout in a primary and that tends to push majority opinions aside. “There’s an intense minority who care a lot about the issue and a relatively apathetic majority that doesn’t care as much about the issue as other things,” he said.

But the Democratic Party also has a role in the Republicans’ dominance, he said. “Much more important, it seems to me, is that the Democratic Party has been relatively weak in fielding a broad set of strong candidates across all districts. Under the basic political rule, you can’t beat someone with no one.”

But he said Republican lawmakers eventually “will be particularly vulnerable to electoral retribution if they are consistently taking minority positions, which seems to be happening now.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2023 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Rushing to the right, NC GOP goes against public opinion on big issues – abortion, guns, school funding | Opinion."