NC Republicans overturn Cooper’s veto, taking power from Stein and other Democrats
With North Carolina Republicans set to lose their veto-proof supermajority come 2025, state lawmakers took their final vote Wednesday on a bill that takes away power from incoming Democrats in the executive branch, overturning a veto with a party-line 72-46 vote.
Police removed protesters who shouted from the public gallery overlooking the state House chamber after the vote.
The Senate had already voted to override the veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of Senate Bill 382, as protesters yelled from the gallery above on Dec. 2. With the House vote, the bill now becomes law.
Republicans are set to lose their total control of the General Assembly after the 2024 election. They would be one vote short in the House in the new year.
SB 382 moves $227 million to a Hurricane Helene relief fund, but mostly focuses on policy. Among other things, the bill takes the power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections from the governor and gives it to the state auditor. Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein is the governor-elect, and the next auditor will be Republican Dave Boliek. The bill also requires the next attorney general, Democrat Jeff Jackson, to represent the will of the General Assembly, which will still be controlled by Republicans.
It was written in secret and fast-tracked, with no committee hearings and with the House starting its debate on the bill less than an hour after it was made public.
However, three Western North Carolina Republican House members originally voted against the bill, and Republicans typically cannot override a veto without support from every single Republican, depending on who shows up to vote. A three-fifths majority is required to override a veto.
The three dissenting Republicans — Reps. Mark Pless of Canton, Mike Clampitt of Bryson City and Karl Gillespie of Franklin — had not said how they would vote on the override. All three flipped their votes Wednesday to support the bill.
After the override passed, attendees in the gallery began to shout “Shame!” and other phrases, with some directing the calls to legislators below them on the House floor.
Police directed those shouting to leave, then appeared to arrest a woman who refused to comply with the order. The woman was seen struggling with officers as they led her out of the gallery.
Outside of the gallery, shouts of “shame!” continued. After several minutes, police directed everyone in the area to leave the building and said those who did not comply would be arrested. Protesters then filed down the stairs and out of the front doors of the building.
House debate on SB 382
All available seats in the public gallery were filled more than an hour before the session was originally set to begin at 3 p.m. An overflow crowd stood just outside the gallery, with many people holding signs. “Stop the power grab,” read one. “Western NC deserves real relief,” read another.
House Speaker Tim Moore announced ahead of the debate that he and Democratic House Leader Robert Reives agreed that each party would have the same amount of time to debate the bill. Reives later said he wanted more debate as more members of his caucus wanted to speak.
House Rules Chair Destin Hall, a Caldwell County Republican who was elected as the next speaker by the incoming GOP caucus, spoke first.
Hall talked about his visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where he talked with members of Congress about how to move forward with more Helene relief.
Regarding shifting the board’s appointment power from the governor to the auditor, Hall said: “I simply disagree with how the State Board of Elections has handled things.”
Republican Rep. Dudley Greene, who also went to Washington with Hall and Moore, gave a lengthy and emotional floor speech about what it was like living through the storm the night it arrived in Avery County.
Greene said they spent the first night in a church, and had to drive to Tennessee to find cell service, then spent a night in a Walmart parking lot before they “headed back to begin our recovery” when the waters receded.
Throughout the day on Wednesday, a number of top Republicans made public pleas calling on supporters to tell GOP representatives to vote to defeat Cooper’s veto of the bill. The N.C. GOP posted about it on social media, while Moore called into Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast to talk about the vote expected later in the day. He said it was “imperative” that Republicans override Cooper’s veto.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, meanwhile, spoke briefly about the bill on the Senate floor in Washington. In a post on X, Tillis, who served as speaker in the N.C. House before Moore, urged “every Republican” in the legislature to vote to break the veto.
Ahead of the House’s afternoon voting session, a large group of protesters gathered outside the House chamber on the second floor of the legislature and the House gallery on the third floor, singing, “This Little Light of Mine.” They continued singing throughout the afternoon as they waited for the voting session to begin.
Democrats and activists had called for protesters, who have been a regular presence at voting sessions since the bill was introduced last month, to pack the gallery during Wednesday’s vote.
In the morning, a recently created House Select Committee on Helene Recovery met for the first time and heard updates from state officials and leaders of faith-based organizations on recovery and relief efforts so far.
The dissenting Republicans, who represent the three westernmost House districts in the state, attended the committee meeting along with several other members of both parties from Western North Carolina.
The House session, and the House Rules Committee before it, were more than an hour later than scheduled on Wednesday. By the time the Rules Committee started, most House members were already on the floor, including Gillespie and Clampitt.
Clampitt was seen talking to fellow lawmakers on both sides of the aisle ahead of the start of session.
‘Nobody got threatened,’ Moore says about vote changes
After the vote, Clampitt declined to comment to N&O reporters. Gillespie also told The N&O that he declined to comment on his vote.
Pless told The N&O that while he can’t be “comfortable with a bill that has so many problems,” he was reassured after speaking with local, state and federal officials that more Helene relief money will soon be on the way. In particular, he said there was a “good probability the federal money will come down before the end of the year.”
Moore said he knew that all Republicans would override the veto before the session started Wednesday afternoon.
The N&O asked Moore if Clampitt, Gillespie and Pless were either promised something or threatened with being challenged in a primary if they didn’t vote for the override. Moore said “no.”
“Nobody got threatened. But it doesn’t take too many people to realize if they vote against something that’s clearly a Republican ideal, that that might be a problem in a primary,” Moore said. He noted that Democratic lawmakers have also been challenged in primary elections, and said, “some facts are painfully obvious.”
Moore told reporters he expected the bill to be challenged in court.
“Of course it’s going to go to court. Are you kidding? The lawsuit’s probably already been filed while we’ve been sitting in here or something. It always goes to court. That’s just the way it is,” he said.
Democrats oppose the bill
Stein, who now will have less power when he becomes governor in January, called the bill a “power grab.”
“The people of western North Carolina are desperate for help from their state government. Yet, this bill is a power grab, not hurricane relief,” Stein said in a statement.
“It is despicable for the Republicans in the General Assembly to use folks’ incredible need for aid to cloak their political pettiness. The legislature needs to step up and do its job. If they do, they will find a good faith partner in me. I’m ready to get to work,” he said.
During the House debate on the override, Democratic Rep. Lindsey Prather, who represented Helene-devastated Buncombe County, said sustaining the veto was a “vote for Western North Carolina.”
Rep. Eric Ager, also a Democratic House member representing Buncombe County, quoted the North Carolina state motto of “Esse Quam Videri,” which means, “To be, rather than to seem.”
Ager said the bill “just seems to be able to help,” but doesn’t actually help. He said the bill “just doesn’t meet the moment, and it doesn’t meet North Carolina’s values.”
Earlier Wednesday, Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat, held a news conference with representatives of several organizations opposed to the bill. Morey said legislators should have been at work providing additional relief for areas hit by Helene, not “reorganizing government.”
Sam Stites, from Just Economics, a Western North Carolina-based living-wage and economic justice organization, said he traveled to Raleigh from Transylvania County to bring a “simple message for the General Assembly” and ask legislators to provide rental assistance for those impacted by Helene. Stites thanked the three House Republicans who voted against the initial bill, including his own representative, Clampitt, and the Western North Carolina Democratic legislators who opposed the bill for their “bipartisan display of unity.”
“Western North Carolina is not a toy to be played with. It is not an opportunity to exploit. It is not a place to be so violently disrespected,” Stites said.
“Yet we are standing here today because some in the General Assembly need a reminder.”
As other critics of the bill have done since the measure was first introduced, Reighlah Collins, policy counsel for the North Carolina ACLU, called the bill and its sweeping provisions on elections and changes to executive authorities a “power grab.”
“This is not about governance,” Collins said. “It’s about control.”
Senate override of Cooper veto
Cooper vetoed SB 382 on Nov. 26, calling it “a sham,” and criticizing the lack of Helene relief and variety of power grabs.
Leading a large protest at the State Capitol on Monday, the Rev. William Barber called the GOP bill a “damnable, moral shame,” and described it as a “legislative coup.” He said that Republican lawmakers were “trying to steal power from the people” while those hit by the storm were still hurting.
Before the Senate override vote, Sen. Ralph Hise, a Spruce Pine Republican, called the power changes a “restructuring to the executive branch of the government.”
There was no debate. Senators voted along party lines to overturn Cooper’s veto.
This story was originally published December 11, 2024 at 5:08 PM with the headline "NC Republicans overturn Cooper’s veto, taking power from Stein and other Democrats."
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