Why this Western NC lawmaker flipped his vote, helping Republicans pass power-shift bill
Three Republicans who initially voted against GOP legislation pairing additional disaster relief with provisions taking power away from recently elected Democrats joined the rest of their party and voted Wednesday to enact the bill into law over a veto.
The decisions by the three GOP state lawmakers from Western North Carolina to join Democrats in voting against the bill last month generated weeks of speculation about the bill’s fate, since outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed it and Republicans would not be able to override the veto — their 29th this session — without all of their members voting together.
One Republican who voted against the bill last month, Rep. Mark Pless of Canton, highlighted a number of concerns he had with the disaster relief portion in recent weeks. He echoed Cooper’s criticism of the additional relief, telling the Queen City News that instead of sending additional money to “the many needs in Western NC,” the bill “was simply moving money from one account to another.”
After Wednesday’s vote, Pless told The News & Observer he decided to vote to override Cooper’s veto after House Republicans held their caucus meeting earlier in the day and had a “pretty lengthy discussion” about the bill and how it works.
He said he still has issues with “the way the bill was done” and will never be “comfortable with a bill that has so many problems.” At the same time, he said he was reassured after speaking with local, state and federal officials that additional relief money will be sent to help people who were devastated by Helene “sometime here in the next very brief period of time.”
In particular, he said there was a “good probability the federal money will come down before the end of the year.” At the state level, he said the General Assembly “has more money to give.”
“A lot of people think that we’re not doing that, but we do have more money to give,” Pless said. “Our share, it’s probably going to be about $5 billion. We’ve only put about a billion to it, so we’ve still got money. That will come with it, as the feds give us money, we can start adding some of our money to it.”
Defending the latest round of relief money against criticism from Democrats who said it wasn’t nearly sufficient to help people who need immediate help paying rent and keeping their businesses afloat, Republicans have pointed out that in total, the legislature has spent nearly $1.1 billion on total relief since Helene ravaged the western part of the state in late September.
This bill sends $227 million from the state’s rainy day fund to the recently created Helene fund, but doesn’t specify what all of the money will be spent on.
Aside from those relief provisions, the bulk of the 131-page bill makes changes to the powers of statewide offices that Democrats won in November.
Among other things, the bill takes away the governor’s power to appoint members to the State Board of Elections, transferring it to incoming State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican; prohibits incoming Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson from taking any position on state laws being challenged in court that is inconsistent with the one taken by the General Assembly; and prevents incoming Democratic State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green from appealing decisions made by the N.C. Charter School Review Board.
In a statement he released later Wednesday evening, Pless said that even though the bill “did nothing” for victims of Helene, he was “convinced there is a path forward and money will be available quickly to provide help [for] the people of Western North Carolina.”
He also said of the criticisms Democrats made of the power shifts: “Numerous attempts have been made to characterize this bill as being unconstitutional. I have no reason to believe that is the case or I would not be voting to pass it today.”
Rep. Mike Clampitt of Bryson City and Rep. Karl Gillespie of Franklin, the other two Republicans who voted against the bill last month but voted Wednesday to override Cooper’s veto, declined to comment when asked about their votes afterward.
Earlier in the day, Pless, Clampitt, and Gillespie attended the first meeting of the newly established House Select Committee on Helene Recovery, to which they were appointed last week.
Asked after session if the three Republicans were either promised something or threatened with a primary challenge if they didn’t join the rest of the party in voting for the override, outgoing House Speaker Tim 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, referencing how Democrats have also faced primary challenges.
He also said he knew that all Republicans would override the veto before the session started that afternoon.
This story was originally published December 11, 2024 at 8:04 PM with the headline "Why this Western NC lawmaker flipped his vote, helping Republicans pass power-shift bill."
