North Carolina dodged a GOP tsunami in the midterms, but it’s still bleeding red

It wasn’t a tsunami — and maybe it wasn’t quite a wave, either — but North Carolina is still seeing red.

Despite a stronger night than expected for Democrats across the country, the Tar Heel state took a strong step to the right Tuesday. Republicans appear to have gained a supermajority in the state Senate, and GOP candidates swept statewide judicial races, including two critical seats on the N.C. Supreme Court.

There is at least one reason for many North Carolinians to breathe a sigh of relief, however: Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto power remains intact. Unlike in the Senate, Republicans stopped one seat short of a veto-proof majority in the House, according to unofficial results. That means abortion access — both in North Carolina and across the Southeast — is likely safe. And other dangerous legislation, such as new voting restrictions, is less likely to be resurrected.

Yes, Republicans walked away celebrating their supermajority in the state Senate. And yes, Democrats, including Cooper, rejoiced in the fact that they prevented one in the House. But it’s still a rough go for Democrats in the General Assembly, when just four years ago it seemed there was a Virginia-like shift happening here. Democrats broke through the Republican supermajority in the 2018 midterms, slowing a near-constant stream of bad legislation that was both harmful and embarrassing to our state.

Further progress was made in 2020, when Democrats flipped a couple more historically Republican seats. Ricky Hurtado’s victory in deep-red Alamance County, for example, made him the only Latino representative in the state legislature. But Hurtado lost his re-election bid Tuesday night, as did Brian Farkas, who unseated a Republican incumbent in Pitt County in 2020. Three other Democratic incumbents lost their seats Tuesday, all of them in more rural counties.

With the balance of power in the legislature now tilted further right, Democrats’ power has weakened significantly, and any hope of lawmakers passing legislation that moves our state forward, not backward, has likewise dimmed. The fate of Medicaid expansion remains unclear, as does the potential for improved pay and benefits for teachers. Republicans need just one vote in the House in order to successfully override Cooper’s veto, which they could get by negotiating with more moderate Democrats or simply waiting for someone to be absent from the floor.

Still, in a tricky midterm environment, this is sort of a win for Democrats, at least in that it’s not nearly as bad as it could’ve been. That’s true across the country; as it turns out, Democrats may hold onto the U.S. Senate and lose the U.S. House narrowly despite expectations of a red washout.

It stings for Democrats, however, knowing that the best they can do for now in North Carolina is damage control. Republicans maintain an iron grip on this state, and that remained evident this year, particularly in statewide races that are not subject to gerrymandering.

The worst result of the night for Democrats, though, was the Republican sweep of key judicial races. Republicans flipped both state Supreme Court seats on the ballot this year, ultimately gaining a 5-2 majority on the court that will remain in place until at least 2028. Much like a supermajority in the General Assembly, the Supreme Court result removes a key check on the legislature’s power, one that has been especially critical in recent years.

With an increasing number of fundamental issues being decided at the state level, it’s a result that’s bad for North Carolina — for voting rights, for public education, for the potential of new and worse partisan gerrymandering. In fact, Tuesday’s outcome might have been a lot different had it not been for the court’s existing Democratic majority, which in February forced a redraw of skewed maps that were expected to hand Republicans a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature.

For now, voters made a clear statement: for all the talk in recent years about North Carolina being a purple state, Tuesday’s results were deeply red.

This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 6:05 AM.