NC Democrats once hoarded power, too. What Republicans are doing now is worse. | Opinion

The U.S. Supreme Court said that Donald Trump is above the law by granting him immunity from his acts in office. So why are we surprised when North Carolina Republicans abuse their power and expect to get away with it?

Many times in my 20 years as a lobbyist in the N.C. General Assembly, I watched the Democratic majority needlessly grind the minority party into dust and wondered why they thought it necessary to flaunt their power. They were going to win. That was simple arithmetic.

In my view, there is a big difference between the behavior of the Democrats then and the behavior of the Republicans since they took the majority in 2011 and gerrymandered their way to automatic election victories.

The Democrats enjoyed winning when they were on top, but they did not hurt the people of North Carolina in the process. They did not mistreat poor people. They did not act like non-Christians don’t exist. And they respected the Constitution, which establishes three separate and co-equal branches of government.

Under the Republicans, millions of North Carolinians were kept uninsured for years while rural hospitals closed and millions of dollars were kept out of the state economy in part because the senate majority leader professed that the federal government would not hold up its end of the bargain. But it did, and our share went to other states that expanded Medicaid while North Carolinians died for lack of care.

One of the ways the Republicans act as if only Christians live in the state is found in the years-long effort to restrict abortion care and make it illegal in many circumstances. Proposing this ban based on religion discounts the existence of other interpretations. Jewish law does not share the belief that life begins at conception, but rather that a fetus attains full personhood at birth. While nuanced, Jewish law does not condone the sacrifice of the mother’s life or well-being for a fetus.

Under Republicans, women have been stripped of our bodily autonomy and reproductive health care freedom. Unless a woman can decide if and when she will get pregnant, she may never participate as an equal member of this economy or society. What health care procedure on the face of the Earth do men have to get permission for, have a waiting period before receiving and have to be close to death before getting?

I heard a member say on the floor of the state House years ago that abortions caused cancer. That was a lie put to rest years before he said it. I have watched unlicensed, phony “medical” facilities get millions of taxpayer dollars to lie to women to dissuade them from getting abortions. These so-called “pregnancy care centers” are not required to have licensed healthcare providers to provide medically accurate information and are not mandated to keep medical information confidential, as per the HIPPA laws.

In 1988, when a Republican won the lieutenant governor’s race for the first time in the 20th century, the Democrats relieved him of many powers. The legislature rewrote its own rules to rework the duties granted to the lieutenant governor, but Democrats did not violate the Constitution. This is not an analogous situation to what the Republicans just did.

What the Republicans did last week in overriding Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of S.B. 382 was a purely partisan maneuver that disrespected the voters of North Carolina by rewriting without our permission the job descriptions of the people we voted for. With S.B. 382, the Republican legislature took away powers written in the N.C. Constitution from several duly elected members of the executive branch. Heads I win, tails you lose, Republicans said to voters.

Politics is a dirty game, sullied even more by Republicans’ latest tactics.

This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "NC Democrats once hoarded power, too. What Republicans are doing now is worse. | Opinion."