The Republican power grab in North Carolina, explained

Democrats will hold some of North Carolina’s highest offices, including the governorship, come January. But these incoming lawmakers will be less powerful than their predecessors, after the Republican-dominated legislature stripped away several of their duties this week.

It isn’t the first time Republicans in North Carolina’s state legislature have shifted the balance of power away from Democrats and toward members of their own party. As a result, the North Carolina governorship is a weaker office than it is in many other states — and Republicans will have a remarkable degree of influence over state politics, despite Democratic victories at the ballot box in November.

North Carolina is a deeply polarized state, and was considered a battleground in the 2024 elections. Now, when Gov.-elect Josh Stein and other Democrats take office in 2025, the battle will be between them and a legislature still dominated by Republicans.

What powers did the governor and other officials lose?

The state legislature, known as the General Assembly, didn’t just target Stein, although he’s the most high-profile official that the new law applies to. The incoming lieutenant governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction (who oversees the state’s public school system) all had authority stripped from them in the new legislation.

There are two major changes to Stein’s authority. First, he loses the ability to make appointments to North Carolina’s five-person elections board. Previously, the governor appointed two Republicans and two Democrats, and a fifth member who could belong to either political party. (Typically, the governor appointed a member of their own party for that final slot.) The State Board of Elections chooses four of the five members of each county board, with the governor appointing the fifth member — again, usually a member of the governor’s party. Those powers will now be in the hands of the new state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek. 

“It shifts from Democratic control to Republican control, because the auditor is now a Republican, and if they keep the same basic principle, he’ll appoint three Republicans and Democrats will appoint two,” Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, told to Vox. “Whether that will be significant in terms of what the election board does in the future, I think we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Perhaps of greater significance, Stein will also have limits around who he can appoint to vacant state supreme court and Court of Appeals seats; now, rather than appointing any qualified person, the law states he must choose from a list “recommended by the political party executive committee of the political party with which the vacating judge was affiliated when elected,” preventing him from significantly changing the balance of power in those courts. 

The other significant change relates to incoming Attorney General Jeff Jackson. Under the new law, he will be required to defend the state legislature’s bills when they are challenged at any level. 

Why did this happen?

Current North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, which also included some funds for disaster relief following Hurricane Helene, but Republicans have enough of a majority in both the state’s House and Senate to override gubernatorial vetos. 

Republicans, however, will narrowly lose their veto-proof supermajority in the House next year — this bill represents the party’s last chance to impose strict limits on the governorship and executive power. 

In many ways, North Carolina is a state primed for the sort of action the legislature took this week: The state’s executive branch has always been weak, Bitzer said.

“The General Assembly is the first among co-equal branches of government,” Bitzer told Vox. “And this is a long history, going back to colonial rule. So the executive branch is weak in general, and they serve at the discretionary authority of what the General Assembly assigns to them.”

This is not the first time the North Carolina General Assembly has weakened an incoming administration’s power. Before Cooper started his first term in 2016, the General Assembly — then also dominated by Republicans — voted to curtail Cooper’s power over the state board of elections and have the state senate approve the governor’s Cabinet selections.

“They took [powers] from him in 2016, [and] they continued to take more powers throughout the rest of the cycle,” Democratic North Carolina state Sen. Sydney Batch told Vox.”What you’ve seen is an attrition of powers in every single elected office that has consistently gone Democratic.”

A similar dynamic played out in the 1970s, when Republican Jim Holzhauser was the governor and Democrats dominated the General Assembly. Republicans have taken similar action in other states as well: For example, Wisconsin’s Republican-dominated legislature also adopted measures to limit Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s power before he took office in 2019.

What’s next

In the immediate term, there are likely to be challenges to the new law in court; however, if those challenges make their way up to the state supreme court, they will face a Republican-dominated bench. 

The new General Assembly will meet on January 29. The Senate will maintain a strong Republican majority, as will the House. Again, House Republicans are just one vote shy of a veto-proof supermajority with 71 seats; they’ll need to appeal to at least some of the chamber’s 49 Democrats if they want to stymie Stein’s agenda. 

“​​I think Stein and Jackson will certainly attempt to use their executive authority and any discretionary power that they feel they have to pursue their own goals,” Bitzer said. “But I think we’re in institutional battle lines between the legislature and the governor and other Democratic executive officers, and we’ll just see how trench warfare plays itself out over the next four years.”