Republicans Are Running Wild in My State

NYT OPINION: Republicans Are Running Wild in My State
By Frank Bruni
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 4, 2023 at 03:00AM

North Carolina is shaping up as a case study in unrepresentative government.

Political colorists can be promiscuous in calling states purple, but my state is true to that hue. I speak of North Carolina, and I have receipts: While our junior senator, Ted Budd, is a Republican who won election to a first term in 2022 by about three percentage points, our governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat who won election to a second term in 2020 by more than four. Donald Trump prevailed in North Carolina that same year, but only barely. This is not a land of blowouts. It’s a middle ground, and that’s reflected in voter registration rolls. Nearly 2.6 million North Carolinians declare themselves unaffiliated, while just over 2.4 million identify as Democrats and just under 2.2 million as Republicans. We don’t tilt. We teeter. In a healthier democracy, that would be an amulet against extremism. In ours, not so much. The North Carolina Supreme Court, which switched to a Republican majority from a Democratic one in the midterm elections last November, just reversed a ruling from last year and cleared the way for the Republicans in the General Assembly to gerrymander North Carolina’s congressional districts — which they will almost certainly do.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/north-carolina-republicans.html