Governor Cooper Vetoes Another Partisan Bill
Senator Paul Newton debates Senate Bill 360 prior to passage in April. Source: Maya Reagan
On September 27th, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper vetoed Senate Bill 360, which passed with a party-line vote. This bill would have required “approval from the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate before the Attorney General may enter into a... settlement agreement in a dispute” in which either the Speaker or the President Pro Tempore are parties.
This bill sought to shift power from the Attorney General, who is considered part of the executive branch, to the legislature. The Attorney General is the head lawyer for the state, and its office handles the state’s legal matters. For all but two of the last 120 years, Democrats have occupied the office. Meanwhile, Republicans have held both houses of the legislature for the past ten years. Yet, the legislature only passed the power shift bill after Attorney General Josh Stein came to a legal settlement concerning election rules that were antithetical to the legislature's views. The resolution ended up increasing “from three to nine, the number of days mailed absentee ballots could be received after Election Day and still count.” It also allowed absentee voters to “correct problems with witness information without filling out a new ballot.”
The election safety debate has been a highly controversial and polarizing topic in the past year. Hence, Republicans were furious when election rules were changed without their consent. Accordingly, they touted the bill as “necessary to keep corrosive, secretly negotiated rule changes out of future elections.” In their view, the Attorney General used this case, in which he agreed with the appellant's requests, to allow him to advance his party’s interests while avoiding the consent of the Republican legislature. Consequently, Republican lawmakers advertised this bill as preventing “collusive settlements” — settlements from cases in which both sides of the dispute seek the same outcome. If what Republicans allege is true, the bill attempts to prevent the Attorney General from circumventing the requirement that changes in governing rules be consented to by the people’s representatives by preventing collusive cases.
State Democrats have heavily criticized this bill for altering the balance of power in the government. Being an elected and constitutionally recognized official, Democrats believe that the Attorney General has legitimacy and should be unimpeded by legislative leaders’ interference while doing their job. Governor Roy Cooper, when vetoing the bill, said that “this bill is unconstitutional and unwise, and would prevent the attorney general from doing his job to protect the people of North Carolina.”
Disputes between Governor Cooper and the Republican-controlled legislature are nothing new. A few weeks ago, Governor Cooper controversially vetoed House Bill 324, which would have banned teaching Critical Race Theory in public schools, and House Bill 805, which would have increased penalties for rioters. These vetoes have been part of a larger pattern of the Governor stymieing partisan legislation passed by Republicans in the legislature. Since 2017, the Governor has issued 64 vetoes, more than all other North Carolina governors combined. However, North Carolina’s governors only received this power in November of 1995. The increased use of vetoes seems to indicate that the Governor will only accept bills that enjoy bipartisan support. So, with a lack of a veto-proof majority in the legislature, the Republicans are forced to play by these rules even if they believe the Attorney General does not.
Given the lack of a veto-proof majority, it is improbable that Republicans in the legislature will be able to overturn the Governor's veto. Ultimately, if they wish to reform the Attorney General’s office, like all other legislation, they will have to do so in a bipartisan manner. It should be noted that Republican legislators are currently in the process of redrawing new legislative districts and will most likely draw these districts to be as beneficial to their party as possible without causing suspicions of gerrymandering. It will be interesting to see whether these new districts will aid Republicans in obtaining a veto-proof majority in 2022, potentially limiting Governor Cooper’s ability to check the legislature.