Cooper vetoes both bills from this week’s special session

Gov. Roy Cooper applied his veto stamp Friday, July 27, to both bills that emerged from this week’s special legislative session. The governor complained in a news release that the bills “further weaken the foundation of checks and balances in state government.”

House Bill 3 jettisoned potential captions for six constitutional amendments on the November ballot. Senate Bill 3 eliminated party labels for candidates in this year’s judicial races, if those candidates joined a political party less than 90 days before filing for office.

“HB 3 seeks to cement misleading ballot descriptions of constitutional amendments that actually roll back basic separation of powers in state government,” according to Cooper’s release. “SB 3 retroactively changes the rules for one Republican candidate running for Supreme Court after the close of filing in order to rig the race and further the Republican manipulation of the judicial system.”

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, responded. “The governor’s outlandish claim that labeling proposed constitutional amendments as ‘Constitutional Amendments,’ and conforming the filing requirements for judicial candidates to every other public office in the state, is somehow ‘rigging the system’ is a poor attempt to protect political gamesmanship by his party,” Berger and Moore said in a prepared statement. “We will override these vetoes to deliver clear and consistent voter information on ballots this November.”

The “one Republican candidate” Cooper referenced is Chris Anglin, a longtime Democrat who changed his party affiliation to Republican in early June, weeks before filing on the last possible day to run in North Carolina’s single Supreme Court race this fall. Anglin joined Republican incumbent Justice Barbara Jackson and Democratic civil-rights attorney Anita Earls in the race. Jackson and Earls have picked up endorsements from their respective state parties.

Since voters face no primary election in judicial races this year, all three candidates will appear on the ballot. Without S.B. 3, ballots would list both Anglin and Jackson as Republican candidates. S.B. 3 would remove the party label from Anglin’s name. The bill also would allow Anglin to drop out of the race.

In his official veto message, Cooper says: “Changing the rules for candidates after the filing has closed is unlawful and wrong, especially when the motive is to rig a contest after it is already underway. All judge elections should be free of partisanship, and continued undermining of these elections creates confusion and shows contempt for the judiciary.”

Meanwhile, H.B. 3 reversed a 2016 state law that would have assigned the job of writing constitutional amendment ballot captions to a three-member committee. That group, originally created in 1983, features Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Attorney General Josh Stein, both Democrats, along with Legislative Services Officer Paul Coble, a Republican. While H.B. 3 blocks the panel from writing amendment captions, a task it never has performed in the past, the group still will develop short, plain-language descriptions of constitutional amendments. Those descriptions will be displayed at polling places and mailed to voters.

Cooper’s official veto message says: “These proposed constitutional amendments would dramatically weaken our system of checks and balances. The proposed amendments also use misleading and deceptive terms to describe them on the ballot.

“This bill compounds those problems by stopping additional information that may more accurately describe the proposed amendments on the ballot. Voters should not be further misled about the sweeping changes the General Assembly wants to put in the constitution.”

The N.C. House and Senate could reconvene as early as Monday to attempt to override Cooper’s vetoes. Three-fifths (or 60 percent) of the members present and voting in each chamber must support a motion to override a veto for that motion to succeed.

H.B. 3 passed with 65 percent support (67-36) in the House and 66 percent support (27-14) in the Senate. S.B. 3 passed with 59.5 percent support (25-17) in the Senate and 66 percent support (65-33) in the House.

The latest vetoes represent Cooper’s 11th and 12 of the year, and the 24th and 25th of this two-year legislative session. Cooper has vetoed more bills than any previous governor in N.C. history. Lawmakers have voted to override 18 of Cooper’s 23 previous vetoes.