RALEIGH – A liberal friend of mine, a longtime Democratic activist, asked me the other day what I thought of the performance of the North Carolina General Assembly so far this year.
It was a good question. To him, both the content and the pace of legislation have been puzzling. But he also admitted that, given his political views and allegiances, he never expected to understand or endorse most of the legislative program of the new conservative majorities in the House and Senate. So he wanted to know how I thought they were doing.
Well, they have certainly made a lot of news, some of it qualifying as bad press. In the House, for example, early attempts to use party caucuses as informational meetings for new members, with lobbyists and other invited guests speaking behind closed doors, proved to be unwise and counterproductive. And some individual members, longtime lawmakers as well as rookies, have committed one of the cardinal sins of politics: engaging their mouths without first engaging their minds.
But when I examine the events of the 2011 session on the basis of how they might appear to the average North Carolinian looking in, here is what I see:
• Recognizing the seriousness of the state’s fiscal problems and the undesirability of another tax hike, a conservative legislature sent an unpopular governor a bill to save hundreds of millions of dollars. She vetoed it to defend corporate welfare. That won’t help her one bit.
• Recognizing the unpopularity and fiscal risks associated with ObamaCare, the conservative legislature voted to add North Carolina to the majority of states challenging its provisions in court. The governor vetoed the move, aligning herself with one of the worst pieces of social legislation in recent memory. In this case, the veto probably improves Perdue’s standing among the Democratic base – but at the expense of further alienating swing voters.
• In her budget plan for next year, Gov. Perdue actually moved towards longtime conservative positions on a variety of issues – such as downsizing the state’s workforce, reorganizing state agencies, privatizing some state services, and cutting the state’s corporate-income tax. But she didn’t come far enough, proposing a net increase in taxes over the next two fiscal years of about $600 million a year. The legislature appears to be working towards a budget to eliminate those taxes, setting up another possible veto fight that probably won’t help Perdue with swing voters, either.
• On education, Republican lawmakers assembled a broad coalition to begin the process of reforming North Carolina’s troubled testing program. While the teachers union supported the initial step, junking invalid state tests in several high-school subjects, it isn’t likely to support follow-up legislation to implement independent, nationally normed testing so North Carolina parents and taxpayers receive valid information about how our public schools are performing.
Assessment is one element of meaningful education reform. Another is parental choice. Legislative leaders have moved legislation to lift the statewide cap on charter schools and make other changes to encourage choice and competition in public education.
In both cases – new tests and charter schools – Perdue will get strong pressure from allied interest groups to issue still more vetoes. Again, taking these positions may serve to rebuild ties with her political base, but they will turn off swing voters, who favor effective testing and choice programs.
• On electoral reform, Republicans have rolled out legislation that would, among other things, require voters to show photo IDs at the polls or else cast provisional ballots so that officials can make sure they aren’t casting fraudulent votes. Democrats and liberal groups are screaming bloody murder, and seem to have made the defeat of this bill a top priority.
Whatever you think of the extent of voter fraud, and the efficacy of voter ID as a remedy, you have to see the political problem here. Because the legislation includes provisions to issue photo IDs to disadvantaged or disabled citizens (thus addressing concerns about excluding legal voters from casting ballots) and is one of the most popular ideas in North Carolina politics at the moment (among voters of all partisan affiliations) liberal lawmakers and activists are committing themselves to a position that makes little sense to most North Carolinians.
It would have been wiser to fashion a compromise on the bill and challenge the Republicans on other issues where voter opinion is more mixed or unformed.
All and all, the first few weeks of the legislation session have featured far more wins than losses for the new conservative majority, both in substance and message.
That’s what I told my friend. He didn’t seem happy about it.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.