North Carolina’s Republican Party had a very rough 2024 — the face of the Tar Heel state’s conservative party Mark Robinson was revealed to be not just a bigot, but a self-proclaimed “black NAZI” and “perv” (yes, he used those exact words).
Those revelations were brought to light in the weeks leading up to the general election, and while 50.7 percent of North Carolina voters chose to elect Donald Trump to the presidency, a much larger percentage rejected nearly every Republican up for election in the state’s executive branch races. Democrats have won eight of the last nine gubernatorial elections in North Carolina, and now, they’ve gained crucial ground in the governor’s mansion, the Cabinet and the General Assembly.
North Carolina’s GOP now faces a real threat to its grasp for control, and in an effort to keep their slimy, grubby fingers grasped on the hilt of legislative power, the General Assembly voted to strip much of the powers of newly elected Democrats, including the governor’s office and his cabinet. If that wasn’t enough concern for North Carolinians, Republicans are working tirelessly to throw out over 60,000 ballots to overturn the results of the state’s Supreme Court election which saw Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs secure her seat by a narrow margin of 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast.
George Orwell poignantly wrote about these kinds of actions in his novel “1984,” stating:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
There is an argument to be made that both political parties have used Orwellian rhetoric or tactics, but it’s become clear North Carolina’s conservative movement and the national GOP are threatened and willing to do anything — even dismantle the very fabric of our Republic — to guarantee their reign remains.
We’re sounding the alarm on North Carolina’s GOP because, like the party in “1984,” they know what they’re doing: they’re testing the limits of democracy with the hopes of being able to replicate this strategy on the national stage. Their goal: to create a system to control people and keep those who want to change our state and country for the better from ever getting close to having a sliver of their power.
Understanding the Republican power grab in the General Assembly
In the weeks immediately following the election in North Carolina, the General Assembly met to pass a slew of legislation. Some bills were masked as hurricane relief for the victims of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, but actually aimed to strip power from the governor’s office and more.
Gov. Stein can no longer appoint members to the state elections board because the duty was moved to the state auditor — the seat of which was won by a Republican in November — by a vote along party lines. The new law also weakens the ability of the governor to fill vacancies on the state’s appeals courts and supreme court, as well as prohibits the attorney general from taking legal positions contrary to the legislature. In addition, Republicans weakened the powers of the state school superintendent and lieutenant governor, which were all won by Democrats in November.
“This is not how healthy democracies work,” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University. “You don’t lose and decide you’re going to change the rules because you don’t like that you lost. It’s corrosive of the basic principles of democracy.”
Attempts to overthrow election results
Republican nominee for the North Carolina Supreme Court Jefferson Griffin filed a motion to challenge 60,273 legal North Carolina voters’ ballots, citing what he calls “incomplete” registrations. His claim argues the ballots are missing information such as a driver’s license or Social Security number. However, it appears Griffin is only targeting certain kinds of ballots.
According to reporting from INDY Week, Griffin’s campaign only challenged absentee and early ballots, which tend to favor Democrats. More than 28,000 voters with similar registration issues who cast their ballots on Election Day, which historically favor Republicans, were excluded from Griffin’s challenge. In addition, analysis by the Voting Rights Lab found over 12,000 voters aged 18 to 25 are included in Griffin’s challenge, making it 3.4 times more likely for youth voters to have their votes challenged than those over 65.
The Voting Rights Lab also found Griffin’s challenge left out over 159,000 voters with the same registration issue who registered before 2004. In addition, urban areas such as Durham with a higher Black voting population are targeted more than rural, white areas in this challenge. In other words: Griffin is attempting to overthrow the votes of many young, marginalized North Carolinians in a last ditch effort to grasp onto any form of power.
“It’s so deeply unethical and unfair,” Voting Rights Lab director Gunther Peck, a Duke history professor, said to INDY Week. “People are watching. And if this is successful here, then the weapon works. It’s bad not just for Democrats. This is bad for Republicans, too.”
The State Board of Elections, however, has told Griffin’s team and the public that voters remain eligible even if their registration lacks a driver’s license or social security number. The reason: All North Carolina voters are required to show identification before they cast a ballot under the newly enforced Voter ID laws.
Despite the board’s rejection of Griffin’s challenge, he took it to the Republican-majority Supreme Court. Now, the highest judicial body in the state refuses to certify the results until there is a remedy. Justice Richard Dietz, a Republican, broke from the ranks of his conservative majority, voicing a dissenting opinion ominously similar to a warning, writing the ruling “invites incredible mischief” and “seeks to remove the legal right to vote from people who lawfully voted.”
The GOP has become ‘The Party’
In true Orwellian fashion, North Carolina Republicans are claiming what they do is in the best interest of their fellow man, but in reality, they only care about holding onto any form of power over a public who’s growing more and more unsatisfied with their state’s government.
The state’s GOP is desperate to stop the inevitable change in the works here in the Tar Heel State — we are sick of Republicans using often necessary legislation to mask attempts and taking more power away. While Republicans think they are taking away power from Democrats, what they’re actually doing is taking away the people’s voice and, in turn, our ability to change our state for the better.
In the words of George Orwell from his novel, “Animal Farm,” which examines how leaders can become corrupt and abuse their power: “Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer — except, of course, for the pigs and dogs.”
Republicans in North Carolina came into power after over a century of Democratic leadership because Democrats used the same abuse of gerrymandering and stunts in an attempt for a cheap power grab. The GOP was able to use that record as fuel to start decades-long work to overtake the state, and it worked.
State Republicans continue to use the Democrats’ past in the state as justification for their actions while Democrats have refused to take accountability for setting the precedent of these actions (though some Democratic leadership such as now attorney general Jeff Jackson have taken accountability for the party’s corrupt past in the state).
Though Democrats set the groundwork, Republicans have taken the political playbook and completely rewrote it to dismantle the very systems set in place to prevent corruption, starting with upending our elections and censoring the people’s voice.
To North Carolina’s Republican legislators: We see everything you do. We know what you’re doing, and you will have to answer to us when your seat is up for reelection.