The below article, “Dark Money Damaging North Carolina Democracy,” was published by my local paper, The Pilot, on August 15, 2018, several years before I published my first Wormwood. Like many Americans, I was observing, every day, the corrosive effects of “Citizens United” on American democracy.
This article provides a case study of how Citizens United has corrupted politics in North Carolina, where a Republican-dominated General Assembly used corporate and billionaire cash to turn a “purple” state MAGA red.
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Dark Money Damaging NC Democracy
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of “Citizens United” on January 21, 2010, Justice Stephens dissented that the majority’s ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across this Nation.” He added that “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”
A few months later, conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie had lunch with conservative multimillionaire Art Pope and laid out REDMAP. The project was designed to help Republicans take control of statehouses where Congressional redistricting was pending, and he proposed to Pope “a new way to spend his money.”
Art Pope
Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article “State for Sale” (October 10, 2011) discusses this meeting and what followed – required reading for anyone who wants to understand how NC Democrats got gob smacked by the GOP from then till now. The article explains how Pope “created a network combining a family fortune, the resources of a large private company, and family-funded policy organizations.” Among these various ultra-conservative groups are “Americans for Prosperity,” “Real Jobs NC,”” The John W. Pope Civitas Institute,” “Civitas Action,” “John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy,” and “The John Locke Foundation.”
Koch brothers
These organizations, committed to the free market, small government principles of the “classical liberal” philosophers like John Locke and David Hume, embrace a high-minded theoretical context for civilized debate. After all, our Constitution was forged out of the creative liberal-conservative tensions among our founding fathers. Compromise between the two opposing world views is essential for the proper functioning of a government.
However, in state elections since 2010, pristine theory has given way to grubby practice. Locke and Hume have been brushed aside by Machiavelli. Pope, in alliance with pals like the Koch brothers, has spent millions of dollars in every corner of NC to reshape the face of democracy in our state. As former governor Bev Perdue said: “The Republican agenda in NC is really Art Pope’s agenda. He sets it, he funds it, and he directs the efforts to achieve it.” Pope subsequently helped finance Pat McCrory’s successful run for governor, and then became his first budget director, deciding budgetary priorities for the state after helping to finance the election campaigns of most state Republicans. Game. Set. Match.
Undeterred by any need or desire to compromise with political opponents, the Republican General Assembly has steamrollered a predictable laissez faire agenda: tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals, loosening of regulations on big businesses, even polluting industries. But they did not stop there.
Republicans typically believe that government interference against corporate behavior is wrong. Let the market decide. Yet that largesse does not extend to actual people. They believe government interference into the intimate behavior of private citizens is somehow warranted. Republican legislators – not the market – will decide.
Hence the punitive face of their agenda: favoring a constitutional amendment on gay marriage, defunding Planned Parenthood, punitive abortion restrictions, senselessly rejecting Medicaid expansion, radically cutting budgets for universities and schools (dropping NC, at one point from 20th in the nation in education spending to 43rd), passing the notorious “bathroom bill,” rejecting common sense gun reforms, lowering pollution standards, favoring “fracking” and offshore drilling.
And more: weeks after the Supreme Court’s gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, declaring racism dead in the South, the NC General Assembly expanded efforts to gerrymander districts to insure long-term majorities throughout the state with a racial as well as a party bias. Vigorous efforts at voter suppression began simultaneously – curtailing early voting, requiring photo ID cards, slashing the number of available voting precincts in majority black counties, making it difficult for college students to vote.
This plan was summed up unequivocally by former legislator, Don Yelton, who bragged on “Comedy Central” that the law was designed to “kick Democrats in the butt” and thwart “lazy college kids” and “lazy blacks.” Mr. Yelton, however, deftly defended himself against the charge of bigotry by stating that “one of his best friends was black.”
Four new constitutional amendments favored by the Republicans are headed for the November ballot. One is intended to give the legislature, not the governor, the power to appoint new judges. When asked by a reporter if the newly proposed constitutional amendments were intended to strip power from Gov. Cooper, Republican senator Phil Berger laughed and asked: “Does he still have any?”
As we know, elections have consequences. So do Supreme Court decisions. “Citizens’ United” has profoundly corrupted our electoral process, as Justice Stephens warned. What Martin Nesbitt, Jr., late Democratic state senator once said of Pope’s spending on elections, “What he’s doing is buying elections.”
Pope himself is quoted as saying “that if his opponents disagreed [with him] they could fund their own side: ‘I welcome the competition.’”
November 2018 – Game On
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And now this. . .
Thanks Tammy. I’ll do my best.
True, very true, and so sad.
Keep on writing the truth.
Thank you.