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Getting away with it

David Daley need not convince us here that “North Carolina has become a laboratory to subvert democracy.” Since the 2010 election, followed by a decade of gerrymandering and redistricting fights, we’ve lived as the GOP’s lab rats.  How do Republicans hate democracy? Let Daley count a few ways (Salon):

Voter ID bills that surgically suppressed the Black vote, a brazen power grab over the state judiciary and election administration boards, an assault on academic freedom in the state university system, a 2016 lame-duck session that neutered the authority of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. This version of political hardball provided the playbook for Republicans in other states across the country, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas and Arizona.

Former Rep. David Lewis became the face of the rigging effort with his admission that he had drawn the state’s congressional districts to lock in 10 seats for Republicans and three for Democrats because he could not figure out how to draw them to get 11-2.

But it was the late Thomas Hofeller’s work behind the scenes that drove the gerrymandering effort. That, plus his proposal to rig the 2020 census by adding a citizenship question intended to to drive down minority response to the advantage of Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Federal authorities finally caught up with Lewis for diverting $365,000 in campaign money to his personal use through a scheme worthy of an internet scammer.

Daley explains what came of Lewis and NC Republicans fighting a decade’s worth of election lawsuits:

This week, Lewis received a slap on the wrist for this illegal financial behavior: No prison time and a $1,000 fine. It pays to be well-connected. Indeed, those without fancy lawyers and professional acquaintance with the judge would almost certainly have earned serious prison time for matters involving much smaller amounts. 

It hardly seems enough, not for Lewis’s abrogation of public trust, and not for his larger sins against democracy which have ruined lives and damaged public institutions. But in the end, North Carolina Republicans essentially got away with that too. When courts overturned the GOP maps as unconstitutional partisan or racial gerrymanders, the party had infamous partisan loyalists like Hofeller on speed-dial to replace them with new maps that were just as obviously rigged, allowing Republicans to hold supermajority power even when the two parties closely divided the vote. And even when the state supreme court overturned Hofeller’s handiwork in 2019, the maps went back to the legislature for tweaking and still favored Republicans in 2020, just a little less.  

The GOP got away with a decade’s worth of illegally drawn districts in North Carolina. All it took was dragging out court procedings and stonewalling judges’ orders to fix them when they lost in court. Republicans here were Trumpist before Trumpism was a thing.

Having gotten away with it for the last ten years, they are even now preparing to do it for another ten.

“The disease is metastasizing,” Daley writes. “Lewis’ petty corruption generated only the most tepid response.” As for their “bulldozing of competitive elections, the perversion of public policy? For that, there never seem to be any consequences at all.”

As I have said repeatedly, this is the GOP’s M.O.: 1) Find the line. 2) Step over it. 3) Dare anyone to push them back. No pushback? New line to overstep. The way water slowly erodes mountains, the GOP is eroding democracy. And damned pleased with themselves for getting away with it.

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