The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Hyperpartisan State

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

North Carolina is a relatively purple state, where voting between the two major parties tends to be close. That might suggest a place of common ground and compromise, but it’s quite the opposite. ��A couple of years before the rest of the country got nasty, we started to get nasty,” a North Carolina political scientist tells Charles Bethea. Not long ago, a veto-override vote devolved into a screaming match on the floor, to which the police were called. Bethea, a longtime political reporter based in Atlanta, went to Raleigh to examine how hyper-partisanship plays out on a state capitol, where everyone knows each other, and the political calculations seem to revolve more on who did what to whom, and when, than on who wants to do what now. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNIC Studios and The New Yorker. How dare you, Mr. Speaker? Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The unseemly lack of leadership is incredible. That's just another day in the state capital of North Carolina. Childishness, cowardice. How dare you do this, Mr. Speaker? A representative named Deb Butler is standing at her seat and shouting at Tim Moore, who's the Speaker of the House in the state legislature.

The speaker had just called a vote to override a veto by the governor, which sounds like pretty standard business in a state capital, any state capital. So what's going on? Are you proud of this? Are you proud of yourselves? Look at you. Passes, chair, correct? There's no one here. It's a story with a lot to tell us about the increasingly partisan nature.

of our country. And here's Charles Bethay, who's been covering politics for the New Yorker for more than a decade. So most of my reporting for the New Yorker involves going to smaller communities, often in the southeast, near Atlanta where I live. I mean, you get a sense of the complexity of both the people and the issues in a way that you don't when you're looking at things like polls. You get texture, you get emotion, which makes things, both more interesting and at times more inscrutable. This past summer and early fall, I started hearing more about how bad things were getting in North Carolina.

And then I saw this video of this House legislative session, and it struck me as pretty wild. Chris, it's Charles Bethay. How are you? Good, man, how are you? I called up a guy I know named Chris Cooper. He's the head of the political science department at Western Carolina University. he's obsessive about North Carolina politics in a useful way. So how would you just describe the partisan divide here?

I guess has it always been sort of rancorous and divisive and toxic? Sure. I mean, I think North Carolina is a little bit of a bellwether. A couple of years before the rest of the country got nasty, I think we started to get nasty. I think part of the reason for that is that we had 100 years, essentially of Democratic control in the state of North Carolina. If the Democrats controlled the General Assembly, which we call the state legislature here,

but as the rest of the South changed partisanship, North Carolina did as well. But what we're left with today is a state that I would describe as a fairly moderate state, a purple state, a swing state, but a general assembly that is overwhelmingly governed by the Republican Party. And at the same time now, you have a Democratic governor who barely, and I mean barely, won the governor's mansion this last round and is facing this majority Republican control. So North Carolina is a purple state, which makes people think that there's going to be more, potentially more cooperation between the parties that they're going to be closer on issues. But actually, the opposite appears to be true. If we accept that North Carolina's a bellwether for the rest of the country, which it appears to be, it seemed important to figure out why it is the way it is.

So in October, I went to Raleigh. Mid-afternoon in Raleigh, walking over to meet the governor, it's hot outside. It's at 95 degrees, I think, which is apparently record-tying for this today, or maybe it's record-tying tomorrow. Well, in either case, it does not feel like October. The new world we're in here. The executive mansion feels a little like my grandmother's house. Musty, thick rugs, oil paintings, oak furniture. Also, according to an aide I talked to, it's haunted.

So I can't really get too into it, but it's haunted supposedly by Governor Fowell. So he was the first governor to live here, and he died in the executive mansion. And so supposedly he likes to make sure things are a-okay. So he's like a friendly ghost. Yeah, most definitely. Governor Daniel Fowl was a Democrat. Even the ghosts in North Carolina are partisan. I met Governor Cooper in an office on the third floor

that oddly had a rowing machine outside. That's mine. That is. Yeah. My rowing has been curtailed when I had a herniated disc. So I got a text from coach Mike Shoshchevsky when I had my back operation saying that I needed to take it easy and not go back too fast because that's what happened to him. And I'm disappointed because I'm a UNC fan and I hadn't gotten my Roy Williams text yet. I was about we're going to talk about speaking across the aisles.

And if you're talking to Shoshchewski as a UNC guy, then that means you're able to do that effectively. My campaign for governor of North Carolina brought UNC and Duke together. So I want to start by talking about your election. So you beat Pat McCrory by about 10,000 votes. To what specific factors do you attribute your victory? I don't think there's any question that the extreme right-wing legislation that he was rubber stamping, most people in North Carolina thought that was not the way to go. The bathroom bill that he had signed, the discriminatory,

voter suppression that has been passed. So this struck me as kind of odd. Cooper's not talking about himself as a candidate. He's not outlining his vision for the state. He just goes right into attack mode. It was because of them, the other side. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised. He's been conditioned to talk like that.

He's been under attack from North Carolina's Republicans since even before he took office. A few weeks before he was sworn in, the Republicans in the state legislature called a special session. What purpose does the gentleman from Hartnett, Representative Lewis, rise? To debate the bill. The gentleman has the fore to debate the bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is Republican Representative David Lewis.

You'll want to remember that name. The bill also does change the number of employees that are exempt from the state personnel act. Lewis is arguing for a bill that would limit the number of appointments Cooper could make as governor. That bill passed. So did a bill giving the Republican-controlled Senate the power to confirm Cooper's cabinet appointments and a bill changing the makeup of the state board of elections to favor Republicans. They went and began stripping the governor's office of power. So this was the first salvo.

Were you or were you not surprised by the power play right after you were elected. I can't say that I was surprised because this General Assembly and this Republican leadership had done everything it could to preserve its power to curtail people's right to vote and draw districts that are technologically diabolical in the way they have gerrymandered them. To show you how diabolical it was, the head of the redistricting committee, he was being questioned about our congressional districts. Vote totals for the two parties tend to be fairly close, and yet the voting maps had elected 10 Republican legislators

and three Democrats. The head of the redistricting committee was asked how that could be. His response, we couldn't figure out a way to make it 11 to 2. That was David Lewis. That won't be the last time you hear that name. Cooper's been clashing with the Republicans ever since on issues like redistricting, climate change, and most recently the state budget.

In June, Cooper vetoed the budget put together by the Republicans in the General Assembly. I vetoed the budget because it short-changed education because it denied health insurance for 5 to 600,000 North Carolinians when we could have easily taken Medicaid expansion.

In North Carolina, to override a veto, you don't need a three-fifths majority of all the members. You just need a three-fifths majority of the members who are there when the vote is called. So to make sure the Republicans

couldn't overturn the veto, every Democrat had to show up at every House session. But they have left their family obligations. One of them even left the sick bed of a spouse. One was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. They came every single time that there was a potential for a vote. So what they continued to try to do was to coax Democrats to leave and to take water. and to create the right amount of people who were there in the chamber in order to override the veto, they could not do it.

The only way they did it was lying to them. And that was a dark day in this day. That day was September 11th. Intentional, systemic deception. Cooper told me it went down like this. The Republican chair of the House Rules Committee told the leader of the House Democrats, that there wouldn't be any votes the morning of September 11th. So a bunch of Democrats took the morning off.

By the way, want to guess who the Republican chair of the House Rules Committee is? It's David Lewis. You know what happened next. I went into a foxhole mode, I think. I just stood up and objected. I was so scared, honestly. That's Deb Butler, the Democrat from Wilmington. just used the best efforts I could muster, you know, and I tried to talk him down,

and I tried to not yield the floor, and it was pandemonium, and the police were coming, and my colleagues surrounded me. I mean, it was chaos. So what's life been like in the chamber since then, how of Republicans been treating you? Oh, very, very sweet to me in the days that followed, offering me cookies, and Deb, can I carry that to you? And I was like, oh my gosh, really? Because there's a certain guilt that came with it. I know that they have to feel poorly about it.

And now that vote, of course, sits in our Senate. It's still not law. We are operating without a budget to this day. And I know, for example, right now the Department of Transportation is struggling terribly. You know, we've had horrific flooding. And we have roads that are in dire need of repair because of these flood events. And they're struggling to have the equipment and the supplies that they need to be prepared. That will make holiday travel very difficult if we have a snow event or a heavy rain event.

I'm guessing there was a time in North Carolina when road repair wasn't a fiercely partisan issue, but that time appears to be over. So, according to the Democrats, the problem in North Carolina, the problem in the road repair wasn't a fiercely partisan issue, but that time appears to be over. North Carolina is the Republicans. I actually hear that a lot, and not just from elected officials, also from voters. People on one side pointing to the other and saying that that's where the problem starts. If I talk to a Republican, I'm sure he'd say the same thing about the Democrats. And the reason I'm sure of that is because I talked to a Republican, and that's what he said.

I think that it is plainly obvious that this is funded by money from the big laugh. The Republican I talk to? Who else? David Lewis. The New Yorker's Charles Bethay. His story about North Carolina politics and just how ugly it's gotten

continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. North Carolina's state government might be one of the most fiercely partisan bodies in a country that is, I think we can all agree, ever more fiercely partisan.

And in October, staff writer Charles Bethay went to Raleigh to try to figure out what exactly has gone wrong in North Carolina. The governor, who's a Democrat, gave Charles a simple and clear explanation. The Republicans did it. So Charles spoke with one of the state's most powerful Republicans, a man named David Lewis. David Lewis has been in the North Carolina legislature for 16 years. He's a legislator through and through. He cares deeply about things like, trash pickup and smoking regulations. And when the assembly isn't in session, he goes back home

to his farm where he grows tobacco and cotton. He's known Governor Cooper for a long time. Many of us had known Governor Cooper from the time he served in the General Assembly. We had known him certainly through his long tenure as Attorney General. I'd actually played basketball with the guy in the past. And every odd-numbered year, the North Carolina, the North Carolina legislature plays the South Carolina legislature in a charity basketball game. That particular year, Attorney General Cooper and the treasurer Richard Moore both played, and frankly, they were both better than I was. That's very, it's big of you and generous of you to admit. I had the size, but Roy had the speed and the skill. That's the last nice thing you're going

to hear David Lewis say about Roy Cooper. Governor Cooper made the strategic decision to bring in a host of advisors who I think are very much to the left of mainstream North Carolina politics. Sort of the old moderate Democrat that Roy Cooper had portrayed, that person went away and was replaced with a much more aggressive leftist-oriented political figure. David Lewis is no moderate himself. He's probably best known for this statement that he made during a hearing on gerrymandering in 2016. I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats

because I do not believe it's possible to draw a map with 11. seven Republicans and two Democrats. In general, it's not a good thing to pull a single sentence out of context like that. So can you briefly give us a little bit about why you made that statement? That statement was made after a multiple day process in which we were tasked with redrawing districts, which normally takes six months. We were given two weeks. I had made clear in previous statements that there were multiple criteria that were being followed in drawing the districts. When he says criteria, he means things like trying to make districts have similar populations or trying to avoid dividing up counties.

If politics had been the only criteria, I could have probably found a way to have given Republicans a chance to win 12 out of the third. 13 seats. So the maps may have been biased towards Republicans, but they weren't as biased as David Lewis could have made them. Yeah, in a weird way, it's kind of refreshing to hear David Lewis cop to that. If you think of politics as something kind of pure and pristine, what David Lewis said would sound shocking. But I don't view politics that way.

I haven't for some time. I don't think David Lewis does either, and he certainly doesn't think the Democrats do. There is a national movement that I think is led largely by former attorney general Eric Holder. I think that it is plainly obvious that this is funded by money from the big left. I know that George Soros held a fundraiser for this event on October 21st at his home. I find it extremely dubious that people who claim to be for fair, are funded by a group whose IRS filing say that their goal is to get more Democrats elected.

Would you rather voter maps be quote unquote fair or help elect Republicans? I think that voter maps should definitely be fair. I struggle with anybody who will define for me what fair means. The only thing that I believe the people that are suing us thinks is fair is some kind of a map that gives the Democrats the majority. I don't think Lewis just disagrees with the Democrats on the issues. To me, it sounds like he's got a grudge against the Democrats. I called Chris Cooper, the political science expert, and he said that when it comes to North

Carolina politics, some level of grievance is kind of justified. The Democrats ran the North Carolina legislature for about 100 years, and when they were in charge, they didn't exactly play fair. In the 1990s, the gerrymandering was called political pornography by the Wall Street Journal. And at that point, that was the Democrats doing the gerrymandering. In the early 2000s, there was a guy named Jim Black, who was a Democratic Speaker of North Carolina. And the Republicans took the House by two seats. So to combat that, he actually met a guy in an eye-hot bathroom. He can't make this stuff up and offered him $50,000 and a job for his son if he would be willing to convert from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

He did that. And so we ended up with a co-speaker arrangement in North Carolina for a little while. The year that Jim Black bribed that Republican legislator was also the year David Lewis was elected to the General Assembly. So if it feels like the Republicans had this sort of pent up frustration, it's probably because they did. And it was probably well deserved. Even when Lewis talks about the veto override vote, that sort of shady move the Republicans pulled while the Democrats weren't there, he sees it as an example of democratic shadiness.

I am disappointed that many of my house colleagues who are Democrats have not been in this institution long enough to understand that they are not employees of or under the direction of the governor. They work for their folks back home. I think the governor has put many of my Democratic colleagues into very bad positions. That being said, I do wish that the circumstances were a little bit clearer about where the Democrats were at that time. The minority leader has said that he knew that 52 of their 55 members were present in the building at the time. So why they weren't on the floor is a truly baffling thing to me.

The House Minority Leader Darren Jackson told us that's totally false. He says his members rushed to the legislative building when they heard what had happened, but that was after the whole thing went down. You have friends in the Democratic caucus, close friends? I do. And so tell me about that. What are those relationships like, given the strain put on the professional side of things? It's been very difficult.

I believe that I have probably lost a friend who I would have considered among my closest friends. And I am deeply saddened by that. But I think this comes down to the folks who work for Governor Cooper are doing every everything they can to keep the legislative Democrats in line behind him. Unfortunately, many have chosen to go that route and abandon long-held relationships here in this building, and more importantly, to this institution. I went to Raleigh to try to understand North Carolina politics because it is a bellwether. After the power grab vote following the governor's election, there were similar power

grabs in Wisconsin and Michigan. Understanding how this kind of partisanship grows up, that's important to do. There was one other guy I wanted to talk to while I was in Raleigh, somebody I've known a long time. When I was a kid, I went to this outdoorsy Christian summer camp in western North Carolina. It was run by a guy named Chuck McGrady. My brother was a counselor at the camp, and one summer, Chuck busted him smoking a joint. Chuck's not in the summer camp game anymore, though.

These days, he's a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives. Chuck, yeah, Chuck McGrady, right here. Chuck. Yes. Hey, hello there. Good to see you. Good to be seen. How are you?

Oh, pretty good timing. Chuck's got a big portrait of a rhino hanging on the wall of his office. That's a pun. Chuck's often called a rhino. That's R-I-N-O, Republican in name only. You won't find many politicians with Chuck's resume. Well, but I've been, I'm an anomaly again, you know, and I first ran Sierra Club president running as a Republican. You've got to be kidding me. I've always sort of worked in that

frame. When I was with Sierra Club, I was on the right fringe. I was one of the few, few guys that could talk to Republicans. I sounded like a Republican. I sit sort of in the middle of the political spectrum, which there's not a lot of that these days. Is it a lonely place here? It can be, but also when we actually want to take action on some range of things, it's amazing how many times people end up on that couch, including speakers, you know, asking me to help bring together a coalition somewhere in the middle. So this level of partisanship that's often described as toxic now, if you agree with that or something like that, where did it begin? Well, I don't know where it began, but I mean, and I think there's some toxicity to it prior to my getting here, because everybody's always pointing to backward to, you know, what the Democrats did when they're in charge and now the Republicans are. But, you know, too bad, two bad things don't correct it.

Or to put it another way, two wrongs don't make a right. I want to stop there. So I went to North Carolina thinking this might be a story about Trump's anger. and Twitter rancor trickling down to politicians at the state level. But actually, what I saw was years and years of animosity and resentment and grievance and how they're actually bubbling up into the politics. In a way, that grievance and resentment,

it's the same fuel that powers the Trump machine. Trump himself was elected because of grievance. It's tempting when we look at North Carolina or other states to think about their politics in intellectual or ideological terms. And that's important, but it misses out on the people who are in politics and the way they feel about each other and communicate with each other and whether they trust each other. The politicians I talk to have gotten themselves so wrapped up

in getting back at each other, so they're stuck. You can't continually pile up wrong after wrong and expect to get anywhere. And that's what Chuck McGrady is talking about here. His advice might be cliche, but it's dead on. Two wrongs don't make a right. That's some wisdom only an old camp director could drop on you. My advice to my leadership was to take a little time off, you know. Cool off.

Yep. Time out. And again, you know, back in summer camp, I could do that. I could put the boy on the front porch and say, you know, you just sit there think about what you just did. You know, we'd be better off if we sent everybody to summer camp, and they learned how to work with each other, and it's the same behavior sometimes. Chuck McGrady, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly,

and he spoke with the New Yorkers, Charles Bethay, a staff writer based in Atlanta. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. And remember, on Christmas Day, the movie Little Women opens, and if you missed my interview with Greta Gerwig, wrote and directed the film, you can find it on the podcast of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Have a terrific holiday, and if you're traveling, be safe. Please join us next time for The New Yorker Radio Hour.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Rianne and Corby, Karen Frillman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Morgan Flannery, Alison McAdam, Monfei Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.