One of the bright spots on Election Night came in my state of North Carolina. Like most reality-based North Carolinians, I was crying tears of joy when Hillary Clinton took what seemed to be a solid lead with more than half the vote in. It looked like Hillary was repeating Barack Obama’s path to victory in 2008–run up an insurmountable lead in the big counties along the I-85 Corridor. My home in Charlotte, for instance, broke for Hillary by a punishing 63-33 margin. Then, whump–an unexpected red tide swept Donald Trump to a narrow win.
There was a bright spot, though. All indications are that Republican Governor Pat McCrory was narrowly defeated by Democratic state attorney general Roy Cooper. But all indications are that McCrory is not only refusing to concede, but crassly engineering an attempt to steal a second term that he knows he didn’t win at the ballot box.
Just before midnight, a large raft of votes from heavily Democratic Durham County, home to the city of Durham, were added to Cooper’s total, turning a 60,000-vote deficit into a lead of just under 5,000 votes. Half an hour later, Cooper declared victory, even though his lead was well within the margin for McCrory to ask for a recount. However, since then, McCrory has launched a series of challenges to the results, which have since grown to encompass 50 of the state’s 100 counties. WXII-TV in Winston-Salem has more details on these challenges.
Under North Carolina law, the county election boards are appointed by the governor, with the governor’s party in the majority. In this case, since McCrory is a Republican, each county board comprises two Republicans and one Democrat. But if McCrory thought those boards would be receptive to his claims that Cooper only took the lead with the help of voter fraud, mishandled ballots, and irregular counting, he was in for a surprise. The county boards all rejected his arguments almost out of hand.
According to Allison Riggs of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, even the Republicans on the boards concluded McCrory’s challenges were “silly, small in number, poorly researched, and often defamatory.” But McCrory isn’t backing down. He has mounted a campaign to challenge the integrity of the results–one replete with Trumpian dog whistles. Campaign spokesman Ricky Diaz claims Cooper is trying to steal the election with the help of “dead people and felons.”
So far, it hasn’t worked. McCrory tried to get the state board of elections to take jurisdiction over the election protests. The board, which comprises three Republicans and two Democrats, only accepted a request for Bladen County, halfway between Fayetteville and Wilmington. At last count, McCrory leads there by 1,045 votes out of more than 15,000 cast. So out of 50 challenges, McCrory was only able to get the state board to look at one from a mostly rural county where he is actually leading. Process that for a moment.
Meanwhile, with provisional and absentee ballots coming in, Cooper’s lead is actually growing, and is now at around 8,000 votes. The Human Rights Campaign provided this illustration of Cooper’s trendline over the last two weeks.
BREAKING: @RoyCooperNC's lead grows to nearly 7,500 as @PatMcCroryNC refuses to admit loss. → https://t.co/qixcYj4F0E #ReadyForRoy #NCGov pic.twitter.com/p1GUAZbfLc
— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) November 18, 2016
My, that’s pretty.
There may be a method to McCrory’s madness, though. It looks like McCrory is trying to cast enough suspicion on the results to clear the way for him to challenge the results in the General Assembly. Despite North Carolina being a swing state by any definition, one of the most brutal gerrymanders in the nation has given the GOP veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Under North Carolina General Statutes Section 163-182-13A, the legislature nominally has the right to step in whenever “a contest arises out of the general election” for one of the nine statewide elected offices in North Carolina and that dispute relates to “the conduct or results of the election.”
From the looks of it, McCrory hopes he can persuade his friends in the state legislature to step in and declare that McCrory received the most votes in the election. If that were to happen, Cooper would not be able to challenge the result in state court. The law explicitly states that such a decision “may not be reviewed” at the state level. A federal court, however, could and should review such a naked power play.
Both Diaz and his counterpart with the Cooper campaign, Marc Elias, have downplayed such an extreme step. State house speaker Tim Moore hasn’t ruled it out, though he didn’t sound particularly enthused about it either.
For his part, Cooper is pressing ahead, even going as far as to form a transition team. He took to YouTube on Saturday to reiterate that he is now governor-elect, and called for McCrory to concede.
That call was echoed by The (Raleigh) News & Observer, which wrote that the outcome “clearly isn’t going to change.” The N&O couldn’t have said it better. McCrory would be better served if he gave up his windmill-tilting expedition. Barring a dramatic reversal of fortune, Roy Cooper will become the 75th governor of North Carolina.
(featured image courtesy Cooper’s Facebook)
