Campaign Watch: Judges Threatened with Impeachment

Rule against us, the top official of a North Carolina political party warned state judges, and you’ll face impeachment.

Last week, lawyers for the state legislative majority told a three-judge panel that the courts had no power to tell the legislature it must honestly describe the contents of proposed constitutional amendments on this fall’s ballot. They argued honesty (or the lack thereof) is beyond the courts’ review, and is purely up to the legislature.

That was Thursday. On Friday, those legislators’ top political party officer appeared on television to issue an extraordinary warning: Try to tell us how the ballot language must be worded, and our legislators will simply throw you out of office. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger declined to disavow the threat. As assertions of absolute power go, it doesn’t get any rawer than that.

The issue is important to environmental advocates because one of the deceptively described amendments would take the governor’s authority to appoint the members of critical regulatory boards like the Environmental Management Commission and the Utilities Commission, and give that power to the legislature. Another amendment would shift the governor’s power to temporarily fill judicial vacancies to the legislature. These amendments are designed to wrest fundamental executive powers from the executive to the legislative branch—but voters who read only the language on the ballots would never know that.

Last Monday, all five living former governors (two Republicans and three Democrats) held an extraordinary news conference to condemn the proposed amendments. They described them as an attempt to shred the checks and balances on excess power built into our state constitution. “Don’t hijack our constitution,” former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said. “It’s not about partisan politics, it’s about power politics,” added former Republican Gov. Jim Martin.

Editorial comment across the state said that both the ex-governors and the current one are right, and that this dishonest power grab by one party in the General Assembly must be stopped.

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