Legislative Watch: Supermajority Broken
The supermajority has been broken in both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly.
Going into the midterm elections, the General Assembly’s power balance was foremost on the minds of North Carolina citizen conservation advocates. With their veto-proof majority, the legislature’s current anti-environment leadership has been able to ignore Gov. Roy Cooper’s objections and drive through many of their most outrageous proposals over his veto. These included a moratorium on wind energy development; allowing Duke Energy to charge most costs of coal ash cleanup to their customers; and taking away neighbors’ right to defend themselves in court from factory hog farms.
When the newly elected General Assembly takes office in January, that will have changed. With absentee and provisional votes still being counted and several recounts likely to take place, the current leadership’s majorities will likely drop from 75-45 in the House to 65-55, and from 35-15 in the Senate to 29-21. This brings them below the three-fifths supermajorities they needed to override a gubernatorial veto on a party-line vote. To strip the majority party of its ability to adopt legislation without negotiation with the minority party, it was only necessary to remove the supermajority in one chamber, but the supermajorities in both chambers were ended.
65 of 109 legislative candidates endorsed by NCLCV’s Conservation PAC appear to have won their elections (46 of 77 House candidates, and 19 of 32 Senate candidates), again, pending further vote counting and recounts. This includes 15 new members of the House and seven new members of the Senate. 16 endorsed candidates (10 in the House and six in the Senate) flipped seats currently held by anti-environment legislators, and 46 endorsed legislators were re-elected (34 in the House and two in the Senate), joined by two representatives-elect and one senator-elect who will replace retiring environmental champions.
“The new legislators-elect are part of our biggest-ever class of endorsed candidates. Their values and their message resonated strongly with voters who are literally sick of the legislature’s backwards priorities,” said Dan Crawford, NCLCV director of governmental relations. “We are excited to get to work with these incoming legislators, the returning veterans, and Gov. Cooper to form our Green Caucus and start moving North Carolina in the right direction.”
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