Roy Cooper’s lead in the governor’s race count continues to grow, as Pat McCrory formally asks for a recount. This week in CIB:
Executive Watch: Cooper Lead Grows; McCrory Seeks Recount
The lead of Attorney General Roy Cooper over incumbent Governor Pat McCrory grew to about 7,700 votes as of Friday, with 81 of 100 counties having reported their final official canvass figures. The remaining 19 counties (including most of the major urban counties, which supported Cooper by significant margins in the tallies as of election night) continued the process of counting their final provisional ballots.
Despite calls from various quarters for his concession, Gov. McCrory last week also formally requested a recount in the contest. If the final margin after completed reporting from all 100 counties remains within a 10,000-vote difference, he will be entitled under state law to an automatic recount upon his request.
There were news reports over the weekend that the McCrory campaign had offered to drop its statewide recount request if they received a hand-recount of the ballots cast in Durham County, and the results there did not change substantially. However, during a special called State Board of Elections (SBOE) meeting yesterday (Sunday), no one was prepared to speak for the McCrory campaign regarding that reported offer, and the SBOE took no action relating to the news reports. A separate SBOE hearing is expected later this week on the request for a recount in Durham County.
In a statement released last week, Dan Crawford, NCLCV’s Director of Governmental Relations, said, “The voters spoke on November 8th and elected Roy Cooper to be the next Governor of North Carolina. Pat McCrory’s history of protecting polluters, gutting clean air and water protections, and failing to clean up toxic coal ash cost him the Executive Mansion. Now, it’s time for McCrory to respect the will of the people and concede the election to Governor-elect Cooper. It’s beyond time for North Carolina to move forward toward a clean energy future with a true environmental champion at the helm.”
In an apparently related development last week, the ‘conservative’ advocacy group Civitas Institute filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to order that one-stop same-day registration early votes in North Carolina not be counted until after all county boards of elections have completed a post-election process of confirming those voters’ addresses. This delay is not part of current state law and there is no evidence that it would affect the outcome of any contest. It represents an attempted re-litigation, after the election, of an issue already decided by the federal courts earlier this year.
Following the Civitas filing, lawyers for voting-rights groups filed a request with the court that it dismiss the new complaint. “Asking the court to throw away votes of people who used same-day registration is not only undemocratic, it’s frivolous,” Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said in a news release. “The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that North Carolinians should have access to the same-day registration.” A court hearing on that matter is expected this week.
Absent some additional unanticipated escapades by one party or another desperate to hold on, kicking and screaming, to their agent in the governor’s office, we have reason to look forward soon to a conclusion of this election in an orderly and legal fashion.
Washington Watch: Limits to Power
Conservation advocates have watched with alarm as the Donald Trump transition process reaffirms our worst expectations about the environmental goals of the upcoming Trump administration. The good news may be that the power of the presidency faces constraints, even within the executive branch itself.
During the campaign, Trump promised to cancel U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement, revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, and dismantle the EPA itself while ripping out environmental protection rules left and right. Trump’s designation of climate-denier Myron Ebell as the head of his EPA transition team seems to confirm Trump’s intent to pursue those goals. Ebell is the head of the “Center for Energy and Environment” at the anti-environment Competitive Enterprise Institute. He has warned against climate “alarmism” and called the Clean Power Plan illegal.
However, undoing the regulatory actions of past administrations is rarely so simple as the pen stroke envisioned by the inexperienced Trump. Given a determined opposition, including career scientists and other professionals within the relevant agencies, it can take years and require winning multiple legislative or court battles to overturn solidly installed rules and programs. With luck and hard work, that can include at least some of the progress initiated under the Obama Administration to rein in runaway climate change.
For example, the Clean Power Plan is a rule which has gone through the entire agency regulatory process and is in the final stages of federal appellate judicial review. It’s currently back before the Court of Appeals for review. That Court could decide to uphold the rule before the end of the Obama Administration; if it does, then it seems likely that a divided U.S. Supreme Court would decline to overrule them. If so, then any new legal challenge to the rule would need to start from scratch. In the meantime, the new Trump Administration would have to start its own rulemaking process in order to reverse the plan. While that is going on, many states will continue to implement their own plans, adopted in conformance with the rule.
In another example, candidate Trump promised to “unleash” oil, gas, and coal exploitation. However, as noted in CIB last week, the Obama Interior Department has finalized its own five-year offshore energy plan barring drilling off the Arctic and Mid-Atlantic coasts. Again, Trump can order his appointees to begin the work of reversing that decision, but he will be looking at a years-long battle through rulemaking and the courts to make that reversal happen.
None of this review discussion is intended to minimize the extremely damaging loss of forward momentum on addressing climate change which we expect to come from the Trump Administration. Further, where policies are incompletely enacted or inadequate, the reversals can be more quickly accomplished. Our point here is to emphasize the value—and the critical necessity—for citizen environmental advocates to continue fighting for progress even in the face of an anti-environmental White House.
Administrative Watch: Van der Vaart Letter No Surprise
In a move completely consistent with his record of opposing strong efforts to protect clean air, water, and public health, the McCrory Administration’s Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has written to president-elect Trump asking for retreat from key Obama Administration policies to deal with climate change and protect clean water.
DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart’s letter was couched in broader buzz phrases such as “federal overreach” and “return environmental leadership to the states,” but also singled out Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule for negative attention. Dated 11/16/16, the letter was printed on NC DEQ stationery featuring van der Vaart and McCrory’s names, and was co-signed by van der Vaart and state environmental program leaders from Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, and West Virginia.
The content and timing of van der Vaart’s letter “congratulating” Trump on his victory reinforced speculation that he is angling for an appointment to a high-profile post within the new Trump Administration.
Multiple North Carolina environmental organizations subsequently co-signed a responsive statement affirming that the van der Vaart letter “does not represent the views of the environmental advocates or experts in North Carolina.”
North Carolina editorialists have taken the opportunity presented by the letter to observe, “Donald van der Vaart’s stewardship as secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory is another reason to take heart from the apparent election of Democrat Roy Cooper.”
That writer continues, “With a change of administrations in Raleigh, van der Vaart would be out and hopefully replaced by someone who would make environmental protection a priority at DEQ. The professionals at that agency certainly care about protecting North Carolina’s air and water quality and also are concerned about sea-level rise, more frequent floods and droughts and other effects of climate change. They just need leadership that takes such threats seriously.”
Education & Resources: ‘Threatened Forests’
The film Threatened Forests is a documentary feature exploring concerns about the impacts of the use of wood as an energy fuel source on forests in Europe and the United States (including North Carolina). The NC-based advocacy group Dogwood Alliance is sponsoring three showings of the film next week: December 6 in Wilmington, December 7 in Raleigh, and December 8 in Durham.
Full details are available here.
That’s our report for this week.
