To reflect on the year, Chapelboro.com is re-publishing some of the top stories that impacted and defined our community’s experience in 2023. These stories and topics affected Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the rest of our region.
The year 2023 saw a flurry of activity in Raleigh, as Tricia Cotham’s party switch in April gave Republicans a veto-proof majority in both houses of the General Assembly – and they took full advantage with an aggressive legislative agenda, including stricter abortion restrictions, tighter election rules, and a trio of highly controversial anti-LGBTQ bills, all of which passed over Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes. But amidst those partisan conflicts, lawmakers also worked together to complete one huge bipartisan achievement: the passage of Medicaid expansion, after more than a decade of political wrangling (and some eleventh-hour budget delays).
In general, 2022 had been a surprisingly good year for Democrats: the sitting President’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections, but Democrats avoided that by capitalizing on public anger over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. In North Carolina, though, it was a different story, as Republicans built on their already-sizable majorities in the State House and Senate. Thus the year began with the GOP holding a veto-proof majority in the Senate – and just one vote away from a veto-proof majority in the House.
North Carolina Democrats reacted to their 2022 losses by shaking up their leadership, ousting party chair Bobbie Richardson and replacing her with 25-year-old Anderson Clayton. Still, as the year began, Democratic lawmakers were hopeful that they’d be able to use their leverage – and Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto pen – to mitigate some of the GOP’s agenda.
Initially, Republican lawmakers agreed. “I don’t think we’ll see anything extreme in nature,” Sen. Jim Perry said at the start of the year, “because you still have to have a Democrat in the House that’s willing to cross over and vote for something.” Cooper’s presence in the governor’s chair was significant too: from 2019 to 2022, he’d vetoed 47 bills, and none of those vetoes had been overridden.
But all of that changed in an instant in April, when Democratic State Rep. Tricia Cotham held a press conference to announce she was switching parties – and handing the GOP that veto-proof majority they’d been seeking for four years.
There had already been signs of a change in the political weather: in March, the General Assembly successfully overrode a gubernatorial veto for the first time since 2018, on a bill allowing residents to buy handguns without getting a permit from their county sheriff. Cotham was one of three House Democrats who had failed to vote on that bill, enabling the override and drawing heavy criticism from progressive leaders. She cited that criticism in her press conference, saying the Democrats had become too ideologically rigid – and that as a Republican, she’d be more free to vote her own conscience even if it bucked the party line. “I will not be controlled by anyone,” she said then.
But that pretense lasted less than a week. Within days, energized GOP lawmakers introduced five anti-LGBTQ bills, most of which specifically targeted transgender children and teens. Cotham had been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights until her party switch – but immediately she became a vocal defender of the GOP’s agenda.
With Cotham’s support, Republicans in April advanced a bill banning transgender girls from competing in women’s sports – and that would be only the beginning. In June, the General Assembly passed a bill heavily restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth – and then in July, lawmakers approved the so-called “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” banning teachers from discussing LGBTQ issues in early grades and even requiring teachers to out trans students to their parents without their consent.
Gov. Cooper vetoed all three bills in July, calling them “a triple threat of political culture wars,” and Democrats slammed them as “more harmful than HB2,” the infamous anti-trans “bathroom bill” that had sparked national condemnation in 2016. But Republicans were able to push through all three over Gov. Cooper’s vetoes nonetheless.
That wasn’t the only hot-button issue that came to the floor of the legislature in 2023. In May, lawmakers unveiled a bill placing new restrictions on abortion in North Carolina – banning nearly all abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, down from 20 weeks in existing law. Again with Cotham’s support, the bill passed with lightning speed, despite a veto from Cooper and a last-ditch PR push from Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. (One of those advocates called the new law “just devastating for abortion access in the South,” because North Carolina had become a ‘haven’ state for women seeking abortion from nearby states with highly restrictive laws.)
And while abortion and LGBTQ rights topped the headlines, Republicans also enacted new legislation on other key issues as well – including stricter rules for absentee voting, a restructuring of state and county election boards that’s already sparked a legal challenge, and a significant expansion of the “Opportunity Scholarship” school voucher program, which Gov. Cooper slammed in May as evidence that “the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education.” The year ended with Republicans pushing through new legislative district lines, deliberately drawn to give GOP candidates a built-in advantage in elections – with the blessing of the State Supreme Court, which issued a ruling earlier this year giving lawmakers free rein to gerrymander districts for partisan gain. The new maps are now facing a legal challenge from advocates who say they’re racially discriminatory, but if they hold up in court they could enable the GOP to dominate state politics for years to come.
But even amidst all that partisan conflict, the defining event of 2023 in state government came from an instance of bipartisan cooperation.
Ever since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, states had been authorized to expand Medicaid access to cover more individuals, with federal funds covering the cost. Expanding Medicaid had long been a priority for Democrats, and Gov. Cooper in particular – but with Republicans largely opposed, North Carolina remained one of only 11 states not to do so. But the persistent push from progressives gradually wore down GOP opposition – and this year, Republicans finally came on board. Lawmakers held a press conference in March to announce a landmark deal on Medicaid expansion, after over a decade of political wrangling; the bill passed later that month, and Gov. Cooper proudly signed it into law on March 27.
But there was a snag: the bill tied Medicaid expansion to the passage of a state budget – and it turned out to be extremely difficult for State House Republicans and State Senate Republicans to agree on a final budget bill. The sticking point, as it turned out, was over gambling: Senate leaders wanted a last-minute provision to address a potential long-term budget shortfall by allowing developers to build casinos, whose income could be taxed – but House Republicans balked, as did religious conservatives and advocates for openness and transparency in government (not to mention the residents of the communities that would have housed those casinos in the first place). The resulting intra-party dispute wore on through the entire summer, well past the start of the fiscal year in July; state health secretary Kody Kinsley worked out an arrangement with federal officials to launch Medicaid expansion in the fall if lawmakers could reach a budget deal, but they missed that deadline too.
Finally, though, lawmakers worked out their differences and passed a casino-free budget in late September. Gov. Cooper sharply criticized many of the budget’s provisions – notably one that exempted lawmakers from public-records laws – but allowed it to become law anyway, saying the benefits of Medicaid expansion were too great (and too overdue) to delay any longer. Medicaid expansion finally became a reality on December 1, more than 13 years after the Affordable Care Act first opened the door.
In the end, Republicans were able to push through most of their agenda over Democratic opposition, overriding all 19 of Gov. Cooper’s vetoes. But in the immediate aftermath of Medicaid expansion, Cooper said it was still a positive year nonetheless.
“We’re strengthening our communities, our infrastructure and our economy,” he told the AP. “We’re laying a groundwork to help North Carolinians right now and for decades in the future.”
Featured photo of State Rep. Tricia Cotham via AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum.
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