One of the best things about 2016 coming to an end is that, at midnight, we’ll have a new governor of North Carollna. Before he goes, though, Pat McCrory wants to cause a little more trouble.
With just one day to go before Gov. Pat McCrory (R) leaves office, it appears North Carolina Republicans are throwing a legal Hail Mary to the U.S. Supreme Court in another effort to undermine the incoming Democratic governor’s ability to govern.
Lawyers for GOP state legislative leaders filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to pause a court-ordered special elections for more than two dozen state legislative districts in 2017 — special elections in which Democrats could have an opportunity to pick up seats in North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature.
A federal court found in the summer that 28 state House and Senate districts were racially gerrymandered, but the three-judge panel made the unusual decision to let the election go forward in those districts because it decided it was too late to redraw the maps. After the election, the court ordered the legislature to redraw the lines by March and hold special elections later in 2017.
Now, Republicans appear to be making one more, last-minute attempt to stop all that from going forward.
When the ball drops, I’ll spend a moment celebrating the changing of the guard in the Tarheel State.
