RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina Republican legislators neared canceling new Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a measure that makes local trial court elections officially partisan again, after enough House members agreed Wednesday to override it.
The GOP-controlled chamber voted 74-44 to overturn the Cooper’s first veto, issued last week. The number of “yes” votes exceeded the constitutional requirement of a three-fifths majority by a few votes. An override vote in the Senate, where Republicans also are firmly in control, is scheduled for Thursday.
If the override is complete, candidates for District Court and Superior Court would be identified by their party designation on ballots starting next year. Parties would also elect nominees in primaries. Unaffiliated candidates could still run if they collect enough signatures.
It would reverse fully a trend starting in the late 1990s to make judicial races in North Carolina officially partisan. In December, the Republican General Assembly passed a law making elections for the state Supreme Court and the intermediate Court of Appeals officially partisan again starting in 2018. They had become nonpartisan in the early 2000s.
Trial courts bill sponsor Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, said voters know very little about trial court candidates and often skip the race on their ballots. Adding party information would give them a “general idea of each judicial candidate’s judicial philosophy when they go into the voting booth to cast their ballot.”
While a state senator, Cooper championed the legislation that made elections for most trial judges officially nonpartisan. The vetoed bill is one of many in which Republican lawmakers are seeking to weaken the recently elected Democrat, with many targeting his ability to shape the state’s trial courts. Many Republicans believe the party fares better in partisan judicial races.
Cooper said in his veto message that the state “wants its judges to be fair and impartial, and partisan politics has no place on the judges’ bench.”
Rep. Joe John, D-Wake and a former Court of Appeals judge, pleaded with colleagues to uphold the veto, saying returning to partisan elections would bring politics back to the court and rip the blindfold from the “Lady Justice” statute associated with the courts. Wednesday’s vote, John said, was “a vote on the future of an independent judiciary in North Carolina.”
Republicans were stung in November when Democrats regained a majority on the state Supreme Court for the first time since 1998. Despite the officially nonpartisan nature of the Supreme Court at the time, the party registration of each justice is closely watched.
Other judicial bills that have already passed the House this year would give the legislature the power to fill District Court vacancies and those when Special Superior Court judges step down, and reduce the Court of Appeals from 15 to 12 judges through attrition, such as retirement or resignation. That change would deny Cooper an opportunity to appoint Democrats to fill the next three potential vacancies - all currently held by Republicans.
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