Thread by @WhitneyEpi

1/ For those wondering what the heck is happening in North Carolina, it’s a foreseeable train wreck that left the station in December 2016

(I could go back further to 2010, but let’s stay focused on state boards for now) npr.org/sections/thetw…

2/ In 2016, Republicans won NC’s electoral votes for US presidency and kept control of the gerrymandered state legislature (“surgical precision”, the Appeals court said).

But Dem Roy Cooper won the governorship…

3/ So fine, it would be split-party control (which lots of people prefer as an affirmative good)…

4/ Instead, right after election (Dec 2016), the legislature and outgoing governor (the one who’d lost) changed the rules of state government to limit newly elected Gov Cooper from doing his job

(It’s that petty, y’all)

5/ Here’s more detail from 2016: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

“legislature withdrew governor’s ability to make appointments to state board of education & boards of trustees of [UNC]-system schools; reduced # of appointments governor can make for govt jobs” (1,500–> 425) etc etc

6/ Anyway, now all these state boards that should be pretty boring, basic-function-of-government workhorses (education, elections, state employees health plan, etc) are partisan cockfights

7/ Living in and loving this state is like being in a decades-long, exhaustingly dysfunctional romantic relationship that has so much goodness in it - and yet…

8/ Even if you live elsewhere in the US, NC is worth paying attention to because these blueprints have been and continue to be circulated among political operatives all over the country vox.com/policy-and-pol…