By John Blust

For the second straight election cycle, primary elections for all state and local offices in North Carolina have been postponed. Hundreds of candidates for offices ranging from the school board to the US Congress have been affected severely. Naturally, most of our media watchdogs in North Carolina have blamed the Republican lawsuit that has challenged the new districts in court on constitutional grounds.

Here is a typical assessment: A few Republicans are responsible for the brinkmanship that has resulted in a legal stalemate. Unable to win enough legislative seats to dominate the district-drawing process, Republican leaders used a sympathetic court in 2002 to circumvent the standard procedure. Republican lawsuits have again challenged the districts redrawn by the General Assembly in late 2003. It’s this latest round of litigation that has resulted in the delayed primary.

First of all, Republicans do not need to dominate the redistricting process. Republicans just want fair, neutral, legal constitutional districts that respect communities of interest and allow voters to decide who holds power at the ballot box. North Carolina voters will then be able to choose between the two competing visions for the future of our state, and very likely, judging logically from past election results, Republicans will then capture majorities in the state Senate and state House.

The Democrats and their ally, Rep. Richard Morgan, the “Republican” co-speaker from Moore County whose treacherous back-room double-dealing with Democrat Speaker Jim Black left Democrats in control of the North Carolina House even when Republicans won the most seats, have given North Carolina the highest taxes in the Southeast and crushed job creation in this state. Morgan-Black and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight know they will lose power if they follow the law and do what’s right with redistricting.

A quick review of the history of the current round of legislative redistricting is in order. The legislature didn’t take up redistricting in the 2001 session until late September. (Legislative leaders needed the threat of redrawing their districts as leverage to get enough votes for huge tax increases). The Republicans went to court alleging that the new plans violated the state constitution and the Democrat gerrymandering was found to be illegal. After a second failure by the legislature to follow the law, the trial judge had to draw temporary districts for the 2002 elections because by that time it was too close to the 2002 elections to give the legislature a third chance to redraw districts until after November 2002.

If the judge who drew the temporary districts used in the 2002 elections was as “sympathetic” to Republicans as the press, the Democrats and Morgan have claimed, why did House Republican candidates get 54 percent of the vote statewide but win only 61 of 120 seats, and why did Senate Republicans win 52 percent of the vote statewide but win only 22 of 50 seats? Obviously, these results demonstrate that the judge-drawn districts were not sympathetic to Republicans, but still slightly favored the Democrats.

The Democrats and Morgan bellyached loudly and vociferously that districts should be drawn by the legislature, not the judges. This was nothing but false spin. The 2002 judge-drawn districts were labeled “interim,” which meant those districts would only be used for the 2002 elections. It was always clear to everyone that the legislature would redraw the districts a third time, just as Morgan and the Democrats claimed the legislature should do.

But what did Morgan and the Democrats do when given a third opportunity to draw maps? On purpose, they waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, they called a quick special session, during Thanksgiving week of all times. The mainstream press has not queried Basnight and Black-Morgan as to why the legislature waited until Thanksgiving week of 2003 to take up the redistricting issue almost a year late. Why would any fair-minded, inquisitive journalist fail to ask legislative leaders this obvious question? I challenge someone who is now blaming Republican litigants for the delay in the primaries to give an honest answer to explain why the legislature waited a year to take up redistricting. That explanation would inform the citizens of North Carolina as to why their primaries are being delayed once again. If the legislature had done its work in a timely manner, there would have been ample time for the inevitable challenges.

I received my official notice of the special redistricting session on Sunday afternoon at 2:30 to report to Raleigh for session the next day at 9:30 a.m. That next day, on the House side, no redistricting plan was available for House members or the public to review ahead of time. This is a matter that will affect state and local government through the end of the decade. But Morgan-Black, even though they profess deep love and concern for the public good, would not allow the public or elected representatives to see what they had planned. This is not the way leaders with a defensible plan would behave.

The Republican majority leader, Joe Kiser of Lincoln County, who has become a total Morgan loyalist, refused to hold a caucus the day of the Thanksgiving special session to show the plan to members who would be asked to vote on it. (Morgan has said publicly that loyalty to him is more important than anything, even competence). As joint caucus leader, I asked Kiser to hold a caucus three different times throughout the day, and got the same answer each time – there was no plan ready. The “Republican” co-chairman of the Redistricting Committee, Rick Eddins of Wake County, never held a committee meeting where the members and the public could see the plan in advance. He, too, claimed there was no plan ready. No committee meeting was ever held on the bill. A bill is supposed to pass a committee before it can go to the floor, but that standard procedure was not followed because the House leaders did not want the members to know what they were voting on. I doubt there is a single person in this state who would want his or her representative in Raleigh to cast an uninformed vote.

A plan was finally given out to House members only 15 minutes prior to the House session. Reviewing this technical and voluminous bill would take at least several hours, if not days. When the session convened, the question was promptly called and a vote was taken before any member that wasn’t part of Morgan’s or Black’s inner circles could have any chance to review the plan. Then, after virtually no debate on this important bill, a “bi-partisan” majority voted for the unknown plan. A short time before, most of those voting aye were claiming they hadn’t seen the plan, they had only seen their own district. Most of those who voted for the plan did so because it gave them districts where they felt safe from electoral challenge.

Most of the Republicans who voted for the plan were afraid that Co-speaker Morgan would retaliate against them as he had against me and some of the other Republicans who have not been blindly loyal to him by putting us in the back of the chamber, giving us small offices, depriving us of our secretaries, killing all our bills, not appointing us to committees, refusing to recognize us to speak during debate, etc., while he spent lavishly on new and expanded offices and other perks for him and his cronies.

There is a way to correct the high abuse of power that is depriving North Carolinians of fair elections. I’m the primary sponsor of the House bill to establish an independent redistricting commission. The current legislative “leaders” who keep drawing illegal and unconstitutional redistricting plans will make sure that no vote for a redistricting independent panel will ever pass the legislature. The press should stop treating those who block critical reform as paragons of good government and idealistic innocents and get behind the reform efforts that will provide North Carolina with constitutional, fair and equitable legislative districts.

District 62 Republican state Rep. John Blust is chairman of the joint Republican caucus.