Washington, D.C. – North Carolina Democrats were left scrambling Tuesday as media outlets throughout the state began reporting state Rep. Tricia Cotham would be crossing the aisle.
Cotham, who represents portions of Mecklenburg County, is expected to make the switch as early as Wednesday, giving the GOP a narrow, three-fifths supermajority in the state's lower chamber.
North Carolina Republicans already had a supermajority in the State Senate, meaning GOP legislators will have the power to override any of Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes once Cotham switches.
Analysts speculated this would allow the GOP to make law of measures that have been priorities for the Republicans but which have met with Cooper's opposition and vetoes. This includes the elimination of the state income tax and making changes to education funding that would tie state dollars to students rather than systems or individual schools.
Cotham's decision to switch was not met with surprise by some of her colleagues in the legislature. Rep. Cecil Brockman, Democrat of Guilford, told The News & Observer newspaper his party had only itself to blame.
Brockman cited what the paper said was “the barrage of criticism he and Cotham received from within the party last week, along with another Democrat, Rep. Michael Wray of Halifax County when Republicans were able to successfully override Cooper's veto of controversial gun rights legislation that repealed the state's permit law for buying handguns.”
Brockman said he thought the reaction from Democrats and party officials had pushed Cotham to switch parties, telling the paper “he knows how she feels and doesn't blame her ‘one bit.'”
The switch pushes Cooper, once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party who was believed to have national ambitions, further down the path to irrelevancy. With the addition of Cotham to its GOP caucus, the North Carolina House will become the 25th of 99 state legislative chambers in the country to have a Republican supermajority, potentially more than at any other time since Calvin Coolidge was president.
On March 17, Louisiana State Rep. Frances Thompson defected to the GOP, creating the party's 24th legislative supermajority. At present, the GOP is the majority party in 58 of the country's 99 state legislative chambers. The Nebraska Legislature is unicameral and non-partisan.
Analysts say these party switches, while infrequent, are often a much bigger deal than they appear. The fact the GOP is surging among state legislators and growing more powerful in the so-called “red states” while Washington is mired in gridlock shows the party's future is brighter than many national commentators appear willing to acknowledge.
North Carolina, for example, has long been thought to be a competitive state. Easy wins there by Trump in 2016 and 2020 along with the retention over the last two national elections by the GOP of both its seats in the U.S. Senate suggest the partisan lines are shifting right.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Hooray We WIN
Be very careful, could very well be a Trojan style set up.
As long as she switches parties for all the right reasons.
The one thing we don’t need is another RINO in the swamp.