Why NC Republicans aren’t rushing to crusade against Biden’s vaccine mandate
Some of North Carolina’s most well-known Republicans aren’t responding as fiercely to coronavirus vaccine mandates President Joe Biden has imposed as their fellow Republicans across the country have, as polls show wide public support for vaccines.
While South Carolina’s governor has vowed to fight the president “to the gates of hell,” North Carolina’s most powerful Republican, Senate leader Phil Berger, merely questioned Biden’s authority to issue such a mandate, saying it could cause “resistance and hesitancy.”
Berger, along with the entire state legislature, is up for reelection next year. With the primary election quickly approaching, Republicans’ milder response to the recent mandate reflects a political calculation by conservative politicians that the issue isn’t worth wading into now, even though the party is generally opposed to government mandates.
Polls show broad support for vaccinations and Biden’s mandates. Some Republicans are also waiting for the Biden administration to release more details on the order and watching to see how the courts respond before taking any further action. Others are betting the issue will blow over entirely by the time voters began casting ballots in March.
“Until we know more about it, until we actually see how it’s going to affect our businesses, I don’t think the political arm of the North Carolina Senate Republican caucus has a full action plan,” said Dylan Watts, an NC GOP political director.
Biden told federal employees and many health care workers they must be vaccinated, and companies with more than 100 employees they must require either vaccination or regular testing. The mandate allows for religious and disability exemptions.
“...We still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot,” Biden said last week. “And to make matters worse, there are elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”
Lawmakers and Senate candidates
In North Carolina, some GOP lawmakers said they are focusing their attention on finalizing a state budget and drawing political maps before the end of the year, rather than wading into the vaccine mandate debate.
“I deal with the universe I’m supposed to deal with,” said Republican House Speaker Tim Moore.
Moore said he believes Biden’s issuing the mandate is unconstitutional, but also emphasized that he’s both been vaccinated and has worked to make vaccinations available.
Candidates for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, whose future could put them in a position to do something about the issue, have responded to the issue similarly, though with slightly more force.
U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, who former President Donald Trump endorsed, said in a Facebook post after Biden’s announcement that the mandate is “extreme government overreach of private businesses.”
Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, by contrast, called for mass civil disobedience in response to the mandate.
Though many voters have already made up their minds about vaccinations, the way politicians respond to Biden’s new mandate could motivate more people to get vaccinated as the delta variant continues to threaten the unvaccinated. Just over half of North Carolina’s population is vaccinated 10 months into the initial rollout. Some politicians mixed criticism of the mandate with support for vaccination.
“Sen. Berger has been clear that he thinks the COVID-19 vaccine is effective and encourages others to talk to their doctor about getting it,” said Senate leader Phil Berger’s spokesperson, Lauren Horsch. “He thinks that everyone should get the vaccine unless their doctor tells them not to, they have a religious reason for not getting it, or they already have the antibodies.”
U.S. Senate candidate and former Gov. Pat McCrory echoed Berger’s sentiment.
“Not only is the Biden plan to mandate vaccines likely unconstitutional, it will not do anything to encourage unvaccinated individuals to get the vaccine,” McCrory said in a tweet. “I’m vaccinated and I want us to defeat the pandemic, but using the Federal government to bully American businesses and citizens is not the solution.”
‘An unpopular position to take’
North Carolina’s politicians took a similar stance on mask mandates in the leadup to the 2020 election. U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who was up for reelection, was decidedly in favor of mask-wearing. Berger and Moore only sometimes wore masks in the state legislature, but did not express staunch opposition to doing so.
Former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, however, adamantly opposed mask mandates.
“When I’m governor I would lift the mask mandate for the state and allow individual freedom to decide whether they wear a mask,” Forest said a month and a half before Election Day.
He ultimately lost against Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has been the face of the state’s pandemic response since he declared a state of emergency in March of last year. Republicans, led by Berger and Moore, kept their majority in the state legislature.
“We found out that in general, North Carolinians approved of how Gov. Cooper was handling things,” said Meredith College political science professor Whitney Manzo of a poll the school conducted last year.
Politicians may put out statements to allow them to say they spoke out, Manzo said, “but I don’t know how loud I’d be about it because its an unpopular position to take.”
In the months after the election, Berger and Moore joined Cooper and other Democratic leaders in encouraging North Carolinians to get vaccinated.
Still, Republican state legislative leaders and U.S. Senate candidates alike are walking a fine line by describing Biden’s mandate as government overreach, much like fellow conservatives across the country have.
In some cases, they are focusing on the process or legality of the mandate rather than whether it’s needed.
“It remains unclear whether one person – in this case the president – has the sole authority to mandate vaccinations as President Biden is attempting,” Berger spokesperson Horsch said.
A recent poll by Axios and Ipsos found broad, but not bipartisan, support for Biden’s vaccine mandates, with 60% of Americans supporting the federal government implementing them. Around 30% of Republicans back the requirements, it found.
“A vaccine mandate could be the greatest idea in the world and the federal government could still not have the power to do it,” former North Carolina GOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse wrote in a tweet.
As the election grows nearer, though, North Carolina Republicans could change their tune. Whether they do may depend on the details Biden’s administration releases in the coming weeks and months.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published September 16, 2021 at 11:23 AM.
