A conservative case for stronger Democrat executives in North Carolina | Opinion

North Carolina has a bad habit: When one party wins a statewide executive office, the other party tries to rewrite the job description.

Republicans have done it to Democratic governors and attorneys general. Democrats did it to Republicans before that. It’s legal, so they do it.

Here’s a counterintuitive idea today’s GOP leaders should consider. If voters keep choosing Democrats for the executive branch, the General Assembly should stop neutering those offices. Instead, make them stronger, with real authority to fix problems and real responsibility when they don’t.

You can’t demand results from an office you’ve hollowed out.

The civics lesson we got wrong

Most of us learned a tidy story in school about three “co-equal” branches of government. That’s not actually how American constitutional design works, and it’s certainly not how North Carolina operates.

The General Assembly is the dominant branch on purpose. I don’t want to change that.

But the dynamic that produces a famously weak governor doesn’t stop at the governor’s office. It runs down the whole Council of State. And nowhere is that clearer than the attorney general.

Republicans haven’t won the AG’s post in over a century, so instead of competing for the office, the instinct has been to narrow it.

That’s a mistake, because the attorney general’s office does some of the most important work in state government. If you like bad guys staying in jail after conviction, thank the AG’s office. If you like scammers getting sued, predatory schemes getting shut down, and the state showing up in court with competent representation, thank the AG’s office.

Yet because Democrats have held the job for so long, Raleigh has treated it like a political inconvenience, and the office has been punished accordingly. The result is an AG’s office that is underpowered for what the public expects.

And the public expects a lot. Voters hear “attorney general” and assume “top cop.” They expect the state’s chief law officer to have leverage when the wheels of justice start slipping. In many states, that’s true. In North Carolina, the AG’s powers are narrower than people realize.

You can’t keep expectations high while keeping authority low. And you can’t keep criticizing an office for results it was never fully empowered to deliver.

Imagine an attorney general empowered to investigate credible violations of the Parents’ Bill of Rights the way we investigate any other alleged violation of state law.

Now imagine an attorney general with clearer authority to step in when a major city’s public safety system is failing in obvious ways and local politics make accountability impossible.

If lawmakers want Attorney General Jeff Jackson, or any Democrat who comes after him, to be accountable for public safety, give the office clearer power. That creates a cleaner test.

Power isn’t the point. Responsibility is.

In a healthy system, authority and accountability travel together. Put someone’s name on the door, let them run the office, and judge them on the outcome.

North Carolina too often does the opposite. If Republicans believe Democrats can’t govern, then the worst move is to build a state where Democrats can always claim they were prevented from governing.

This is the part conservatives should like, even if it feels uncomfortable. Strengthening Democratic executive offices can make the political contrast sharper, not softer. Give Democrats real authority and you get fewer excuses. We can argue about results, not process. Both parties can compete for the future instead of litigating the past.

I’ve argued before that many of these recurring fights flow from a constitution that is vague and internally contradictory about executive power, and a full overhaul would solve a lot. I’m also realistic enough to know we’re not rewriting the constitution anytime soon. So the next best thing is to stop turning our government into an alibi machine.

North Carolina doesn’t need weaker executive offices. It needs fewer places to hide.

Contributing columnist Andrew Dunn is the publisher of the Longleaf Politics newsletter, which offers thoughtful analysis of North Carolina politics and policy from a conservative perspective. He can be reached at andrew@longleafpol.com.