\n<\/p>\n
North Carolina voters have chosen Democrats in three straight elections for governor; the state\u2019s Republican-led legislature has countered by siphoning off some of the powers that traditionally came with the job.<\/p>\n
These power grabs have had a profound effect on both democracy in the state and on the everyday lives of North Carolina residents, Democrats argue.<\/p>\n
The changes are \u201cweakening environmental protections, raising energy costs, and politicizing election administration,\u201d Josh Stein, North Carolina\u2019s governor, said in a text message responding to questions from ProPublica.<\/p>\n
Republican leaders in the General Assembly did not respond to requests for comment or emailed questions about the power shifts. In the past, they have defended these actions as reflecting the will of voters, with the senate president describing one key bill as balancing \u201cappointment power between the legislative and executive branches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former state Sen. Bob Rucho, a Republican picked to sit on the state elections board after lawmakers shifted control from Stein to the Republican state auditor, said the changes would fix problems created by Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans are very proud of what\u2019s been accomplished,\u201d Rucho said. Shifting authority over the elections board, he argued, would \u201creestablish a level of confidence in the electoral process\u201d that Democrats had lost.<\/p>\n
ProPublica recently chronicled the nearly 10-year push to take over the board, which sets rules and settles disputes in elections in the closely divided swing state. Decisions made by the board\u2019s new leadership \u2014 particularly on the locations and numbers of early voting sites \u2014 could affect outcomes in the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n
Below, we examine how other power transfers driven by North Carolina\u2019s Republican legislature are reshaping everything from the regulations that protect residents\u2019 drinking water to the rates they pay for electricity to the culture of their state university system.<\/p>\n
ProPublica tracked 29 executive powers and prerogatives traditionally held by North Carolina\u2019s governor and other Democrats that have been targeted by its Republican-majority legislature since the end of 2016. We found many have been stripped away, leaving the governor the nation\u2019s weakest.<\/p>\n
2016<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic or divided control of:<\/span> <\/p>\n 1.<\/span> Board of Transportation<\/span><\/p>\n 2.<\/span> Building Code Council<\/span><\/p>\n 3.<\/span> Coastal Resources Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 4.<\/span> Commission for Public Health<\/span><\/p>\n 5.<\/span> Economic Investment Committee<\/span><\/p>\n 6.<\/span> Environmental Management Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 7.<\/span> Industrial Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 8.<\/span> State Board of Community Colleges and community college trustee boards<\/span><\/p>\n 9.<\/span> Some aspects of K-12 education<\/span><\/p>\n 10.<\/span> Some special Superior Court seats<\/span><\/p>\n 11.<\/span> State Board of Elections<\/span><\/p>\n 12.<\/span> State Highway Patrol<\/span><\/p>\n 13.<\/span> UNC universities\u2019 trustee boards<\/span><\/p>\n 14.<\/span> Utilities Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 15.<\/span> Wildlife Resources Commission<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic powers:<\/span> <\/p>\n 16.<\/span> Power of the attorney general to oppose legislature<\/span><\/p>\n 17.<\/span> Power of the governor to appoint judicial vacancies<\/span><\/p>\n 18.<\/span> Power of the governor to direct federal block grants<\/span><\/p>\n 19.<\/span> Power of the governor to hire and fire over 1,000 political appointees<\/span><\/p>\n 20.<\/span> Power of the lieutenant governor to chair Committee on Energy Crisis Management<\/span><\/p>\n 21.<\/span> Power of Democratic officials to oversee charter schools<\/span><\/p>\n 22.<\/span> Power of the governor to choose his own Cabinet appointments without legislature\u2019s approval<\/span><\/p>\n 23.<\/span> Power over residential building codes<\/span><\/p>\n Republican control of:<\/span> <\/p>\n 1.<\/span> Child Care Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 2.<\/span> Clean Water Management Trust Fund Board<\/span><\/p>\n 3.<\/span> Parks and Recreation Authority<\/span><\/p>\n 4.<\/span> Private Protective Services Board<\/span><\/p>\n 5.<\/span> Rural Infrastructure Authority<\/span><\/p>\n 6.<\/span> State Building Commission<\/span><\/p>\n Republican powers:<\/span> <\/p>\n 2025<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic or divided control of:<\/span> <\/p>\n 1.<\/span> Board of Transportation<\/span><\/p>\n 2.<\/span> Child Care Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 3.<\/span> Clean Water Management Trust Fund Board<\/span><\/p>\n 4.<\/span> Commission for Public Health<\/span><\/p>\n 5.<\/span> Economic Investment Committee<\/span><\/p>\n 6.<\/span> Industrial Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 7.<\/span> Parks and Recreation Authority<\/span><\/p>\n 8.<\/span> Private Protective Services Board<\/span><\/p>\n 9.<\/span> Rural Infrastructure Authority<\/span><\/p>\n 10.<\/span> State Building Commission<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic powers:<\/span> <\/p>\n 11.<\/span> Power of the governor to appoint judicial vacancies<\/span><\/p>\n 12.<\/span> Power of the governor to hire and fire over 1,000 political appointees<\/span><\/p>\n More Republican control of:<\/span> <\/p>\n 1.<\/span> Building Code Council<\/span><\/p>\n 2.<\/span> Coastal Resources Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 3.<\/span> Environmental Management Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 4.<\/span> State Board of Community Colleges and community college trustee boards<\/span><\/p>\n 5.<\/span> Residential Code Council<\/span><\/p>\n 6.<\/span> Some aspects of K-12 education<\/span><\/p>\n 7.<\/span> Some special Superior Court seats<\/span><\/p>\n 8.<\/span> State Board of Elections<\/span><\/p>\n 9.<\/span> State Highway Patrol<\/span><\/p>\n 10.<\/span> UNC universities\u2019 trustee boards<\/span><\/p>\n 11.<\/span> Utilities Commission<\/span><\/p>\n 12.<\/span> Wildlife Resources Commission<\/span><\/p>\n Republican powers:<\/span> <\/p>\n 13.<\/span> Attorney general doesn\u2019t have the power to oppose legislature<\/span><\/p>\n 14.<\/span> Power to direct federal block grants<\/span><\/p>\n 15.<\/span> Lieutenant governor doesn\u2019t have the power to chair Committee on Energy Crisis Management<\/span><\/p>\n 16.<\/span> Democratic officials have decreased power to oversee charter schools<\/span><\/p>\n 17.<\/span> Legislature has veto power over governor\u2019s Cabinet appointments<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tNote: Data covers December 2016 to December 2025. Sources: ProPublica review of North Carolina legislation and court cases; expert interviews.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Alcantara\/ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n What it is:<\/strong> The Environmental Management Commission adopts rules that protect the state\u2019s air and water, such as those that regulate industries discharging potentially carcinogenic chemicals in rivers.<\/p>\n Power transfer:<\/strong> In October 2023, Republican legislators passed a law shifting the power to appoint the majority of the commission\u2019s members from the governor to themselves and the state\u2019s commissioner of agriculture, who is a Republican.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happened since:<\/strong> The new Republican-led commission has stymied several efforts by the state\u2019s Department of Environmental Quality to regulate a potentially harmful chemical, 1,4-dioxane, in drinking water.<\/p>\n Advocates for businesses, including the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, had criticized some regulations and urged the commission to intervene. \u201cClean water is worth the cost, but regulators should not arbitrarily establish a level that is low for the sake of being low,\u201d the chamber said in a press release.<\/p>\n The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has pressed the state to regulate the chemical, has said the commission\u2019s rulings are \u201ccrippling the state\u2019s ability to protect its waterways, drinking water sources, and communities from harmful pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n What it is:<\/strong> The North Carolina Utilities Commission regulates the rates and services of the state\u2019s public utilities, which include providers of electricity, natural gas, water and telephone service. The commission also oversees movers, brokers, ferryboats and wastewater.<\/p>\n Power transfer:<\/strong> In June 2025, a trial court sided with the General Assembly in allowing a law passed in 2024 to take effect, removing the governor\u2019s power to appoint a majority of the commission\u2019s members and transferring that power to legislative leaders and the state treasurer, who is a Republican.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happened since:<\/strong> The state\u2019s primary utility, Duke Energy, has backed off from some plans to rely more on clean energy and retire coal-fired power plants. In November, the company said it would seek the commission\u2019s approval to raise rates by 15%.<\/p>\n In response to a new resource plan the company filed in October, the executive director of NC WARN, a climate and environmental justice nonprofit, said in a statement that Duke\u2019s actions would cause \u201cpower bills to double or triple over time\u201d and increase carbon emissions. The state\u2019s governor and attorney general, both Democrats, have said they oppose the rate hike.<\/p>\n Garrett Poorman, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, said that the company is \u201cfocused on keeping costs as low as possible while meeting growing energy needs across our footprint\u201d and that the company had recently lowered its forecasted costs.<\/p>\n The commission will decide whether to approve the proposed rate hikes in 2026.<\/p>\n What it is:<\/strong> The University of North Carolina System encompasses 17 institutions and more than 250,000 students, including at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, considered one of best in the nation.<\/p>\n Power transfer:<\/strong> Though the legislature has traditionally appointed the majority of the trustees for individual schools, the governor also made a share of these appointments.<\/p>\n In 2016, the legislature passed a law that eliminated the governor\u2019s ability to make university trustee appointments.<\/p>\n In 2023, changes inserted into the state budget bill gave the legislature power to appoint all of the members of the state board that oversees community colleges and most of those colleges\u2019 trustees. The governor had previously chosen some board members and trustees.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happened since:<\/strong> The system has created a center for conservative thought, repealed racial equity initiatives, suspended a left-leaning professor, gutted a civil rights center led by a professor long critical of Republican lawmakers and appointed politically connected Republicans to the boards.<\/p>\n Republicans say the moves are reversing the system\u2019s long-term leftward drift.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, the board stays in for a while, and you change administrators, and then start to moderate the culture of the UNC schools,\u201d said David Lewis, a former Republican House member who helped drive the changes to the university system.<\/p>\n Democrats, including former Gov. Roy Cooper, have criticized the board changes as partisan meddling.<\/p>\n \u201cThese actions will ultimately hurt our state\u2019s economy and reputation,\u201d Cooper said in a 2023 press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Carolina voters have chosen Democrats in three straight elections for governor; the state\u2019s Republican-led legislature has countered by siphoning off some of the powers that traditionally came with the job. These power grabs have had a profound effect on both democracy in the state and on the everyday lives of North Carolina residents, Democrats<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[10575,17280,7962,558,21395,242,1664,247,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-39445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-boards","9":"tag-carolinas","10":"tag-gop","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-legislature","13":"tag-north","14":"tag-power","15":"tag-propublica","16":"tag-shape"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Environmental Management Commission<\/h3>\n
Utilities Commission<\/h3>\n
University of North Carolina System<\/h3>\n