RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – North Carolina’s next Democratic governor has seen a deal he helped broker to repeal the state’s law limiting LGBT protections fall apart and had several of his powers stripped away by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature. And he hasn’t even been sworn in yet.
Gov.-elect Roy Cooper has vowed to keep his campaign promises to bend back the rightward course of the state. But with only a 10,000-vote victory over GOP Gov. Pat McCrory and bitter partisan distrust in this deeply divided state, he’s already slipped along the rocky path he must walk to work successfully with the legislature. And Republicans will maintain veto-proof majorities in 2017.
“My future negotiations with them are certainly going to have to be instructed by this,” a somber yet angry Cooper told reporters last week after the deal to repeal the law known nationally as the “bathroom bill” collapsed.
Two December special sessions, one of which saw raucous protests against Republicans and dozens of arrests, have created further strain in a divided state that chose Republicans Donald Trump for president and Richard Burr for U.S. Senate but went with a Democrat for governor.
“There’s a complete lack of trust between the legislative leadership and Cooper at this point in time,” longtime state Democratic consultant Brad Crone said. “That does not bode well for an incoming governor.”