Board of Elections Democrats cast their vote

This post was first published in the Wilson Times May 18, 2019

Events this week have made it clear that it’s party affiliation (or even suspicion of partisanship), not competence, that matters in North Carolina government. On Monday, the recently reconstituted State Board of Elections summarily fired its executive director, Kim Strach, and replaced her with a reliably Democratic director, Brinson Bell.

The vote was 4-3; four Democrats voted to oust Strach, a veteran investigator and administrator, who is registered as an unaffiliated voter. Three Republicans on the board opposed Strach’s ouster.

It was Strach who investigated malfeasance in office by former Speaker of the House Jim Black, former Commissioner of Agriculture Meg Scott Phipps, and former Gov. Mike Easley, all Democrats. She proved herself to be a thorough and tenacious investigator and a protector of North Carolina’s voters. More recently, Strach led the effort to uncover a surreptitious and illegal absentee ballot scheme in the 9^th Congressional District, which resulted in the nullification of the 2018 general election vote and nationwide headlines leading to a do-over election this year.

Apparently some Democrats had been lying in wait for the opportunity to pay Strach back for the party’s embarrassments of the Black, Phipps and Easley cases. All three of the Democrats Strach investigated are out of politics, and all three paid the price for their misdeeds. Strach caused some Republican embarrassment last year in the 9^th District, where the leading Republican candidate hired a consultant known for his ballot stuffing work. She resisted GOP pressure to back off the investigation of the absentee ballot scheme.

You would think that both Democrats and Republicans would welcome anyone who could get to the bottom of crooked politics and punish the perpetrators, thereby improving the reputation of public officials.

But that’s not the way politics work in this state in the 21^st century. The GOP leadership in the General Assembly made it clear that they would up the ante on the usual “spoils” system of electoral politics. With a veto-proof majority in both chambers, Republicans attempted to redefine the role of governor, stripping the state’s highest-ranking official of most of his traditional powers. Republican leaders decided they should take over the governor’s appointment powers for state boards and commissions, including the State Board of Elections. Even former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, along with other former governors, opposed the GOP legislature’s power grab. A long court fight ended with restoration of the former rule that the SBOE would have a majority of members of the governor’s party. That led to Monday’s vote to fire the state’s most successful and recognizable elections official.

Less than 50 years ago, when the Democratic Party dominated state politics, and the Democratic primary was “tantamount to election,” the spoils system was not as blatant. Each new Democratic governor got to appoint his supporters to various boards and commissions and oust the former Democratic governor’s cronies, but there was not the rancor that has taken over the simplest decisions of today. One-party rule was not a vibrant democracy, but the gerrymandered super-majority in the legislature has not been an improvement.

As another national election approaches, North Carolina voters should have confidence that the people in charge of elections are acting in a fair, non-partisan manner to protect their sacred right to vote. The public must have confidence in the outcome of elections. The widely condemned firing of Strach, whom SBOE chair Robert Cordle (a Democrat) praised for doing an excellent job, tells voters that party labels matter more than accomplishments.

Monday’s vote didn’t need to happen that way. If Democrats on the State Board of Elections had viewed the elections director decision as a test of good governance and protection of election integrity, rather than an opportunity to slap down the opposing party, they would have kept Strach as director of elections.