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It looks as though the U.S. Supreme Court may finally weigh in on the question of whether districts gerrymandered for partisan advantage are constitutional. Earlier this month, the court agreed to hear two cases that challenge the practice, one from North Carolina, where Democrats are the aggrieved party, and one from Maryland, where it is Republicans who are aggrieved. For the sake of both parties, let’s hope the court sets reasonable limits on the practice and establishes a fair playing field that allows voters to choose their representatives instead of representatives choosing their voters. Rucho v. Common Cause comes out of North Carolina. It’s an appeal by the North Carolina General Assembly of a federal district court ruling that Republican lawmakers violated the Constitution when they drew district maps in 2016 that were blatantly designed to “to gain partisan advantage” for the Republican party, as the lawmaker in charge of drawing the maps said on the floor of the General Assembly. The maps resulted in 10 Republican and 3 Democratic representatives to the Congress in 2016, even though Democrats got nearly half (46 percent) of the statewide congressional vote. The Maryland case, Lamone v. Benisek, was brought by Republican voters who argue that Democratic state lawmakers redrew a district in 2011 to retaliate against citizens who supported its longtime Republican incumbent. The incumbent, Roscoe G. Bartlett, won his 2010 race by a margin of 28 percentage points, but in the redrawn district he lost in 2012 to Rep. John Delaney, a Democrat, by a 21-point margin. The plaintiffs argued that by redrawing the district, the Democrats violated the First Amendment by diluting their voting power. In 2017, a U.S. district court denied a preliminary injunction to the Republicans challenging the redrawn district, but Judge Paul V. Niemeyer dissented. He wrote that the problem of partisan gerrymandering is “cancerous, undermining the fundamental tenets of our form of democracy.” “The widespread nature of gerrymandering in modern politics is matched by the almost universal absence of those who will defend its negative effect on our democracy,” Judge Niemeyer wrote. “Indeed, both Democrats and Republicans have decried it when wielded by their opponents but nonetheless continue to gerrymander in their own self-interest when given the opportunity.” The Supreme Court has been prudent in its reluctance to take on the issue of partisan gerrymandering. In cases in 1986, 2004 and 2006, a majority of the court agreed that partisan gerrymandering violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But Supreme Court Justices have rightfully worried that, as former Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2004 case, there are “no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating” claims of partisan gerrymandering. Political registration isn’t a reliable test because many people are registered independent and many, no matter the party they are registered as belonging to, vote for the other party’s candidate. One solution to that dilemma arose in Whitford v. Gill, a case out of Wisconsin that came before the Supreme Court in 2018. It advances a standard called the “efficiency gap,” which would establish whether the results across districts in any given election roughly matched the number of votes cast for a given party. It was thought that the court would decide the case based on whether the “efficiency gap” standard developed by political scientists would, in the court’s view, be an acceptable standard for determining when partisan gerrymandering had occurred. But in June 2018, the court remanded that case to the lower courts after finding that the plaintiffs, a group of 12 Democratic voters, did not have standing. The court found unanimously that they did not meet the requirement under Article III of the Constitution that plaintiffs in federal lawsuits must show that their complaint arises from a specific, direct and significant injury that could be remedied or prevented by a decision of the court, rather than from a general grievance. Instead of dismissing the case, the court remanded it to be argued again, giving the plaintiffs another opportunity to establish standing. Judge Niemeyer’s dissent in the Maryland case, Lamone v. Benisek, presents an eloquent argument for how gerrymandering harmed the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case. “Building on the Supreme Court’s previous holdings that ensure ‘one person, one vote’ and that prevent racially motivated gerrymanders,” Niemeyer wrote, “we held earlier in this case that when district map drawers target voters based on their prior, constitutionally protected expression in voting and dilute their votes, the conduct violates the First Amendment, effectively punishing voters for the content of their voting practices.” If that isn’t a grievance worthy of “standing,” it’s hard to imagine what is. As Americans, we have no more fundamental right than the right to vote. But it isn’t just the harm to individual voters the Supreme Court should consider. It is the harm to our democratic process. Allowing legislatures to “pack and crack” voters means that candidates only need appeal to their base. That gives the most radical elements of their parties power way beyond their numbers. Once elected, lawmakers cannot risk compromise for fear of alienating that base. That brings government to a halt, as the present federal shutdown demonstrates, and leads to increasingly entrenched polarization. As the 2020 Census approaches with the redistricting that will follow, we can only hope that the Supreme Court sets a standard that prevents the kind of redistricting abuses we’ve seen during the past decade. If it fails to do so, voters throughout the nation will be disenfranchised as state legislatures engage in an orgy of partisan gerrymandering. Any competitive human activity with no rules and no referee soon becomes a free-for-all. Let’s hope that’s not where our nation is heading.

If you think it seems there’s a little less elbow room here in North Carolina, you would be right. And if you enjoy living here, there are more and more people agreeing with you. As the sun set on 2018 it marked the third straight year North Carolina saw a population gain of at least 100,000 people. As of July, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the state’s population at 10.4 million souls, a jump of 113,000 from 2017. That puts North Carolina’s growth rate at 1.1 percent, well above the national average of 0.6 percent, and placed the state in the top 10 for population growth, and in the top five in terms of numeric growth. Since 2010, the state has added 850,000 residents, a jump of 8.9 percent. The vast majority of that growth, two-thirds of it, has been from people moving here as opposed to people being born here. That said, being born here makes a difference; North Carolina is what is termed a “sticky” state. Those born here tend to stay here. The numbers are interesting, but behind them are political ramifications: The growth means The Old North State is on track to pick up a 14th congressional seat following the 2020 census. Right now, the state has 13 congressional districts, but thanks to some … er, creative electoral engineering in the 9th, we only have 12 representatives in Congress. That contest will eventually be settled. What comes after could have a lasting impact on the state’s delegation in Congress. North Carolina’s congressional maps have been something of a full-time jobs program for legions of lawyers since gerrymandering following the 2010 census. Newly drawn district lines were ruled unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering and then due to partisan gerrymandering. A federal three-judge panel ruled the lines used in the 2018 election were unconstitutional, but the matter had dragged through the courts so close to voting that the plaintiffs in the case argued it was too late to change them. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the 13 districts shuffled around in a creative manner yet again headed into the 2020 race. But following 2020 it will be 14 seats, and that will be harder to gerrymander following the census. The first census was held in 1790 and has been held every 10 years since as required by the Constitution. Its task is both simple and complex: To count every person in the U.S. and where they live. The census itself may be subject to some electoral engineering. The 2020 census is the focus of a slew of lawsuits over the push to add a citizenship question for the first time since 1950. Given the toxic national conversation over walls, deportation, ICE raids and the like, it’s a guarantee that with a citizenship question, many people, fearful of potential repercussions, will skip the census. It will guarantee an undercount in states with large numbers of immigrants, including legal immigrants and citizens in immigrant communities who might have a non-citizen living in their household. An undercount carries real consequences in dollar terms. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill demographer Rebecca Tippett estimates more than 400,000 North Carolina children have at least one immigrant parent. In an environment of fear, it’s a given a lot of those households will skip the census. Tippett says every person missed means a loss of nearly $1,000 in federal funding. The census issue sounds like something a ways off in the future, but we’re on the clock. The Census Bureau has to do a population count by April 1 of 2020, send it to the president by the end of that year, and the states have to have new redistricting data in hand by April 2021. Get it wrong, and it’s a mistake we’ll live with for a decade. For a growing North Carolina, that is unacceptable.

With the recent storm patterns that have hammered the United States, it is time for state and federal government to embrace the fact that the climate is changing. A failure to recognize this is costing the nation and North Carolina billions of dollars in property damage and loss of life. Hurricane Florence is more evidence for those not already convinced that climate change is real. And those not already convinced include the majority of the North Carolina legislature. During the last decade, North Carolina and South Carolina have endured almost one hurricane a year, not including tropical depression storms that have caused flooding, property damage and loss of life. Many maintain the recent patterns of storms in the United States and around the globe are driven by climate change. It can be argued that the historical storms in New Orleans, Houston, Florida, New Jersey and along the eastern seaboard can be credited to global warming. Those who argue climate change is not real are not facing the extraordinary research that has been done in North Carolina, the nation and internationally. The evidence is overwhelming that climate change is real and has implications for our economy and our very lives. A key question is what is climate change, or global warming? And are we simply going through a period of time with more storms? In reviewing a formal explanation by Wikipedia, “climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns, when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e. decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather within the context of longer-term average conditions. Physical evidence to observe climate change includes a range of parameters.” The recent storms are a very small sample size, not enough to build an ironclad case for climate change. But there are plenty of additional, and convincing, components for the argument: sea level change, cloud cover and precipitation changes, changing vegetation patterns, Arctic ice sheet erosion, temperature changes and more. These factors are in turn impacted by growing populations and growing emission levels. In 2005, North Carolina authorized the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change to direct the commission to determine if a cap on emissions was warranted, and if so, at what level. The North Carolina Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPG). The 43-person Commission of diverse experts from across the North Carolina expired with the submission of its report in 2008. The 118-page report listed 564 recommended options for further study and potential adoption that are believed to be most important for mitigating North Carolina’s GHG emissions. The associated economic impact projected significant cost savings for the state through 2020. In the summer of 2012, North Carolina, conservative state Rep. Pat McElraft introduced a bill that stipulated state and local agencies must refer to historical linear predictions of sea level rise rather than current research, and only look at 30-year predictions – basically ignoring the evidence and overlooking the potentially dangerous impacts of weather-related damage to homes and property along coastal Carolina. The bill was passed despite rising sea levels on the state’s coast and the recommendations from the CAPG. We implore politicians to move away from political party positions and provide the funding to support scientific research that will assist local communities, regions and the states to address this crucial issue, that impacts everyone, regardless of boundaries or political affiliation. Global warming is a real and must be addressed. In 2015 the Pew Research Center reported, “that a median of 54 percent of all respondents consider climate change a serious problem.’’ Politicians should also consider climate change a reality – not a political agenda item. Fortunately, 196 countries see the impact of global warming, given that they signed on to the Paris Agreement, to bring nations together to fight against climate change. President Trump pulled the United States out of the accord, for political and shortsighted reasons. Global warming is real and we must take appropriate actions to address it or continue to face the wrath of mother nature.

I served in the United States Air Force (AWACS) and am a Vietnam War Veteran. I flew 120 Arial Combat Support Missions and was awarded four Air Medals. I spent the majority of my career working for the public sector and am considered an expert in public administration. I also served on the Board of Directors for the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. I served governors and political appointees, both Democratic and Republican Administrations. One of my greatest honors was to serve as co-chair of the Arizona Veterans Committee for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. I also served as an Arizona delegate (alternate) for the Republican National Convention in support of John McCain. While the overall campaign was not successful, there was one consistency – John McCain’s relentless determination to continue to serve the people and this country. There has been much commentary about his care for the people and this great nation.As an African-American, I was asked by friends, family and the media: “Why do you support John McCain? My response was, I have and will always support the candidate I feel is best for the country and the people, regardless of the political party, race or gender. I believed then and I believe now, John McCain was the better candidate. I also have the utmost respect for our first African-American President, Barack Obama. As far as I am concerned, there is something they have in common as it relates to history – they both left their mark. After the 2008 Presidential Election, John McCain told me he felt bad because he let me and others down. That was just another demonstration of his character and his care for all of us. He was very sincere and I could feel it bothered him. I told him he should not feel that way, given what he has done and was doing for this nation. I am not going to restate all the good things that have been said the last several days regarding John McCain, they are all true. He is the role model for what this country needs, he has set the standard for other political hopefuls to follow. My final message to John: You will always be my Commander-In-Chief. Edward O. Willis lives in Phoenix, Arizona

My Journey on the Monuments Study Committee Union Square is a place of prominence on our Capitol Grounds in Raleigh whose collection of monuments has often been compared to game pieces on a chessboard by visitors to the site. After the North Carolina Historical Commission Public Hearings in March, I walked around Union Square and noticed four and one-half of these 14 monuments were either dedicated to the Civil War, contain the word Confederate or have a Confederate Flag depicted within their Bronze Plaque. The statue of George Washington was the first monument placed there in 1857 and the memorial to the Confederate dead was the second in 1895. These first monuments mark periods of upheaval in the history of our state and our nation; and ever since Native American Indians were pushed away from this land in the 17th century, Union Square has witnessed a succession of national owners who flew the flag of Great Britain, the United States, the Confederate States of America and finally the United States again. However, the flag of North Carolina has always flown on our Capitol Grounds. A Critique of the Monuments on Union Square John Coffey, Curator of American and Modern Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art wrote a “Critique of the Monuments on Union Square” on February 15, 2010. He said: “As one who is a native of Raleigh and reasonably well-versed in the history of this state, I am also fascinated by these sculptures as expressions of ideas and sentiments now sometimes hard to appreciate or even comprehend. If one believes that the commemorative monuments on Union Square should honor the most important events and the most praiseworthy men and women of North Carolina, then the present disparate group of monuments fails in many respects. Collectively, they convey to the visitor an abiding reverence for the Confederacy, for war and warriors, and for politicians and civic leaders of decidedly mixed legacies.” The Lack of Diversity among the Monuments At the swearing-in of the African American Heritage Commission on February 27, 2009, State Supreme Court Justice Patricia Goodson-Timmons noted the lack of diversity among the Capitol Memorials. In particular, the African American Heritage Commission stated: “We wish to bring to the attention of the North Carolina Historical Commission the vital and central role played by African Americans in North Carolina’s long history, from the appearance of the first imported bondsmen in the seventeenth century to the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century, and ongoing struggle for equal rights” In April 2016, Governor Pat McCrory publicly announced and encouraged North Carolina citizens to participate in eight public hearings across the state to offer feedback on a new monument on the State Capitol grounds to commemorate the achievements of African Americans. Governor McCrory said, “These hearings will allow more people to play an active role in helping the state recognize the contributions African Americans have made to North Carolina.” Two and one-half years have now passed since the African American Memorials Committee held these Public Hearings. No further steps have been taken and no public funding has been provided. Our state now seems paralyzed by a pre-occupation with defending an incomplete representation of our past within our most public square instead of reaching forward into a new future and exploring new possibilities for how we represent our state with public art. My Personal Story I agree with the African American Heritage Commission’s statement. African Americans haveplayed a vital role in my life, in the lives of my ancestors, and in the lives and history of the people of North Carolina. This is my personal story. My great great grandparents Hardin William Reynolds and his wife Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds owned 88 enslaved African Americans in 1863 who planted and picked tobacco on their Rock Springs Plantation in Patrick County, Va. My great grandfather’s brother A. D. Reynolds served as a major in the Confederate Army representing Virginia during the Civil War. Beginning in 1875, mygreat grandparents, R. J. Reynolds and his wife Katharine Smith Reynolds employed thousands of African American factory workers in my hometown of Winston-Salem to twist lumps and roll cigarettes and later to work in their home and gardens at Reynolda Village built in 1917. Beginning in 1933, my grandparents Dick and Blitz Reynolds employed dozens of African Americans during the Great Depression to help construct and operate their Long Creek Dairy Farm in Surry County and to work as cooks, and gardeners and maids in their home at Merry Acres built in 1941. When I was a child in the 1970s, my parents also employed housekeepers in the home, and I was introduced to African American culture in a manner similar to that of the character Skeeter in Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel, The Help. Like Skeeter, as a young adult, I began to explore and to question my history and my heritage. As a high school junior, I researched and wrote on Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan’s sole dissenting opinion in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case and learned how the legalization of “separate but equal” status for African Americans had launched the era of Jim Crow in the South. More recently, in 2001, I began to attend a local African American church in Winston-Salem, where I was baptized in 2005 by the same African American Pastor, Lewis Devlin, who later buried my father in 2009 in our ancestral cemetery in Patrick County, Va. And most recently, on October 3, 2015, I married my wife, Deborah, before God, officiated by a different African American minister, my longtime friend, the Rev. Paul A. Lowe, Jr.

The Boston Globe has called on newspaper editorial boards to publish pieces on Aug. 16 denouncing President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on the press, specifically his oft-repeated charge that the news media is the “enemy of the people.” We’re small fry in the media ecosystem and as such weren’t approached by the Globe, but since Aug. 16 is our publication date, we thought we’d speak our piece on the issue. That’s because when somebody with as large a megaphone as the president of the United States repeatedly makes such an accusation, it filters down all the way and can have an impact even on the most humble news organization. So, for the record: We’re not the enemy of the people. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees the freedom of religion, speech, assembly and petition. There’s no accident it singled out a single profession – the press – for protection as well. The founders were all about a government run by the consent of the governed, and knew full well that the governed needed information about what their governors were up to in order to make the best decisions regarding their own fate. In 1765 John Adams wrote, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right … an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.’’ In 1792 Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.” In less flowery terms, the role of the press is to keep an eye on the henhouse. Quite often, that comes in terms of covering municipal and county meetings. People are busy and can’t always sit in on these kind of official gatherings. The press is there to sit in for those who can’t attend, to let them know what their leaders on the local level are doing. These meetings are sometimes, honestly, a bit boring, focusing on the formation of a task force to study this or that esoteric concept. At other times, they can mean you wake up one day with a gun range bordering your property, or a hog farm, or who knows what. It’s our job to give you a heads-up as to what’s coming down the pike. We may opine about the ramifications of such decisions on these pages – that’s why they’re called the opinion pages. Our reporting, on the other hand, strives to deliver the facts and the context as truthfully as possible. At times, that truth can be painful to people, particularly when it casts someone they’re fond of in a negative light. But it’s still the truth. And a truth many people forget in an age where there’s a war being waged on the press. The fact is, people write their own stories. We just report them. In an ideal world this paper would be filled with nothing but positive stories (and in fact, this community being what it is, we are able to run a great many more positive stories than can be found in other communities). But the fact is, there will be arrest reports, there will be crime, there will be times when a government official, through negligence or sinister motives, does something to impact a community. To use an example from a nearby county, there’s a reason a sheriff isn’t rolling in video-gambling money, and a reason a county manager isn’t living large on the taxpayer tab. It’s because they chose poorly in writing their own stories, got caught, and were reported on by the local press. Sure, there are bad reporters out there, as with any other slice of society. There are bad cops. Bad teachers. And bad politicians. But there’s a difference between a bad reporter and universal condemnation of a First Amendment guarantor by the person holding the highest office in the land. It’s leading us into uncharted territory in this country, a potential moment described best by political theorist Hannah Arendt: “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. “And with such a people you can then do what you please.’’ No, we’re your eyes, your ears, perhaps even your nose – we’ve seen many a seasoned reporter who can tell something just doesn’t smell right. We’re not the enemy. We’re just doing a job, sometimes imperfectly, for the communities and country we love. Cheerleaders or stenographers we’re not. And have no intention of being such.

For starters, not North Carolina’s five surviving former governors. In an unprecedented gathering, Jim Hunt, Jim Martin, Mike Easley, Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory stood together at a dais Monday afternoon in Raleigh to announce their united opposition to two of the six proposed constitutional amendments slated to appear on the November ballot in North Carolina Martin and McCrory are Republicans, Easley, Hunt and Perdue Democrats. The group issued a prepared statement that reads as follows: “As former Governors of North Carolina, we believe that two of the proposed Constitutional amendments would crippled the separation of powers in our state. These two amendments transfer clear executive authority to the legislature and the ballot language misleads voters as to how damaging these changes would be to our checks and balances in government.’’ Let’s back up a bit to see how we arrived at this moment. Democrat Roy Cooper narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in the 2016 election. The outcome was disputed for several weeks. Also, in 2016, the GOP kept its supermajorities in the N.C. House and Senate, but lost control of the state Supreme Court. McCrory called a special session to deal with a disaster relief package. As the doors closed on that session Republican leaders called for another special session, and that’s when it became clear Cooper – and the courts – were in the crosshairs. In no particular order, here are the proposals that were presented in that session: Removing the governor’s control of the State Board of Elections, overhauling county election boards to prevent Democratic control, make Supreme Court races partisan, reduce the number of state employees appointed by the governor from 1,500 to 300 (that number was raised from 500 to 1,500 when McCrory was governor) and require Senate approval of Cooper’s picks for the Cabinet. Some of those items passed, some were modified. But the legislature wasn’t done. As the new legislative session opened this year, Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore were asked if they had plans to strip Cooper of any more of his powers. Berger, laughing, said, “Does he still have any?” Moore chipped in with “If you have any suggestions, let us know.” The path from those statements to the sight of former governors taking a bipartisan stand was direct. Two of the six proposed constitutional amendments that may be before voters would restructure the balance of power in North Carolina’s government. One would move the ability to fill vacant judgeships away from the governor to the legislature. The other would overturn 100 years of established practice giving the governor appointment powers over the state elections and ethics board and hand it to the legislature. It would also give the legislature control of duties and appointments to any commission or board it creates. Regarding the first amendment, there are also serious issues with the way the question on the ballot is worded, saying voting for it would switch to “professional qualifications instead of political influence when nominating justices and judges.” However, there’s no guarantee at all politicians wouldn’t simply pack the court with their pals. The former governors lit into the proposals in fine fashion. Martin said, “This is not about partisan politics. It’s about power politics. And it must be stopped. “It may seem brilliant – I would say deviously brilliant – that they now propose to put these amendments to the constitution that would give them absolute power over both the executive and judicial branches. … I’m going to say to you personally, that it is embarrassing to me after a career devoted to building a healthier more competitive two-party system in our state, that it is a legislature controlled by my Republican party that has hatched this scheme.’’ McCrory was just as blunt, saying, “My advice to legislators…if any of you want to take on the responsibilities of the governor, then have the courage to run for governor, and win. Earn it. Do not hijack these duties through two deceitful and misleading amendments that attempt to fool our great citizens.”. These amendments would weaken the office of governor in North Carolina, already one of the weakest in the nation, very nearly to pointlessness. We’d point out that the office of governor is one that is voted on by all North Carolina voters. These amendments came from the leaders of the House and Senate, voted on by people in their district and people in their party – not people across the state. It’s inexcusable for them to be making such a power grab. The interest in more control of the courts is obvious, considering the legislature keeps losing cases in court regarding various pieces of legislation, starting with the disastrous black eye to the state called HB2. That may happen again this week, when a three-judge panel hears legal challenges to get four of the six amendments off the ballots. The sensible solution would be to drop the push to get the amendments on the ballot. This legislature would seem to prefer changing the courts, and sending the governor off to mall ribbon-cuttings instead of exercising the constitutional charge of leading the state.

The U.S. House’s recent defeat of a second and more moderate Republican proposal to reform immigration demonstrates a failure to deal with one of the most significant economic, food security and humanitarian issues of our time. North Carolina is one of many states whose economy suffers from that failure, yet few lawmakers have been more instrumental in exacerbating the problem than Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and the Freedom Caucus he leads. Meadows represents the state’s western counties. The state’s agriculture industry is one of the largest in the U.S. In terms of value-added, it’s the top sector of the state’s economy according to an N.C. State study, contributing $84 billion in 2017. Farming is an uncertain business in the best of times. But fewer hands to do the work has taken the place of the weather as many farmers’ number one worry. After analyzing 15 years of North Carolina farm labor data, economist Michael Clemens concluded “There is virtually no supply of native manual farm laborers” in the state. Even during the Great Recession with an unemployment rate in some counties in the teens, unemployed North Carolinians did not come forward for these jobs. The pool of immigrant labor so essential to farm operations has dwindled as a result of tightened enforcement, deportations and the country’s utterly dysfunctional immigration laws. The Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018 rejected in late June made no pretense of being bi-partisan. But unlike a more conservative bill defeated earlier in the month, it made an effort to find a compromise between the moderate and conservative wings of the Republican Party. Basically that compromise gave a form of legal status to young immigrants who qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. Otherwise, it was a hardline bill that provided money for a border wall, decreased legal immigration and raised the bar for seeking asylum in the U.S. The negotiations leading up to the votes on the two bills were contentious and sometimes angry, including a shouting match on the House floor between House Speaker Paul Ryan and Meadows, whose caucus pretty much scuttled the compromise bill. Granted, it was a bad bill, but the need for reform is desperate. For farmers, the greatest disappointment came in the failure to address their need for a fair, workable and legal way to employ immigrant labor to do the work for which there is no native-born labor pool. Though not included in the final bill, an earlier proposal that would have helped farmers would create a new guest worker program to replace the cumbersome, costly and inadequate H-2A visa program. Called H-2C, it would eliminate H-2A housing and transportation requirements. But its most significant feature would allow experienced farmworkers already in the country without documentation a way to come out of the shadows and obtain a legal guest worker visa. Estimates are these workers represent 50 percent to 70 percent of the current farm labor in the U.S. This acknowledges the reality that without these workers, much essential farm labor would go undone resulting in lost crops and ultimately in lost farms, leaving Americans ever more dependent on foreign produce. A report prepared for the Partnership for a New American Economy found that while just 14.5 percent of the fresh fruit Americans purchased from 1998-2000 was imported, by the 2010-2012 period, 25.8 percent was imported. For fresh vegetables, imports as a share of total spending climbed from 17.1 to 31.2 percent during the same period. The partnership brings together Republican, Democratic and Independent mayors and business leaders who support immigration reform. The report found that labor challenges faced by U.S. farmers and the inadequacies of the H-2A visa program are a key reason why American farmers have been unable to maintain their share of the domestic market. The inability of U.S. growers to keep pace with rising consumer demand at home represents a major lost opportunity for many rural communities dependent on the agriculture industry. This is not only an economic travesty, it represents both a food safety and a food security issue. This version of the H-2C proposal contains a “touchback” feature requiring undocumented workers to leave the country in order to obtain H-2C status. Most farmers oppose this feature because of the time, expense and risk of workers not returning. The proposal has other problems as well, but that’s a topic for another day. Our immigration laws need to be fixed. The ongoing failure to do so leaves North Carolina farmers dealing with uncertainty and frustration and puts domestic food production at risk. Unless Meadows and the Freedom Caucus he leads become part of the solution, voters who care about domestic food production and about treating farmworkers fairly need to hold them accountable at the polls.

North Carolina achieved a dubious honor earlier this year. Two Harvard professors named the state an example of what America in the post-Trump era may look like — a place of politics without guardrails. In a book titled “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt examine how democracies unravel and point out that in the 21st century they rarely end in swift bloody coups. More often they die slowly at the hands of autocratic elected leaders determined to retain power. Two norms have undergirded American democracy and helped it avoid the partisan fight to the death that has destroyed democracies elsewhere in the world, they write. Those norms are toleration (competing parties accepting one another as legitimate rivals) and restraint (the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives). These have served as the soft guardrails of American democracy. But today, Levitsky and Ziblatt say, those guardrails are weakening. “American politicians now treat their rivals as enemies, intimidate the free press and threaten to reject the results of elections,” they write. “They try to weaken the institutional buffers of our democracy, including the courts, intelligence services and ethics offices. American states, which were once praised by the great jurist Louis Brandeis as ‘Laboratories of democracy,’ are in danger of becoming laboratories of authoritarianism as those in power rewrite electoral rules, redraw constituencies and even rescind voting rights to ensure that they do not lose.” Though lawmakers in other states are guilty too, North Carolina’s legislature, in their view, represents the best example of this. North Carolina Republican lawmakers have tried to intimidate and undermine state courts, take control of the elections board, gerrymander districts for the express purpose of electing as many Republicans as possible and diminish the power of Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Their efforts represent exactly the kind of behavior that Levitsky and Ziblatt write about, the autocratic impulse to sacrifice democracy in order to hold on to power. The North Carolina Republican in charge of drawing new district maps, Rep. David Lewis, justified the Congressional maps that were rejected by a three-judge federal panel in January by saying, “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” In a democracy, it is not Rep. Lewis’ prerogative to decide what is better for the citizens of North Carolina. That would be the voters’ prerogative. Lewis freely admitted that he ordered the districts drawn to elect 10 Republicans and three Democrats because he did not believe they could be drawn in such a way to elect 11 Republicans and two Democrats — this in a state where 38.9 percent of voters are registered Democrats, 30.3 percent are registered unaffiliated, and 30.3 percent are registered Republican. Lewis’ comment suggests a lawmaker who does not see Democrats as legitimate rivals, but as enemies that must be defeated even if that means gaming the system. GOP lawmakers’ efforts to undermine state courts are perhaps even more treacherous. Already, they have made non-partisan judicial elections partisan and reduced the size of the Court of Appeals from 15 to 12, depriving Gov. Cooper of the opportunity to replace three retiring members. A new raft of bills aimed at intimidating judges includes one that would reduce all judicial terms to two years and one to redraw district and superior court judicial districts in a way that, according to analyses by NC Policy Watch and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, would disproportionately harm voters of color and Democrats. As Americans, we believe that our democracy is different from those in Venezuela, Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine — countries written about by Levitsky and Ziblatt, where elected leaders subverted democratic institutions. But we see the kind of tactics those autocratic leaders used on display here as courts and other institutions that function as checks and balances are intimidated or undermined. Though Democrats also have tested the guardrails, Levitsky and Ziblatt say the current win-at-all-costs era began with the hardball tactics of Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich who schooled fellow Republicans that they were fighting a war for power and used over-the-top rhetoric calling his opponents “corrupt,” “sick,” “anti-American” and “anti-family.” It also is true that rapidly changing technology, demographics and economic trends have contributed to the two underlying forces that Levitsky and Ziblatt believe are driving American polarization: racial and religious realignment and growing economic inequality. Autocrats can exploit these forces to their advantage in their quest to become ever more powerful. If we, as citizens, hope to preserve our freedoms and our say over who holds power in our state and country, we can’t sit on the sidelines. Finding solutions to the challenges we face won’t be easy, but we should be wary of deploying the tactics that have brought us to this place. As Levitsky and Ziblatt point out, hardball practices like refusing to consider the nomination of a qualified Supreme Court candidate as the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate did when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, foster tit-for-tat behavior that leads to dysfunction and stalemate. Democracy is about compromise. But in our polarized atmosphere, we seem to have forgotten that.

During the second semester of 2014, I received a call from a student asking specific details about our affordable housing programs. In particular, the young person seemed interested in housing scams and discrimination targeting residents from Spanish-speaking countries. Her questions were so precise and inquisitive, that I assumed she was interviewing me for a graduate-level research paper. As the former executive director of The Lexington Housing Community Development Corporation, that was my first conversation with Cinthia Pecina, a transfer student at Davidson County Community College who was calling various nonprofit agencies to volunteer as a translator. Our agency appeared on a list of possible locations seeking volunteers and Cinthia made it clear that she was looking for a real opportunity to impact the lives of others who faced a situation similar to her experiences. She interviewed our agency carefully before asking if we were accepting interns. I later learned more about Cinthia and her path of becoming a United States citizen. She came to the United States from Mexico when she was 9 years old and did not speak English. When she first arrived, she had difficulty adjusting to a new language and culture. In November 2012, Cinthia’s purse was stolen and she had to prove she was a legal resident. Although the honor student had completed her secondary education, she suddenly couldn’t prove she was even allowed to be in this county. Without those documents, she couldn’t prove she was legally allowed to work. She couldn’t obtain another copy of her Social Security card or driver’s license until she received another copy of her permanent resident card, which would take months and a lot of money. With the help of Casa Guadalupe Catholic Social Services in Greensboro, she submitted her application and was sworn in as a citizen in January 2013. Cinthia later enrolled at Davidson County Community College, and during one of her classes, a teacher gave her a list of service projects to earn extra credit. Harkening back to the days when she first came to this country, she decided to volunteer as a translator. When she contacted us, I knew that she was serious about seeking social justice for families. Outside of translating documents she worked alongside our staff as a translator and wrote about issues as a bilingual reporter in our Empowerment Magazine. Her work inspired city agencies to contract with our program in order to hire Cinthia to help coordinate outreach including surveys and a neighborhood revitalization project for the Lexington Office of Business and Community Development. Cinthia’s work was instrumental in reaching residents of our city who could not speak English. She spent hot summer days going door-to-door visits in order to explain the city’s neighborhood plans and broaden the community feedback. Indeed, Cinthia is out there changing the world. She emailed me recently to say that she graduated from UNC in 2017 with a degree in public policy. She started a new job in October working as a legal assistant at the Forsyth County District Attorney’s office, specifically working in the Domestic Violence Unit and she is looking toward law schools. “I am looking for volunteer opportunities this spring to maybe mentor middle or high school students,” she said. Indeed, Cinthia is one of our dreamers — but she’s not the only one. It’s time to find a permanent immigration solution. Republished with writer’s permission by Women AdvaNCe. Antionette Kerr is a news correspondent, lover of poetry, publisher and consultant. Email her at akerr@thewritefolks.net T

Last week, a federal three-judge panel struck down North Carolina’s congressional district maps. Tuesday’s ruling said the congressional maps drawn by state lawmakers in 2016 were unconstitutional and ordered new maps drawn by Jan. 24. The unanimous ruling marked the second instance maps drawn after the 2010 Census have been tossed out by a three-judge panel. A 2016 ruling said two majority black districts originally drawn in 2011 relied too heavily on race. The map redrawn as a remedy sparked a new round of lawsuits. Last week’s ruling did not focus on race, but on raw partisanship. It marked the first time a federal court has stepped in to block partisan gerrymandering, an issue the courts generally have steered clear of. The 191-page opinion written by Judge James Wynn, a Democratic appointee, says “Rather than seeking to advance any democratic or constitutional interest, the state legislator responsible for drawing the 2016 Plan said he drew the map to advantage Republican candidates because he ‘think[s] electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.’ But that is not a choice the Constitution allows legislative map drawers to make.” The representative in question is David Lewis, R-Harnett, who also said the 2016 map was designed to elect 10 Republicans and three Democrats “because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” Western Carolina political science professor and department chair Christopher Cooper said “This is the most politically consequential redistricting ruling in NC since Reno v. Shaw—the 1993 ruling that limited the degree to which states could use race when redistricting. Unlike previous cases out of NC, however, this case is significant because it is about partisanship rather than race. In brief, in this case, the court ruled that the NC General Assembly violated the equal protection clause of the constitution when they virtually guaranteed the Republicans would have a massive advantage over the Democrats.’’ The numbers do reflect the advantage. Registration figures from earlier this month showed 2.6 million voters registered with the Democratic Party, 2.09 million unaffiliated and 2.06 million registered Republican. Despite that relative balance North Carolina’s congressional delegation contains 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats. With the redrawn maps, Republicans won 49 percent of state’s congressional votes in 2012 and took nine of 13 congressional seats. In 2014 the party took 54 percent of the congressional vote and landed 10 seats. “This case joins recent cases out of Wisconsin and Maryland—both of which are currently before the Supreme Court,’’ said Cooper, “and both of which have held that their respective states went too far in securing partisan majorities for the ruling parties.’’ “Although no one knows exactly what will happen, it is almost certain that the Republicans will appeal this decision,’’ Cooper said, “and ask that the Supreme Court consider North Carolina’s decision alongside Maryland and Wisconsin. If the court is amenable, these trio of cases may settle, once and for all, whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution.’’ State Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse defended the GOP maps, saying in a news release that the districts “are fair and were drawn following all known rules, and existing case law.” Woodhouse is correct on that point, as the courts have not deemed political gerrymandering as a constitutional violation. At least, not yet. That could change. U.S. District Judge William L. Osteen Jr. concurred with the three-judge panel’s decision but partially dissented regarding legal analysis. However, the George W. Bush appointee wrote, “In my opinion, Article I, Sections 2 and 4 (of the U.S. Constitution) set a clear limit on unconstitutional political gerrymandering. When the legislature, through its redistricting plan, controls the outcome of the election, whether as a result of partisan consideration or another factor, the plan is unconstitutional.” Cooper said the impact of the outcome of this case could be very significant for Western North Carolina. “If this case holds, our members of Congress will run in different districts than those they currently represent,’’ Cooper said. “Although it’s far too early to know what the new districts will look like, it’s almost certain that they will be more favorable to the Democrats than our current districts. “And nowhere will this be more apparent than right here in WNC, where our congressional districts (the 10th and 11th) sit on perhaps the largest gerrymandering fault line in American politics.’’ Mapmakers took the 11th District, which includes Sylva, and removed a large chunk of liberal Asheville to the conservative 10th District in new maps after 2010. That changed the 11th, traditionally perhaps the most competitive seat in North Carolina, to a seat with a 14-point GOP advantage. If Asheville is made whole again, the math would revert and the district could be up for grabs again. Arguments in the Wisconsin case were heard by the court in October; in December the court agreed to hear the Maryland case. On Thursday the chairman of the Senate’s extra session redistricting committee filed a notice of appeal of the North Carolina decision to the Supreme Court. The shape of the decisions to come will shape the future of North Carolina politics. Jim Buchanan is editor of The Sylva Herald.

Given the turbulence of the politics in 2017 in North Carolina, The Sylva Herald thought it would be appropriate to turn to Chris Cooper, professor and head of the Department of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, for his thoughts on what lies ahead here in 2018, a year that will see all the state’s congressional seats, in addition to all its state legislative seats, up for grabs. Cooper graciously broke out his crystal ball to answer 10 questions from Herald staff. What are the moving targets in 2018 in North Carolina that voters should pay attention to in 2018? Two words: Constitutional amendments. The rumor mill around the state indicates that the Republican General Assembly may take some of the more controversial issues directly to the people, in the form of Constitutional Amendments. While they could propose any number of amendments, the most likely seem to be voter ID and judicial elections. And, if the past is any guide, these amendments would have a good chance of passage (about 85 percent of previous amendments have passed). Bringing controversial ideas to the people allows the Republican supermajority to move their agenda forward without facing intense backlash from likely opponents. Simply put, it’s a smart political move. Pending the outcomes of the previous question, what are the areas of the state that could see a swing to the right or left? There are 12 counties in North Carolina that I view as bellwether counties—counties that have shown recent trends towards supporting both Republican and Democratic candidates for high office. All but one of these counties are rural (New Hanover being the exception). The battleground in 2018, therefore is much more likely to be in Jackson and Watauga than Mecklenburg or Wake. November is a long way off, but current conventional wisdom says the Democratic Party has the momentum. Is that true in North Carolina to any degree? Absolutely. There is clearly a national swing towards the Democrats—we can see that in poll results and in special election results where Democrats have fared very well. Some of that is simply the cyclical nature of politics (the President’s party always takes some hits), but some of it is due to Trump’s anemic approval. And there’s no reason to think that all of this doesn’t apply to the Tar Heel State. What are the prospects of Democrats retaking the state House or Senate? Taking back the state House or Senate would be extremely difficult (and that’s probably an understatement). Even if we see some movement in the courts on partisan gerrymandering, I haven’t seen any scenario that gives the Democrats a legitimate chance of taking back the majority. If they somehow pull it off, it would be the political equivalent of a #15 seed making it to the Final Four. What are the prospects of Democrats breaking the filibuster-proof hold on either chamber? The goal of the Democrats should be to run a candidate in every election (or darn close), and to break the super-majority. The former strategy is important in the long-run as the Democratic party needs to reassert itself as a viable alternative in all types of districts. The latter goal is important as it will allow Roy Cooper to move his agenda forward—right now his power is almost completely symbolic. The bar in the Senate is extremely high (the Democrats currently just control 15 of 50 seats), but the potential for beneficial redistricting combined with a national Democratic wave may give some hope in the House to break the supermajority. The economy is generally the top issue for voters. Does that appear to be holding true this year? Bill Clinton liked to quip, “it’s the economy, stupid.” And that remains true today, although the mechanism may be slightly different than it used to be. Rather than the key being raw economic numbers, it tends to be people’s perceptions of the economy—and in today’s information environment, those two do not always jibe. Is the relative decimation of the state’s Raleigh press corps having any impact on this year’s election? It will have an impact in important ways — and in ways that I don’t think necessarily benefit either party. Whether voters like to admit it or not, we all depend on journalists in Raleigh to translate state news for us. Information is the currency of politics and there are fewer people proving this currency than in any time in our state’s history. While this is a national problem, the effects may be greatest in a state like North Carolina—a state that is growing rapidly and undergoing some serious growing pains. The two trends in American politics that give me the gravest concern for the future are the staggering levels of political polarization, and the decline of a robust press corps covering state politics. What are the “Black Swan’’ issues that could impact the election, either to the left or right? The potential resolution of the redistricting decisions clearly provides one such issue. If the Court sides with the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin redistricting case, it will have ramifications across the country, including in North Carolina, where the standard being litigated would immediately deem our districts unconstitutional. We can’t know what the resulting districts would look like, but they would have to change—and any change would almost certainly benefit the Democrats. I also think that the national conversation about sexual harassment and sexual discrimination has not moved to the state legislative level yet—and when it does (and I do think it’s a when, not an if), there’s no telling who will have to reckon with their behavior and who might quickly become a political liability. As Governor, Roy Cooper is the state’s most recognizable Democratic leader. Who in your view is the face of the GOP in North Carolina? The Republicans are fortunate that they have built a strong enough party that they don’t rely on one leader. Speaker Tim Moore and president pro-tem Phil Berger certainly hold the formal leadership positions in the legislature, but neither has cultivated a statewide presence in the way that former speaker (and current U.S. Senator) Thom Tillis did. Western North Carolina’s Tom Apodoca certainly yields tremendous power for the Republicans in the lobbying corps, and Dallas Woodhouse draws a great deal of attention (and some ire) as head of the party in the state. As powerful as these men are, however, none singlehandedly drives the state’s attention. Regardless of your opinion of the Republican party’s policy stances, this sort of distribution of power is a sign of a healthy party. How tightly are Republican fortunes in North Carolina tied to Donald Trump? There is no doubt that any president—particularly this one—leaves a wide wake. When the president is popular, he helps his down ballot candidates with his coattails, and when he’s not, the reverse happens. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Donald Trump is a singularly unpopular president, and this lack of popularity extends to the Tar Heel State. The Republicans in North Carolina are in an awkward position—they certainly can’t attack the president as the vast majority of their voters voted for Trump, but at the same time, they may not want to jump on his coattails for fear they get tossed off. The best chance for Republican candidates is for Trump’s approval to improve slightly and him not to take too active a role in the campaign. Chris Cooper, professor and head of the Department of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, provides expert commentary on matters involving politics and political science in (and beyond) North Carolina. Cooper’s research focuses on state politics and policy, political communication, political psychology and Southern politics. He was named the 2013 “Professor of the Year” in North Carolina by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. That year, he also was honored as one of the top professors in the University of North Carolina system by its Board of Governors. Originally published in The Sylva Herald