Even with Republicans holding unprecedented political power across the South, Democrats remain mostly in charge of urban centers in otherwise conservative states. Yet increasingly that control is threatened, not at the ballot box, but by Republican-led legislatures reaching into local governing decisions.
In Georgia and North Carolina, GOP efforts range from regionalizing the Charlotte airport, the Atlanta metro transit system and the Asheville water system to redrawing district lines for local offices to benefit Republican candidates.
Republicans say there’s no power play at work as they do battle with Democrats such as Charlotte Mayor Antony Foxx, who is now President Barack Obama’s nominee to be U.S. transportation secretary, and the board of commissioners in Georgia’s most populous county, which includes most of Atlanta. Georgia state Rep. Edward Lindsey, a key GOP floor leader and a candidate for Congress, said the ideas are intended to make government more responsive and efficient.
But many Democrats contends that Republicans are abusing newfound power to overtake the last lingering Democratic bastions. And some Democrats almost mock Republicans for abandoning the conservative principle that the best government is the one closest to home.
“This all just flies in the face of Republican thinking,” said North Carolina state Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Democrat from Durham.
In Georgia, race is also at play in the longstanding tension between the majority African-American south Fulton County and the whiter, wealthier areas in newly constituted cities north of Atlanta.
“None of this is about making Fulton government better,” said Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Berlon. “This is about taking over Fulton County.”
The Republican-led legislature this year redrew lines for the Fulton commissioners to give north Fulton residents, who are reliably more Republican, a greater voice. Two black Democrats in south Fulton must now run against each other. The GOP stripped the commission’s power to appoint the top county elections official and handed the Republican governor the power to appoint the chief local magistrate judge. Republicans also made it easier to fire new county employees.
When the General Assembly reconvenes in January, the Republicans will pick up two even bigger measures that were stymied this year: One would grant a property tax break that Fulton County officials say would gut their budget. The other would overhaul the Atlanta metro transit system, privatizing many of its functions and giving suburbs more control. There’s also a measure for north Fulton to break away from the south altogether and form its own county.
Lindsey, who represents the wealthy Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead, attributed the push in no small part to mismanagement by Fulton officials. Fulton elections have been plagued by voting problems, with thousands of new voters having to cast provisional ballots last November.
In North Carolina,
Republican lawmakers blocked Foxx, the Democratic mayor of Charlotte, from raising a local tax for more revenue in a deal with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. They’re trying to create a regional authority, with suburban representatives, to take over the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport that Foxx and the city council now control. The city and Mecklenburg County would be represented, but the governor and legislative leaders — now Republicans — would get to pick some of the members.
The Republican state senator sponsoring the Charlotte airport bill said it’s about ensuring the facility’s continued growth. “It’s not a taking by the state,” said Bob Rucho of Mecklenburg County, emphasizing that he wants to require that authority members have relevant experience in fields like transportation, bonds, logistics.
Foxx, in an interview, declined to engage in any partisan sniping. But the mayor, who is a transportation attorney in the private sector, questioned the rush from Republicans and said he doesn’t believe that governance determines an airport’s success. Foxx said he has the same priorities for the airport as Rucho.
The legislature has already voted to regionalize the water system in Asheville, a left-leaning enclave that helped elect a Democrat to Congress from western Carolina until the GOP divided the city into separate districts. The city is suing to block the regionalization that becomes law Monday.
Berlon, the Georgia Democrat, said he believes North Carolina and Georgia are GOP test cases, with successful results certain to be exported to other states where — as in Georgia and North Carolina — fast-growing minority populations threaten future GOP majorities.
“You’ll see this next in Arizona and Texas,” he predicted. “I give them credit for foresight.”
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