When I returned home to North Carolina from the nation’s capital in 1989 and subsequently registered to vote, I opted not to join a political party. Although my conservative views were already well-established — and publicly on display in the syndicated newspaper column I’d created three years earlier — I considered it inappropriate for a journalist to join a partisan team. I was, and remain, unaffiliated.
At the time, North Carolina was an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Since then, the share of voters registering as Democrats has fallen precipitously. The Republican share rose for a while, then leveled off. The ranks of independent voters have, by contrast, kept growing rapidly. As of early March, about 36% of the state’s 7.2 million voters are unaffiliated, with 33% registered as Democrats, 30% as Republicans, and the rest as Libertarians or Greens.
I’m unaffiliated. So is a plurality of our state’s electorate. Nevertheless, I strongly favor partisan elections. They’re more transparent. They’re more competitive. And with few exceptions, those who strongly advocate nonpartisan elections are partisan actors who think their team benefits by keeping voters in the dark about their favored candidates’ affiliations.
That’s what happened two decades ago when the General Assembly removed the party labels from elections for North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The Democrats, then in charge of state government, had been entirely comfortable with decades of partisan elections for those offices — until voters started choosing Republicans.
In 1998, the GOP won a majority on the high court for the very first time. Republicans had also been doing better in other judicial races.
Was this because swing voters without much else go on assumed Republican judges would be tougher or crime and less likely to legislate from the bench? Probably. Whatever the explanation, by 2002 Democratic leaders had seen enough. They took the party labels off. Both major parties kept running candidates for the appellate courts, of course, but it became much harder to convey their philosophical differences to voters. That was the plan. It helped keep Republicans from increasing their majority on the high court. Indeed, they went down a seat in 2004.
Years later, after voters put Republicans in charge of the state legislature, it was the GOP’s turn to play the game. In 2016, strategists feared the party would have a rough election cycle with Donald Trump at the top of the ballot. Worried about losing the one Supreme Court race up that year, they first tried to convert it into a retention election, placing only the incumbent’s name on the ballot for an up-or-down vote. Once this was (properly) ruled unconstitutional, they consciously kept the Supreme Court race nonpartisan even as they restored party labels for Court of Appeals.
The gambit backfired. While Republicans ended up having a pretty good cycle — winning all five Court of Appeals races, for example — they lost the “nonpartisan” race for Supreme Court. That’s probably because, by the luck of the draw, the name of the Democrat, Mike Morgan, was listed above that of the Republican incumbent, Bob Edmunds. In the partisan races of 2016, the Republicans were listed above the Democrats. Morgan got lots of votes from North Carolinians who assumed he was the Republican.
The legislature finally ended the farce of nonpartisan judicial elections. So why am I revisiting the issue today? Because lawmakers have also been converting previously opaque school-board races into transparent ones. A decade ago, only one in 10 school boards featured officially partisan contests. Today it’s one in three. More will follow.
Democrats are up in arms about this. Not coincidentally, Republicans are winning most of the newly labeled school-board races.
Now, I’m open to the argument that we shouldn’t elect our judges. I’ve long been convinced that we should let county commissions appoint school boards as administrative bodies. But as long as we elect these public officials, voters should have as much information as possible about them — including their party affiliations, if any.
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John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member.
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Correction to previous post: I was looking at a single county for Trey Allen's win. Allen's statewide win was closer to 5 percentage points. Still a big deal in a state where Trump only won by 1 point.
Glad John Hood cleared this up! Apparently even the libertarian think tanks are done pretending that judges and justices are fair, neutral arbiters of the law. I appreciate the full-throated embrace of conservative "judicial activism."
"Nevertheless, I strongly favor partisan elections. They’re more transparent. They’re more competitive."
The only "transparency" gained is being 100% certain of a candidate's party affiliation. But let's be real. In this political climate, if the candidate has made any public statements whatsoever, I think we know exactly where they stand. As for increased competitiveness, this is a flat out lie. Hood admits as much when he smugly notes that Republicans will consistently blow out Democratic candidates as soon as party affiliation is on the ballot. We saw this with Sam Ervin in 2022. Ervin was an incumbent with a reasonable path to reelection, though it was expected to be a tight race. Once the race became partisan, however, he lost massively by around 13 percentage points. The winner of that race, Trey Allen, doesn't even have any judicial experience. With a law degree and a professed love of Antonin Scalia, the sky's the limit.
So it makes perfect sense when Hood says:
"And with few exceptions, those who strongly advocate nonpartisan elections are partisan actors who think their team benefits by keeping voters in the dark about their favored candidates’ affiliations."
Think about what he is literally saying. He's not afraid of voters being kept in the dark about actual intentions, judicial philosophy, experience, competency, or record of service. Just party affiliation. Nothing but pure tribal partisan voting, no matter candidate quality. What happened to educating voters on the issues and candidates' stances? His whole claim about Mike Morgan's win is that people didn't know enough about either candidate to even make a reasonable guess!
Sure, just look at the "D" or "R" next to someone's name. That's apparently all we need to know. Don't think, don't listen, don't read, don't learn. Hood is a total hack; it's almost unbelievable that he teaches at a university. I'd love to audit one of his courses.
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Thanks to modern technologies, you and more people are reading the Watauga Democrat than ever before. Freedom of the press is essential to preserving democracy: But a free press isn't free. It takes significant resources for Mountain Times Publications' 8 full-time journalists and editors to provide credible, fact-based and ethical journalism in the High Country. So, we are asking you to join our advertisers and print subscribers in supporting local journalism with your dollar. Your financial support will help sustain these services that you use to inform your decisions and engage with your community.
Your financial support will help sustain these services that you use to inform your decisions and engage with your community.
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Correction to previous post: I was looking at a single county for Trey Allen's win. Allen's statewide win was closer to 5 percentage points. Still a big deal in a state where Trump only won by 1 point.
"...the farce of nonpartisan judicial elections."
Glad John Hood cleared this up! Apparently even the libertarian think tanks are done pretending that judges and justices are fair, neutral arbiters of the law. I appreciate the full-throated embrace of conservative "judicial activism."
"Nevertheless, I strongly favor partisan elections. They’re more transparent. They’re more competitive."
The only "transparency" gained is being 100% certain of a candidate's party affiliation. But let's be real. In this political climate, if the candidate has made any public statements whatsoever, I think we know exactly where they stand. As for increased competitiveness, this is a flat out lie. Hood admits as much when he smugly notes that Republicans will consistently blow out Democratic candidates as soon as party affiliation is on the ballot. We saw this with Sam Ervin in 2022. Ervin was an incumbent with a reasonable path to reelection, though it was expected to be a tight race. Once the race became partisan, however, he lost massively by around 13 percentage points. The winner of that race, Trey Allen, doesn't even have any judicial experience. With a law degree and a professed love of Antonin Scalia, the sky's the limit.
So it makes perfect sense when Hood says:
"And with few exceptions, those who strongly advocate nonpartisan elections are partisan actors who think their team benefits by keeping voters in the dark about their favored candidates’ affiliations."
Think about what he is literally saying. He's not afraid of voters being kept in the dark about actual intentions, judicial philosophy, experience, competency, or record of service. Just party affiliation. Nothing but pure tribal partisan voting, no matter candidate quality. What happened to educating voters on the issues and candidates' stances? His whole claim about Mike Morgan's win is that people didn't know enough about either candidate to even make a reasonable guess!
Sure, just look at the "D" or "R" next to someone's name. That's apparently all we need to know. Don't think, don't listen, don't read, don't learn. Hood is a total hack; it's almost unbelievable that he teaches at a university. I'd love to audit one of his courses.
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PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
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Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.