Dr. David McLennan, Meredith College political scientist, on the General Assembly, executive power and Sen. Tillis
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Transcript
20 segmentsDr. McClend, thank you as always for joining us this morning. Good morning, Tony. Always good to be with you. Well, it's always good to talk to you as well. And a topic that we've talked about before, and really, North Carolina politicians and commentators have been talking about it for decades, and that's the General Assembly, taking more power away from the executive. Yeah, it's a bit of steady erosion over the years, and they're proposing a few more changes in what's called a technical corrections bill related to the budget, so that's an unusual thing in and of itself. that they would put more things in there than budget items. But anyway, it's a proposal to move some appointment powers away from the governor and to remove the Secretary of State from a local commission, a local commission. And I think the Secretary of State had been a member of the local government commission since it was created. Yeah, and it's since the Secretary of State is primarily in charge of licensing businesses and doing things like that, it's a rather unusual move for the General Assembly, but... You know, we can see it through the lens of politics with a Democrat being removed, and that just shifts a little bit more responsibility for the local government commission to Republicans. And this sort of is in the same vein as what we saw late in the last legislature when the General Assembly took away powers from the governor for elections and handed them to the state auditor. Yeah, that was a big change. State auditor has got a lot of responsibility, not just auditing the expenditure of state revenues, but now controls the election process. And an elections bill that has been recently filed will give him even more power if that passes to do audits of elections. You know, Dr. McLennan, one of the things that I found fascinating than this new budget proposal is that the Senate had already... had confirmation power for the governor's appointment to his cabinet positions, but now a provision if they failed to hold a vote on one of those picks, a person would have to leave the job and also not be eligible or be renominated for any other high-level role during the governor's term. Do any other states have a provision that is that extreme?
None that I know of. I don't know all 50 states constitutions that well, but it is a very unusual move and one that I'm sure will be challenged legally because that is not just giving the consent functions to the North Carolina General Assembly, but actually is controlling the process of who the governor... may appoint. So I think it's a fundamental shift that I'd be surprised if the Stein administration doesn't take this to court. Is this the most surprising measure of any of these that have been included this year? It really is. I mean, you know, for years the government, the governor had pretty much free range for appointing cabinet-level positions. The Senate in recent years has said, well, it's always been a prerogative of hours to... consent to the appointment. So, you know, that's been within the last few years that that's been done. And now this next step is just taking it further along the process of stripping the government, of the governor of appointing his cabinet officials or people on. powerful boards and commission. Well, we have you with us this morning, Dr. McClend. Just a couple of things out of Washington. Wanted you to comment on. One, Thom Tillis, in a powerful position, again along with John Cornyn, and they're basically holding up Todd Blanche's nomination to be Attorney General because of that IRS deal with the president. Yeah, the IRS deal and what is commonly referred to as the slush fund. And, yeah, Central Thom Tillis and Senator Corcor made some very strong statements yesterday about not getting cooperation from the Justice Department about those two items. And they postponed today's vote, judicial committee vote on the nomination of Todd Blanche, which given the Senate schedule, they're scheduled to be out for quite some time. after this week, that may push the nomination vote into September. You know, it occurs to me, Dr. McClendon, that since he announced he was not going to seek re-election, Thom Tillis has probably had more national headlines than any North Carolina senator, at least since Jesse Helms or maybe even Sam Urban back in the Watergate days. It really is interesting that he has exerted a lot of power.
Sometimes he makes strong statements and doesn't always follow up the votes. But again, I think you're right that he has been very much a roadblock for President Trump over the past few months. And, you know, a lot of his critics will say, well, if you... thought this, why didn't you exercise this authority before and keep the president in check as the Constitution requires? But again, you know, These two senators, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, can create some problems for the president over the last few months of their term. Yeah, it's sort of interesting. You've got, and I'll throw Bill Cassidy in there with it, you've sort of got a block of these independent Republican senators for the rest of this term. Yeah, and given how close the Senate is, the margins in the Senate are very close, meaning that in this case, the nomination of Todd Blanche, these two senators could derail the process. But on other items that go to the full Senate, if all three of those senators were to vote against. a particular provision, that would put it to be a 50-50. All they would need is one more Republican to vote against President Trump's plans, and that could derail a piece of legislation. Dr. McClendon, as always, we love talking to you, and we appreciate your insight. Thank you very much, Tony. Have a good day.