Editorial Roundup: North Carolina
Charlotte Observer/Raleigh News & Observer. October 5, 2023.
Editorial: NC’s attorney general may have given the NCAA the shove it needed on UNC’s Tez Walker
The NCAA abruptly announced Thursday that Devontez “Tez” Walker will be eligible to play football at North Carolina this season after all, reversing the cruel decision it had previously made to deny him eligibility.
In a statement announcing its decision, the NCAA claimed it received “new information” from UNC regarding Walker’s situation that led them to grant the waiver request.
Perhaps that “new information” was the threat of legal action.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein sent the NCAA a letter last month demanding that it reconsider its decision to deny Walker eligibility, his office said in a statement Thursday. The letter warned that the NCAA’s decision to deny Walker eligibility was likely unlawful because it may have violated federal and state antitrust laws.
Stein’s letter also stated that his office was considering the “full range of options at its disposal to investigate the NCAA’s potential antitrust violations.”
“These options include issuing civil investigative demands to the NCAA, initiating an investigation alongside Attorney General Offices in my sister States, and pursuing litigation alleging violations of state and federal law,” Stein wrote in the letter.
Good on Stein. It was the right battle to pick, and the NCAA had it coming.
The NCAA didn’t back down quietly, though. Instead of accepting the blame for its own decision, the NCAA pointed the finger at UNC, petulantly saying that the “entire unfortunate episode could have been avoided” had the school provided the supposed new information from the start. UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham, however, said that characterization was “not accurate.”
The NCAA went on to whine about the “public relations campaign” waged by UNC head coach Mack Brown and other school officials. Please. Had it not been for pushback from people like Brown and Stein, the NCAA probably would have upheld its decision, no matter how wrong it was, and Walker never would have been able to play this season. Besides, the fuss didn’t begin until the NCAA had already screwed up once.
The NCAA did the right thing in the end. Too bad it won’t ever admit that it was in the wrong to begin with.
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Winston Salem-Journal. October 8, 2023.
Editorial: GOP fears a fair fight
Stripped to its barest essence, the war over redistricting in North Carolina isn’t so much about maps and demographics as it is about honesty. Or the lack thereof.
The basic premise of representative government is that voters get to choose their leaders.
It’s a simple idea: The person who gets the most votes wins.
That candidate presumably earns your support by convincing you that he or she is more qualified, has better ideas and will address your needs and interests more effectively than the other guy.
Fair enough?
Only if it’s a fair game.
What we have done to that model is twist it almost beyond recognition.
The fatal flaw in the rules is that the political party in power gets to draw the district lines after each census. In recent years this has meant the Republicans.
And by faith alone we’re asked to trust that they will put the voters’ interests first. An honor system for politicians, if you will.
How’s that working out? About as could be expected.
The Republicans are (pick your metaphor) stacking the deck, loading the dice, tilting the playing field, or if you prefer, gerrymandering.
They herd voters into districts with one objective foremost in their minds: to draw boundaries that allow them to win the most seats possible, regardless of what the majority of voters may want.
Democrats did it too, but, thanks in part to improved technology, the GOP does it better.
Hence, a state that is almost evenly split in its partisan leanings has veered so severely to the right when it comes to who gets elected.
So, here we are. The Republican-majority General Assembly is about to redraw district lines for congressional and legislative seats and hardly anyone expects a fair outcome.
In fact, the question isn’t whether the lines will be unfair, it’s how unfair.
In fact, to ensure such a result the GOP tucked a provision into the new state budget that absolves them of practically of any responsibility to be open about the redistricting process.
They have gone through the ritual of holding public comment sessions but even that was a half-hearted ritual. In 2021 they held 13 such sessions over 10 days. This time there were three over three days, all at 4 p.m., when many North Carolinians were still at work.
Of course, this broken process does more than rob people of their voices.
It breeds bad government by rewarding extremism and punishing moderation. Hence a new abortion law in this state that most voters oppose and, of course, the ongoing circus in the U.S. House.
We had a brief taste of fair maps in 2022 when the state Supreme Court voided the maps drawn by Republicans, calling them “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Lawmakers redrew the legislative lines and a court-appointed expert revised the congressional lines, resulting in maps that were more reflective of voter sentiment. In the 2022 election, the state’s congressional seats were evenly split.
But those maps could be used only once. In the interim, a majority-Democratic Supreme Court became majority-Republican. And the court suddenly reversed itself, saying partisan gerrymandering didn’t violate the constitution after all. So Republicans now have a green light to redraw the lines yet again.
It’s worth pointing out that all of these actions seem very, uh, un-Republican.
Republicans say they believe you should earn your success by working hard for it ... except in political campaigns where, obviously, it’s OK if a manipulated map gives you a big head start over an opponent.
Republicans oppose affirmative action, saying we should be judged solely on our merits ... but apparently not politicians.
We’ve love to be proven wrong when the new maps are unveiled, possibly as soon as this week.
But we won’t be.
To hear the North Carolina GOP tell it, these have been halcyon days since they took control of the legislature.
They cite a strong economy and a fat budget surplus and expanded school vouchers and looser gun laws and fewer regulations and a war on wokeness among their accomplishments.
Well, if their record’s been that good, why are they so afraid to run on it?
In a fair fight?
END