On March 5, North Carolina held its primary for the upcoming 2024 election. Several positions are up for grabs. One of those positions is in the race for governor, where four candidates are vying for the role.
The governor is the chief executive of the state, similar in structure to the role of the President of the United States. As the chief executive, the governor is responsible for executing the laws of the state and managing the safety and security of its citizens.
Pope McCorkle, a professor of the Practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and long-time political consultant, said the governor is unique in its importance to state politics.
“The governor … represents the top political official, or elected official in the state,” McCorkle said. “[They] set the tone for the state for outsiders as well as North Carolinians.”
One important role the governor has is the ability to appoint a broad variety of executive officials, from the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Secretary of Environmental Quality.
However, this appointment power does not apply to every executive position in North Carolina. Steven Greene, a professor of political science at NC State, said the North Carolina governor’s appointment role is more limited than in other states.
“There’s this whole, almost a dozen council of state offices,” Greene said. “Now in some states, the governor is appointing those people, and here in North Carolina, they have their own independent authority because they are their own duly elected representatives of these opposites.”
Because offices like the agriculture commissioner and the state treasurer are elected alongside the governor, this often means North Carolina’s governor must work in a more bipartisan manner to accomplish their policy goals than other states’ governors.
Greene said because the governor has less control over who they will have to work with, it is important to look for potential gubernatorial candidates who can work with people across the political spectrum.
“The reality is, you’ve got these constraints,” Greene said. “You’re dealing with the legislature, you’re dealing with interest groups, you’re dealing with donors, you’re dealing with people in your own party, you’re dealing with the state constitution, you know. … So to work effectively within all of those constraints to build coalitions, to have the experience to make this stuff happen is important.”
McCorkle said that prospective voters should keep in mind that, in comparison to the role of legislators, the governor’s day-to-day responsibilities are fairly nonpartisan.
“The governor has still a lot of importance as a nonpartisan leader,” McCorkle said. “When there are crises, when there are hurricanes, when there are other natural disasters, the governor is really looked upon as somebody to lead that.”
There are some important partisan actions the governor can take, like the power to veto bills passed by the legislature. In the last few years, Republicans have enjoyed a supermajority in the legislature, giving them the ability to overturn gubernatorial vetoes.
With this election, however, Greene said the veto power is vital in deciding on a variety of hot-button issues that Democrats and Republicans disagree on, especially for abortion access.
“If Josh Stein is governor, Republicans will not be able to pass laws that are any more stringent on abortion than they already have because they need a supermajority,” Greene said. “And I don’t see a lot of evidence that they have a supermajority of their members ready to pass very conservative abortion laws.
“Whereas, if Mark Robinson is Governor, they don’t need a supermajority. They just need a majority, and I would be surprised if they didn’t pass a six-week abortion ban or even more stringent than that.”
Election day is Nov. 5, 2024.
