Just weeks after North Carolina Democrats won several prominent statewide offices in the 2024 general election, including governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, the Republican-controlled legislature moved swiftly to limit the authority of these offices in what many have called a significant “power grab.” This Explainer analyzes this and seeks to situate it within the broader context and history of similar efforts in North Carolina and other states.
Just weeks after North Carolina Democrats won several prominent statewide offices in the 2024 general election, including governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, the Republican-controlled legislature moved swiftly to limit the authority of these offices in what many have called a significant “power grab.” The proposals were controversially attached to legislation ostensibly meant to provide relief for Hurricane Helene victims, Senate Bill 382, and then rushed through the lame-duck legislature with little public notice. The timing is especially notable, as the state’s Republicans also just lost their veto-proof supermajority in the state house of representatives, meaning the legislature will have less ability to act unilaterally in the new year. Outgoing Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill shortly before Thanksgiving, calling it “a sham” that violates the state constitution by stripping executive branch officials of important powers. He further criticized the bill for failing even to deliver aid to the state’s hurricane-affected region, saying it “does not send money to Western North Carolina but merely shuffles money from one fund to another in Raleigh.” Despite this, both legislative chambers subsequently voted to override Cooper’s veto, with the state house of representatives doing so most recently on December 11. As a result, Senate Bill 382 will become law. The legislation has sparked widespread backlash. Even former Republican Governor Pat McCrory, who signed a controversial power grab on his way out of office in 2016, condemned the tactic of attaching the proposals to a hurricane relief package as “just not the way government should work.” This legislative maneuver exemplifies a trend of escalating “power plays” in state governments, where officials pursue institutional changes for partisan gain. This Explainer analyzes Senate Bill 382 and seeks to situate it within the broader context of similar efforts in North Carolina and other states. Ultimately, the bill represents one of the most significant lame-duck power grabs anywhere in the country in recent history, rivaled only by similar episodes that played out in North Carolina in 2016 and Wisconsin in 2018.
Senate Bill 382 spans over 130 pages and begins with a section titled “The Disaster Recovery Act of 2024—Part III.” Ostensibly meant to provide relief for Hurricane Helene victims, it transfers $277 million from a general savings fund to a special hurricane victims fund, though it requires the funds to remain unspent until appropriated by subsequent legislation. However, the hurricane relief provisions conclude on page 13. The remaining pages address scores of unrelated topics. Among the most consequential proposals are sweeping changes that will strip key powers from incoming Democratic officials and give them to Republican-controlled offices. The bill drastically curtails the governor’s ability to make appointments:
The bill also limits the powers of other offices that will be held by Democrats next year:
The bill also proposes other controversial changes to state law, including:
Senate Bill 382 is not North Carolina’s first experience with lame-duck partisan maneuvering. Some of these tactics date back to at least the 1970s, but the scale and intensity significantly escalated in 2016.
Although legislators have justified their recent maneuvers by pointing to historical examples of similar conduct, the examples prior to 2016 tended to be smaller-scale:
The events following the 2016 general election marked a significant escalation in North Carolina’s history of lame-duck politics. After Democrat Roy Cooper narrowly defeated Republican Governor Pat McCrory, the Republican-led legislature sought to dramatically limit the incoming administration’s powers. In December, McCrory called a special legislative session ostensibly to address disaster recovery needs after Hurricane Matthew. However, McCrory’s call for a special session also cryptically stated that legislators could use the session to address “any other matters.” Within 48 hours of the start of the special session, the legislature passed two controversial bills that limited gubernatorial authority. One was Senate Bill 4:
While the state supreme court later invalidated the election board changes as violating the state constitution’s separation of powers, the legislature has continued to pursue similar changes. It proposed a constitutional amendment to make this change, but the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by the state’s voters in 2018. Additional legislation to alter the election board has also been blocked by the state’s courts; this litigation is still pending but will likely be mooted by Senate Bill 382’s changes. The other bill passed during the 2016 lame-duck session was House Bill 17:
These changes represented a dramatic escalation in scope and impact, eclipsing previous episodes in North Carolina; one observer called them “unusually aggressive even by North Carolina’s standards.” Senate Bill 382 now stands alongside the 2016 lame-duck bills as one of the most far-reaching examples of partisan power plays in the state’s history.
Episodes in Wisconsin and Michigan after the 2018 elections, as well as more recent developments in Kentucky and Ohio, demonstrate that lame-duck power grabs are not unique to North Carolina. However, only Wisconsin’s experience in 2018 is in the same ballpark as North Carolina’s in 2016—or now in 2024.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s actions following the 2018 general election stand out as the most prominent example of a lame-duck power grab outside North Carolina. After Democrats won the governorship, lieutenant governorship, and attorney general’s office, the Republican-controlled legislature convened a special lame-duck session to pass two sweeping laws (Acts 369 and 370), which outgoing Republican Governor Scott Walker promptly signed. These laws curtailed key powers of the incoming Democrats. For example, one of the bills authorized three legislative committees to intervene in lawsuits challenging state laws and required the attorney general to obtain legislative approval to settle litigation involving the state. It also targeted the incoming administration’s ability to promulgate administrative rules, giving a legislative committee multiple mechanisms to block proposed and existing rules. And it limited the governor’s authority over a key agency focused on business development, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, by restructuring the agency’s board to give legislative leaders more appointment powers. The lame-duck legislation made several other controversial changes, too, including a work requirement for people on Medicaid and revisions to the state’s voter ID law.
Around the same time Wisconsin lawmakers were enacting lame-duck legislation, Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature passed over 400 bills during its lame-duck session after Democrats won races for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. Some were clear attempts to limit the incoming administration's authority, but unlike in Wisconsin, the state’s outgoing Republican Governor, Rick Snyder, vetoed a few. One proposal (HB 6553) sought to grant the legislature the power to intervene in lawsuits challenging state laws. However, Governor Snyder vetoed the bill, calling it “well-intentioned” but reasoning that it would “serve only to complicate the management of [such] litigation.” Another bill (SB 1176) sought to bar state agencies, including the attorney general and secretary of state, from requiring “dark money” nonprofits to disclose donors and sought to limit the attorney general’s authority over fraudulent charities. However, this was likewise vetoed. Other proposals failed to pass the legislature. For example, there was a bill (SB 1252) that proposed shifting oversight of campaign finance law from the secretary of state to a six-person bipartisan commission appointed by the governor. It passed the state senate but stalled in the house.
Kentucky offers a more limited but still noteworthy example. On the same day that Democrat Andy Beshear defeated incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin in 2019, three Republican senators, including the senate president, proposed a bill to limit the governor’s control over transportation policy. It would have created a transportation board whose members would be recommended by business and government groups, and it would have required the governor to select his transportation secretary from a list of names provided by this board. It also would have stripped the power of the governor to prepare the first draft of the state’s two-year road budget. Although the bill passed the senate in early 2020, it stalled in the house.
Another example comes from Ohio. While Republicans swept every statewide office and retained legislative supermajorities at the 2022 general election, Democratic-backed candidates won most of the elected seats on the state board of education. During the subsequent lame-duck session, Republican legislators revived a dormant proposal to strip the board of most of its powers. The measure failed to pass during the lame-duck session but was re-introduced and enacted as part of the state budget the following summer.
While other states have enacted controversial lame-duck measures, none rival the scale or ambition of North Carolina’s efforts in 2016 and now in 2024, though Wisconsin’s experience in 2018 came close. By targeting the powers of the governor, attorney general, and other statewide officials—and by attaching these changes to hurricane relief—Senate Bill 382 represents an escalation in partisan power grabs, one that could inspire similar tactics in other states.