Opinion: Is North Carolina ready for political regime change?

[littlemissmartypants]

After 15 years of GOP control, a North Carolina columnist argues tax cuts, education shifts and voting changes show it's time to break veto-proof majorities and test regime change.

By Tom Campbell
June 24, 2026

A case can be made that 15 years of Republican dominance in state government is enough and a regime change is desirable.

For the record, we felt the same way after Democrats ran the state for over 100 years. Republicans have done some good things, chief among them putting our state on a sounder financial footing and amassing cash for the inevitable rainy day. But the damage now outweighs the benefits.

The GOP mantra has been cut, cut, cut. In 2011, when Republicans took charge, the personal income tax rate was 7.75% for incomes over $60,000. Today it is 3.99% and Republicans want to cut even more. If current legislative leadership gets their way, corporate income taxes will disappear altogether. Let’s acknowledge tax cuts were justified and helped stimulate our economy. But we’ve cut enough, and at some point need to question who is going pay for state government services?

Is this primarily a ploy by leadership to cut budgets and state services?

For more than a decade they prohibited North Carolina from expanding Medicaid, keeping more than a half million elderly and low-income citizens from having health insurance. Republicans have resegregated our state’s public schools, transferring funds from traditional public schools to charters and now gifting $675 million per year to private schools filled with predominantly white, middle-to-upper-income students — schools where we have no idea how well students perform. It is apparent Republicans have essentially given up on traditional public schools.

...more...
https://www.wilsontimes.com/columns/is-north-carolina-ready-for-political-regime-change-8b8691d1

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[wendyb-NC]

1. We absolutely need major change

The Republicons, as usual, are legislating their self-righteous power grabs, through new rules legislating limits to the limit the

ability of Governors who are Democrats. They gerrymander districts, and now they are trying to change voter requirements

and election rules, for this coming election. These tactics increase the likelihood that they will be in the majority, in both

Houses of the State legislature, as they are now.