Ousted North Carolina GOP leader assaulted democracy, checks & balances for decades

State Senator Phil Berger has ruled the North Carolina Capitol with an iron fist, controlling the legislative agenda and enforcing party loyalty for 15 years. His power in state government is matched only by the state House speaker. To stay in power, Berger ruthlessly worked with his counterpart to push voter suppression, assault the other branches of government, and break new ground in gerrymandering elections.

On March 3, that power came tumbling down when Berger lost his Republican primary by 23 votes. He leaves behind a legacy of undermining the foundations of democratic government in North Carolina. 

Berger has led the North Carolina State Senate since Republicans took control of the chamber in 2010. The GOP quickly got to work, gerrymandering enough election districts to secure a supermajority in 2012. 

One of the first items on the GOP supermajority’s agenda was a draconian voter suppression bill. A few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature introduced a wide-ranging, Jim Crow-style voter suppression statute.

Freed from the VRA’s “preclearance” requirement, lawmakers asked the DMV for data about driver’s license possession, broken down by race, and asked the elections board how Black voters cast their ballots. Berger and his colleagues then designed a wide-ranging voter suppression bill that was intended to disenfranchise Black voters. A panel of federal judges determined that the legislators had targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.” 

During the 2018 lame-duck period, with Berger at the helm, Republicans capitalized on the supermajority that allowed them to overturn the Democratic governor’s vetoes. Berger orchestrated a series of lame-duck bills that weakened the governor’s power.

And last year, after nearly a decade of trying to take control of the state’s election boards from the executive branch, Republicans finally succeeded. 

But it wasn’t all victories for Berger and his colleagues. Lawmakers passed a series of bills targeting state courts, and these attacks escalated as voters began challenging Berger’s election districts in state court. Many of their power grabs were struck down for violating the state constitution.

He leaves behind a legacy of undermining the foundations of democratic government in North Carolina. 

Berger and his colleagues lashed out at potential checks on their power. They targeted judges they didn’t like, tried to pack the state supreme court, and even threatened to impeach Democratic justices. 

Berger and the House speaker were defendants in all of the litigation over their power grabs and gerrymandering. When the state supreme court ruled that the state constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering, Berger’s son — who was elected to the court in 2020 — ruled for his dad and joined a dissent. 

In fact, Justice Phil Berger Jr. ruled for his dad many times in lawsuits over his authority as a state legislator. The son’s excuse for not recusing himself, despite sitting out a case against his father when he served on the Court of Appeals, was that Berger was being sued in his “official capacity” as leader of the state Senate. But ethics rules say that a judge should sit out a lawsuit against his father. And the conflict of interest was obvious to anyone, like a father calling balls and strikes in his son’s major league baseball game. Despite all this, Berger, Jr. remained on the cases.

The clock on Berger’s time in power began to run out last year, when Berger and his colleagues re-gerrymandered congressional districts for the sole purpose of helping Republicans win more seats in the midterms. There were rumors and speculation that Berger did it in exchange for President Trump’s endorsement in the primary, which didn’t help him win. 

Voters in Berger’s home county turned on him when he tried, along with his son on the county commission, to legalize casino gambling and open a massive casino in the rural county. 

Berger tried to cash in all of the political capital he had accrued over two decades in the legislature. But he failed. And he lost his seat for it. 

With Berger still in office until 2027, there is the potential for more power grabs. Berger and the GOP have a long history of lame duck power grabs when elections don’t go their way. They have used December sessions to slash the governor’s powers or threaten court packing when voters made decisions they didn’t like. 

Berger will leave behind a legacy of undermining the foundations of democracy in North Carolina. In the years before Trump began assaulting democratic norms, Republican state legislators like Berger were already targeting voters they didn’t like — whether it was Black voters, college students, or Democrats. Berger fought like hell to keep his GOP caucus from facing any accountability from voters — and he finally faced the consequences. 

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Billy Corriher is the state courts manager for People’s Parity Project and a longtime advocate for fair courts and progressive judges. As a Democracy Docket contributor, Billy writes about voting and election state court cases in North Carolina and across the country.