Oops!
Published 11:17 a.m. today
By Gary Pearce
Riding high after 15 years of unchecked power, North Carolina Republicans got greedy - and over-confident.
Donald Trump wanted another U.S. House seat in North Carolina. Senate boss Phil Berger saluted and said, “Yes, sir!”
Berger did Trump’s bidding because he was in trouble in his primary back home - in retrospect, a sign that something was stirring in the electorate.
Berger and Speaker Dustin Hall dutifully summoned legislators to Raleigh and rammed through a rare mid-decade redistricting scheme aimed at producing an 11-3 partisan split in our congressional delegation.
Sure enough, it did: a possible 11-3 split for Democrats.
Now, if you look up “dummymandering,” on Wikipedia, you see North Carolina’s 2026 congressional map.
Berger’s hunger for power did him in. He got Trump’s endorsement, but still lost his primary and his power.
His arrogance cost the GOP - in Washington and Raleigh.
Democrats took the state House and might have taken the Senate if some corrupt dealings had been better publicized.
You could call it karma.
You could call it The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Or you could recall an old country saying: Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered.
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