Phil Berger’s legacy will last for decades, maybe generations.

 I feel like I should request a royalty from Sam Page. Page, likely to become a State Senator, referred to his vanquished opponent Phil Berger as “North Carolina’s King.” I believe that I was the first person to append this sardonic nickname to our state’s long-time legislative leader. But, in fairness, my nickname for Berger was not terribly imaginative. This small-town lawyer built an empire from Murphy to Manteo and ruled it with an iron fist for 15 years. 

Berger’s legacy. What is Berger’s legacy? The conversation has already begun. There will likely be a temptation to grant Berger some magnanimity. To observe that he at least meant well in his 15-year ideological crusade and sometimes spoke with civility. To render that generous judgment would be to evade the truth about a man who spent his career attacking the weak and dismantling democracy in North Carolina. Berger’s profound influence on North Carolina in the 21st century is beyond dispute. The moral implications of his rule are ugly. 

Consider the sheer number of groups of people Phil Berger targeted: 

Poor people, with the elimination of the state Earned Income Tax Credit 

Teachers, by eliminating tenure and master’s pay, keeping their salaries mired near the poverty level, defunding schools, and intimidating teachers by forcing them to post their lesson plans for inspection by paranoid evangelicals 

Women, by substantially banning abortion in North Carolina and imposing a draconian 72-hour waiting period for abortion care, among the longest in the country 

Children, by cutting 33,000 children from SNAP 

Immigrants, by forcing sheriffs to cooperate with an increasingly abusive ICE 

College students, by raising tuition and slashing financial aid 

College professors, by politicizing universities and even threatening to abolish tenure 

Trans people, by passing HB2 and prohibiting trans people from changing the gender listed on their birth certificate 

Same-sex couples, by passing SB2, a Berger brainchild that allows evangelical magistrates to refuse to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples 

And, more than anyone else, Black people: by passing the “Monster Voting Law,” racial gerrymandering, a law effectively banning the removal of Confederate monuments, another law banning Critical Race Theory, and denying tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones in an act of blatant racial discrimination. 

It’s quite an enemy’s list, and I could have added other people to it. The point of raising this long succession of victims is to show that the core tactic of Berger’s politics was to scapegoat, target, and punish weaker groups who inspired resentment (or hatred) from his base. He was a cynical showman, bashing apart human pinatas to the oohs and aahs of increasingly radicalized rural whites. I have often heard observers note Berger’s personal civility. This is a red herring. The heart of his politics was an effort to punish marginalized groups who lacked the political and social power to fight back. And to put this on vivid display for a base lustily enamored of Trumpism. 

Berger was a cynic. He was also an ideologue. He cut the top income tax rate virtually in half and created a new tax structure where poor people pay nearly a 50%-greater share of their income to state government than do rich people in luxury homes. In our state, 1.35 million people live in poverty. These unfortunate souls pay a heftier share of their meager incomes to a state government that does less for them than it has in decades. Berger’s enforcer, the burly Ralph Hise, complained that North Carolina had somewhat more generous standards for SNAP eligibility than did some other states. Oh, the horror. 

Besides performative populism and supply-side economics, Berger’s greatest concern was limiting the ability of Democrats to win free and fair elections. No state has done so much to erode democracy virtually since the Reconstruction-Redemption eras. When the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, a Berger lieutenant said, “Good, now we can move forward with the full bill.” Within 48 hours Berger had passed a law that targeted African American voters “with almost surgical precision,” as a federal judge put it striking down the racist abomination. 

Berger gerrymandered the state so shamelessly that a House ally said, “I drew a map with ten Republicans and three Democrats because I did not think it was possible to draw a map with eleven Republicans and two Democrats.” Berger’s coup de grace, his last little gift to the cause of autocracy, was to demolish an African American Congressional district in return for Donald Trump’s endorsement. North Carolina effectively does not have democratic elections for the legislative branch of government—competitive authoritarianism fixed by Phil Berger. 

Berger excelled in these efforts to destroy democracy. But he was not only a champion but an innovator in stripping powers from other branches of government. North Carolina, with Berger’s swift and potent support, created the practice of the “sore loser law” taking power from incoming Democrats and giving it to Republicans. He went back to this oozing well constantly over the next ten years, taking so much power away from the governor that the governorship, already too weak, was becoming an almost impotent position. Part of the reason Berger did this was to insure against the possibility that Mark Robinson would get elected governor and use executive power to damage the state. Berger had already endorsed Mark Robinson. 

I believe that Phil Berger was the most influential single state legislator in North Carolina history. For much of the state’s history, speakers and presidents pro tem served only briefly, as a capstone to their careers. This changed when Republicans won the governor’s mansion in the 1980s (showing that Democrats do not have a record of purity on democracy in modern North Carolina). But the long-serving leaders who ran the legislature in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, were basically status quo figures on policy. Berger’s role model Marc Basnight was a business progressive who continued the state’s business-friendly, pro-education policies. Berger completely redefined the state and its political culture. 

Phil Berger’s legacy is already clear and will last for decades, maybe generations. When you effect a “paradigm shift,” as political scientist Frank Baumgartner calls it, in public policy, it tends to stick for long periods of time until an equally intense period of political upheaval corrects for it. Berger was a paradigm shifter. He was also an autocrat, a right-wing ideologue, a bully, and a smug, greedy political boss. Speaking as a liberal, I think Sam Page seems like a decent and honest man. Congratulations to him and thank you for ending this grim and destructive era in the history of the North Carolina State Senate