State Auditor Dave Boliek is wrong to embrace extreme partisanship

Earlier this year, after the state Supreme Court effectively okayed the egregious action of Republican legislators stripping the Governor’s power to appoint members to the State Board of Elections and handing it to the newly elected GOP state Auditor, Justice Anita Earls powerfully and eloquently dissented, saying, in part:

“If the voters of North Carolina wanted a Republican official to control the State Board of Elections, they could have elected a Republican Governor. If they wanted David Boliek [the Auditor] in particular to run our elections, they could have elected him the Governor. The voters did not. The General Assembly may not grab power over enforcement of election laws by shuttling the Board between statewide elected officials until it finds one willing to do its bidding.”

We can now prepare, Earls continued, for the Agriculture Commissioner to “represent the State in criminal appeals, the Attorney General supervise the State Health Plan, and the Treasurer to run the State Fair.”

She might have added that a similar anti-democratic power grab was previously rejected by North Carolina voters. When an amendment removing election board appointment authority from the Governor was presented to the voters in 2018 in a constitutional amendment ballot initiative, they soundly rejected it, by a margin of 61.6% to 38.4%. In a purple state like North Carolina this was an overwhelming landslide and a decisive outcome. The people had spoken, loud and clear.

But it has become the central tenet of the North Carolina GOP under Senator Phil Berger’s leadership that he and his pals know better than the people and are more than willing to shove their agenda down our throats whether we like it or not. Not only do Republican leaders continue to put power over principles, they seem poised to keep driving forward with their right-wing authoritarian plans until they are stopped.

And that brings us to Dave Boliek, our newly elected, extreme MAGA partisan State Auditor. This office, maybe more than any office on the Council of State, is designed to fulfill a nonpartisan role. Obviously, Boliek ran as a Republican – just as the incumbent he defeated, Jessica Holmes, ran as a Democrat. Like all elected officials, he’s entitled to his beliefs and partisan tendencies and preferences and to run a campaign. But it’s also true that the duties of the State Auditor — the state’s top accountant – are overwhelmingly nonpartisan and that once in office, he needed to leave all the partisan nonsense at the door.

Interestingly, Boliek spoke a good game on the campaign trail about how he was going to bring integrity and fairness to this office if elected. But in a fashion that’s become disturbingly typical for North Carolina Republicans, he said what he needed to say to get elected and then as soon as he was, he quickly thumbed his nose at every voter that is not part of the MAGA base.

Boliek made clear just how thoroughly partisan of an actor he would be just four weeks after the election when he said, “I pledge to be that guy that stands between Josh Stein, Jeff Jackson, and Rachel Hunt doing what they want to do without answering to accountability. That will be my job as your state auditor. I pledge to do that each and every day.” As you can see, he only mentions keeping Democrats accountable and not Republicans, which is the exact opposite of how a State Auditor should approach their duties.

The moment at which Boliek could have really stepped up and acted as a true leader for the entire state was when GOP lawmakers gave him the power to make appointments to the State Board of Elections. It was obvious to anyone with two eyes and a brain that what the General Assembly was doing was corrupt as heck when it effected the power switch during a lame duck session after the 2024 election.

I know it probably sounds laughable in today’s political climate for a leader to make a stand for the integrity of our system over raw political power, but Boliek could have made just such a stand by appointing a truly nonpartisan board. Instead, however, he happily spat in the face of all voters who elected Governor Stein to have this power by choosing extreme partisans.

At my organization, Veterans for Responsible Leadership, we strive to help get people into public office that want to put their integrity and their duty to the constitution above all else. This is for the good of the country and the health of our democracy. Dave Boliek has clearly failed this test miserably and our state is worse off because of it.