North Carolina Is a Warning

The ad that signaled the coming catastrophe for democracy in North Carolina appeared just four days before the November 2012 election. As the ad opened, a woman’s voice wondered aloud whether voters “can trust Sam Ervin IV to be a fair judge.” Ervin, captured in black and white, looks shifty, moving his eyes back and forth before turning his head suddenly as if he is on the run. Ervin and his family, the ad announced, had donated to the campaign of the former Democratic governor, and later convicted felon, Mike Easley. The camera lingers on Ervin’s face as the ad explains that he went on to get a $100,000 state job; the portrait could be mistaken for a mug shot, were it not for his suit and tie.

One might have assumed that Ervin was running for high federal office, given the seriousness and slickness of the ad—and the fact that the group responsible for it was largely funded by a national Republican PAC. But no, Ervin was running for one seat of seven on the state supreme court. When Election Day arrived, he lost to Paul Newby, who is now North Carolina’s chief justice. (In 2014, Ervin won a seat on the court too.)

This ad in the Newby-Ervin race augured a fundamental change in the politics of North Carolina’s judiciary. Just eight years prior, the state had made judicial elections nonpartisan and created the country’s for judicial elections. This ad brought the worst of the political system back into judicial races: and Republican efforts to take over the courts after the Tea Party wave. Soon thereafter, the era of attempted judicial reform in North Carolina formally ended. The legislature eliminated public funding just months after the 2012 election and later made judicial elections partisan yet again.