The top Democrat in the state Senate says she expects to see more bipartisanship in the legislature next year.
Sen. Sydney Batch, D-Wake, says the close partisan split after last week's election will stop Republicans from passing bills with no input from Democrats. She spoke with WUNC News on Monday.
"There are 10% of the bills that are actually Culture War bills, but the vast majority of issues like hemp, like healthcare, like education, don't fall on partisan lines," she said. "So when you're at 24-26, it's ostensibly a tie. We're going to, on both sides, have to work in our caucuses to be able to get a couple of members from either caucus to be able to vote on really important bills."
Batch says she'll seek another term leading Senate Democrats; she said her caucus has not yet met to formally select her for that role. Her counterpart in the House, Rep. Robert Reives, D-Chatham, announced Friday that he has the support of the Democratic caucus to become the next speaker, and he's already launched a website to recruit his staff.
Whether Batch would be the minority leader or the president pro tem who replaces Sen. Phil Berger will depend on a close race in the Lumberton area. Republican incumbent Sen. Danny Britt is currently ahead by less than 300 votes with more still to be counted this week; a recount is possible. The two counties with remaining provisional ballots — Robeson and Scotland — will have local Board of Elections meetings Tuesday to review those ballots and add them to the tally.
Batch says Democrats are closely monitoring the counting process there but haven't seen any abnormalities. Both Republicans and Democrats have been raising money for their legal funds, which pay for lawyers.
"Sen. Britt's vote count has actually shrunk (since election night), but I don't know that we'll be able to overcome it," Batch said. "I think what is the most fascinating about that, and so many other races in the Senate, is that we had four races within 1,800 votes of Republicans — that I don't believe they ever thought that they would be that close to potentially losing."
A win for Britt's Democratic challenger, Hoke County Army veteran Catina Ham, would make next year's Senate consist of 25 Republicans and 25 Democrats — a tie that would be broken by Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, who presides over the Senate and is a Democrat.
Hamm raised just $6,000 for her campaign, with very little coming from the Democratic Party. Britt raised $600,000, with more than $50,000 from the Republican Party.
Asked if she has any regrets about which races got significant party resources, Batch said that "people weren't betting on the Senate" to flip parties like the House did.
"With regards to the resources that we had, we spent them in the districts that we needed to make sure that we had the best opportunity to win, which is why we flipped four seats that no one expected us to flip," she said.
Senate Republicans have not yet chosen their leader for next year, after Berger lost his March primary to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. Sens. Todd Johnson, Brent Jackson, Ralph Hise and Jim Burgin are all running for the position. Batch declined to weigh in on who she'd prefer.
"I have really good relationships, unbeknownst to most people publicly, with a number of the Republicans in their caucus, and believe that this is the opportunity for us to reset, because Sen. Berger ruled very differently and usually with a cudgel, and everybody fell in line," she said.
Batch says she doesn't expect a situation where the majority party can't reach an agreement on their leader and instead looks for support from across the aisle to appoint a president pro tem.
A sign of Senate Republicans' unity came on Friday when the four candidates for leader issued a joint statement in support of Britt. "For those worried about all of the ways Democrats will try to hike your taxes next year: We’re confident Republicans will retain control of the Senate to stop that from happening," the statement said.
One area of possible agreement next year could be around independent redistricting. Democrats' bills to limit gerrymandering have gone nowhere in recent years, much as Republicans' independent redistricting proposals failed when Democrats last controlled the legislature.
But Batch says she's optimistic that the new political dynamics could move the idea forward.
"I would hope that they would realize that if you're not going to do it because that's what the vast majority of North Carolinians want — like it's more popular than any other policy — then I would hope they would do it because they selfishly want to make sure that some of them come back," she said. "Because in (20)31, there's nothing stopping Democrats in theory of doing the exact same thing that Republicans did ... of gerrymandering the heck out of the state and removing as many Republicans as possible. We should be better."
