Opinion: NC a purple state, a new book asserts. Author talks how it impacts the election.

Political science professor Chris Cooper writes in his new book that judging whether North Carolina is a conservative, “red” state or progressive “blue” state is a Rorschach test.

If you see red, he writes that could be because of Republicans’ more than a decade-long control of the N.C. General Assembly and a set of very conservative statewide policies; two Republican U.S. Senators; and the GOP candidate winning the last three presidential elections.

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If you see blue, he writes that could be because of the states’ two-term Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper; cities like Asheville (a “Shangri-la” to Southern liberals, Cooper says) and Charlotte, known for left-leaning positions, like its fight over transgender bathrooms; the fact that the state has never elected a Republican attorney general (often a stepping stone to the governor's mansion); and the viewpoint of political scientists and historians who place the state on the progressive side of the aisle, “particularly when compared to its southern neighbors.”

The title of Cooper’s book, “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer” (The University of North Carolina Press) makes clear where his beliefs lie.

“Yeah, I think it explains why our mailboxes are jammed full of political flyers,” Cooper said on Wednesday. “It explains why I've got 90 unread text messages for various candidates asking me for money. It explains why I can’t watch a football game without being inundated with ads.

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“The ways our lives are just dominated by politics in the state is precisely because we're a purple state.”

His book achieves the promise of its title; it is a brisk read, yet a well-researched rundown of how North Carolina found its way into its purple status — and is now one of seven swing states whose voters could decide this year's presidential race between Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.

Along the way, Cooper introduces us to some true characters and shenanigans from the Old North State's political history, as he details three trends roiling the state’s politics today — nationalization, competition and polarization. He writes in a breezy style and has a way with analogies such as: “Thanks to a weak veto law North Carolina’s governor has no more control over redistricting than the cashier at the local Family Dollar.”

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Let's look at a few of the book's notable takeaways.

How we vote in NC is polarized. But Republicans are writing a new chapter.

Cooper looks at how party polarization has even affected how and when we vote, with Democrats traditionally favoring voting early more than Republicans.

But this year's early voting may scramble that narrative. Republicans early voting numbers are running very closely to Democrats so far, Cooper said Wednesday, a “real surprise.”

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“That is unheard of in North Carolina politics,” he said. “The Republican effort to bank your vote as they call it, seems to have been successful.”

A Jim Crow relic is still in the NC constitution

North Carolina still has a racist literacy test in its state Constitution, Cooper reminds us in "Purple State." It is a Jim Crow era law meant to prevent Black people from voting and that required Black voters but not white voters to be able to read and write any section of the constitution. It is not enforced, Cooper writes, but remains on the books. A statewide vote to amend the constitution and end the test failed in 1970.

NC has lots of rural voters, with lots of power

It is taken for granted that urban areas are more likely to vote Democratic and rural areas more likely to vote Republican, Cooper writes. These days, NC’s “central fault line” in politics is the rural and urban divide, he writes.

North Carolina’s rural population is second only to Texas, Cooper notes.

“Despite increasing urbanization, rural voters have an outsized influence in North Carolina as compared to rural voters in other states,” he writes..

'None of the above' leads the pack in NC voter registrations

The No. 1 political “party” by numbers in North Carolina is unaffiliated, followed by Democrats and then Republicans. These voters can participate in either party’s primary, and they are truly in the middle, according to Cooper’s data. They tend to vote in GOP primaries more often, but Democrats have had the edge at times, too.

Unaffiliated voters are less likely to be born in the state; are a full seven years younger on average than the state’s Democratic and Republican voters; and while they are “less likely to be white than those registered as Republicans” they are “much more likely to be white than registered Democrats.”

Cooper calls unaffiliated voters “the future of North Carolina politics.”

Gerrymandering in the Old North State is ... old

North Carolina has attracted national attention for its heavily gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts. They are districts drawn in a way where one party can hardly lose.

Cooper devoted some words to father of these extreme Republican-led gerrymanders, the late Thomas Hofeller.

But he also points out Democrats were no strangers to gerrymandering during their decades-long reign in NC politics, which broke in 2011. In the 1940s, the Democrats drew “bacon strip” districts that stretched from the mountains to the Piedmont, diluting the power of heavily Republican areas out west, he writes.

Lobbyists in the NC General Assembly flex the power of information.

There are four lobbyists per lawmaker in the N.C. General Assembly in Raleigh, Cooper writes. The total does not include liaisons who lobby for state government organizations.

He does not present lobbyists as bad per se, but says the “power of information in North Carolina politics is underrated” and lobbyists help lawmakers process the reams of information related to public policy.

Of course, lobbyists have clients to serve.

Cooper writes: “Often, this information is used to help pass policy but at other times lobbyists may want to make sure a certain policy doesn’t pass.” (emphasis his)

Western Carolina prof: Let's move toward a more ‘professional’ NC legislature.

Which bring us to the subject of “professionalism.” Cooper writes we need a more professional legislature.

He is not calling the state's lawmakers a bunch of amateurs. He explains that “professionalism” in state legislatures for political science types means a legislature with more  resources to properly do its job. Many studies have found that more professional legislatures are “more representative, more responsive, and function better than their less professional counterparts," he writes.

One way to help, Cooper writes, is to raise salaries of lawmakers — an idea many in the public would recoil at but an idea he says could make a difference. Legislators currently earn $13,951 per year in base salary and money for mileage.

The basic idea is their jobs should be treated more as full-time positions, not side gigs. An increase in staff size and other resources would free up more time time for the legislators to meet and respond to constituents and make them "less apt to rely on interest groups and lobbyists for information, generating information from within their own offices instead."

While lobbyists are not the scoundrels they are made out to be, he writes, they are "insulated from reward or punishment at the ballot box.”

Cooper writes: "Something needs to change"

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3559.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Opinion: 'None of the above' and other takes from a book on purple NC