Executive offices matter. Teacher recruitment shows why
North Carolina can’t recruit teachers while its own leaders talk the profession into decline.
The General Assembly can fund a better education system, and it should. But it will never be able to sell North Carolina as a great place to build a teaching career.
That is the job of executive leadership.
I write a lot about governors and other executive leaders because they matter in ways that can be easy to underrate in North Carolina. The General Assembly is still the most powerful branch of government in this state. It writes the budget and drives most of the big policy changes.
Republicans leading the General Assembly are perfectly content to have a Democrat in the Executive Mansion. They don’t have to pretend to share power, and it gives them a useful foil. Voters seem to like divided government in North Carolina, too.
I understand the logic. But it has limits.
There is value in having some unity of purpose between the executive and legislative branches. Not so one rubber-stamps the other, but so both can tackle the same problems from different directions.