North Carolina’s race for state schools superintendent is once again in the national spotlight after an unearthed social media video by Republican candidate Michele Morrow called for a military intervention to keep former President Donald Trump in office in 2021.
In interviews with WRAL News on Tuesday Morrow denied calling for a military coup.
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Her opponent, Democrat Mo Green, says she’s unfit to run the state's K-12 public schools.
The video was one Morrow posted on social media on Jan. 6, 2021, after she attended the rally that turned violent at the U.S. Capitol.
In the video, Morrow called on then-President Donald Trump to use the Insurrection Act to activate the military and put “the Constitution to the side” in order to stay in power.
“They can all be arrested for treason,” Morrow said in the 2021 video. “And if the police won't do it and the Department of Justice won't do it, then he will have to enact the Insurrection Act, in which case the Insurrection Act completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, ‘Now the military rules all.’”
On Tuesday, Morrow said she didn’t ask for people to be arrested for treason.
“My words were not to arrest people for treason,” she said. “I was stating that when our government is not protecting the God-given inalienable rights of our citizens, that it is our duty to make sure that they understand that they work for us.”
She continued: “I thought that it was time for us, as we the people, to stand up and say, ‘You guys work for us,’ because I believe everybody that's an elected official works for the people of the United States of America, and government doesn't give us our freedoms. It's actually God-given inalienable rights, right?”
Morrow went to the Jan. 6, 2021, protest with her children. She says they didn’t take part in any of the violence that day.
Green, in an interview with WRAL on Tuesday, said Morrow’s comments were “deeply concerning and incredibly dangerous.” He pointed out that Morrow has also called for the executions of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the past, which WRAL has previously reported.
“Now we're going to talk about putting aside the Constitution, and we're going to install the military, and we're going to arrest many for treason,” Green said.
Green said he was concerned Morrow is running to become the head of the Department of Public Instruction, charged with taking care of the state’s 1.5 million public schoolchildren.
“Whoever is elected is going to have to swear to an oath to uphold the Constitution,” Green said. “And it caused me to question whether she could actually be trusted to uphold the Constitution when she says in the video to put it aside and essentially put in a military.”
Morrow has come under fire before for her posts on social media prior to her various political campaigns. She’s posted about Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories and called public schools liberal “indoctrination centers” and urged people not to send their children to them. She’s also called for the “killing of all traitors,” including prominent Democratic politicians and liberal philanthropists, such as Bill Gates. She called for former President Barack Obama to be killed by firing squad on pay-per-view.
Since winning the Republican primary for state superintendent, Morrow has scrubbed much of her social media, deleting one of her accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Morrow ran to represent the Cary district of the Wake County school board before that, losing handily in 2022 to Democrat Tyler Swanson.
Morrow is a former nurse and homeschool teacher who has homeschooled her children in North Carolina.
Green, an attorney by trade, is retired from leading the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and before that, serving as superintendent of Guilford County Schools and holding other administrative positions in Guilford and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Elective Bible classes
In their interviews Tuesday, both candidates restated why they wanted to run for office and things they planned to focus on. For Green, that includes focusing on building “character” in students and ensuring every student’s unique needs are met. For Morrow, that means rooting out what she says is liberal ideology in schools and re-evaluating the state’s relationship with the federal education department, which supplies more than $1 billion in annual funding for things like extra teachers.
They also discussed their positions on public schools continuing to offer elective classes on studying the Bible — an issue brought up earlier in the day by a political action committee that supports Democrats.
Elective Bible classes are allowed in North Carolina public schools and are being taught in some already.
“It's in our bylaws in North Carolina that if we wanted to study the Bible in terms of a historical text or because of legislative reasons or whatever it might be, that that could be an elective that students could choose to take if they wanted to take that, Morrow said Tuesday. “So I just want to expand that opportunity.”
Green said he had no problem with people wanting to study the Bible.
“That is something certainly that local districts can make a decision about as to whether they want to do that,” Green said. “The thing that I think we need to be thinking about, though, is let's be sure that we think about what are the significant issues impacting our schools today?”
Green said he’d rather focus on increasing school funding, paying teachers more, giving students more resources to succeed and keeping schools safe.
American Bridge, a political action committee that conducts opposition research into Republican candidates, published audio Tuesday of Morrow saying she supported expanding elective Bible classes in public schools.
The group obtained the audio at the Republican National Convention, when a worker posed as a conservative and began talking with Morrow about Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters.
Walters, who has come under fire from within his own Republican Party, has gone a step further, requiring that the Bible be taught to all public school students.