Frayed nerves, flaring tempers: Republican fight over casinos, budget shows limits of party unity
The impasse holding up North Carolina's $30-billion state budget is over expanded gambling in the state.
It is also much bigger — and much smaller — than a proposal to allow additional casinos in select counties and statewide video lottery terminals.
The stalemate is the messy culmination of what has outwardly seemed like a successful legislative session for Republicans. And it has turned the spotlight on two powerful Republican lawmakers charged with navigating their respective chambers to pass a budget jammed with GOP policy victories and hundreds of millions in spending projects championed by lawmakers from across the state.
For Phil Berger, the buttoned-down patriarch of a burgeoning political dynasty and the top Senate leader, the fight is about principles and commitments and honoring one's word.
For Tim Moore, the jovial House Speaker in his final term as the chamber's leader, the fight is about math and votes and not delaying a hard-fought budget compromise any longer.
Casinos and video lottery terminals? They’re the backdrop for a different fight.
"These are philosophical differences," said Sen. Ralph Hise, a Berger ally. "Who is going to keep their word? Who is not going to keep their word?"
On Tuesday, Moore announced his chamber didn’t have the votes to include additional casinos and legalized video lottery terminals in the budget despite having a majority of Republicans in support. He proposed moving forward without it.
An angry Berger accused House leadership of breaking an agreement to include any provision that secured a majority of Republican votes. He instead demanded that the House leadership “live up to its commitments,” couching the disagreement as a fundamental reshaping of the relationship between the chambers.
“At this point, it’s not the casinos,” Berger said. “It’s whether or not I can go back to my members and tell them that I have an understanding with the leadership in the house on a particular issue. Doesn’t matter what the issue is. When I cannot do that, then it makes it very, very difficult for us to get any kind of business done. So it’s larger than just casinos.”
The pair has navigated choppy waters before. Berger, 71, has been in charge of the Senate since 2011; Moore, 52, has been the Speaker for a record five terms. Together, they’ve moved North Carolina in a more conservative direction on taxes, regulations and social issues consistently and repeatedly.
Presiding with narrow supermajorities this session, Republicans have enacted tighter restrictions on abortion, limits on transgender athletes and treatments, a parents' bill of rights and agreed to Medicaid expansion. The chambers have overridden all of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes since a surprise party switch during the session gave them just enough votes to do so.
And the budget promises deeper tax cuts, a massive expansion of private school vouchers and many other items on the GOP wish list — if and when it becomes law.
"The consistency of party unity has really, particularly now that they've got the supermajorities formally, has been quite impressive," said Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College and longtime observer of North Carolina politics. "Party unity can only go so far, and sometimes an issue will catapult other issues and other dynamics at play. That’s potentially what we might be seeing now."
Counting votes
The House and Senate haven’t always been in lockstep. The Senate was prepared to expand Medicaid last year, but ran into resistance in the House. Senate-passed bills, such as deregulation around advanced practice registered nurses and medical marijuana, went nowhere in the House.
With supermajorities in both bodies, Republicans need not convince Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to agree with them. Instead, they must keep various intraparty factions satisfied. They’ve done so on a wide swath of controversial issues. On the contentious issue of abortion, where moderates and conservatives disagreed, House and Senate Republicans internally reached a consensus and quickly passed a ban at 12 weeks.
No such consensus has emerged on casinos and VLTs, the final point of contention in budget negotiations.
And one that is now playing out publicly. Berger didn't hide his anger with his GOP counterparts Tuesday, as reporters scurried back-and-forth between the leaders.
Moore said there are 42 Republicans in favor of a budget that includes expanded gambling and 30 members opposed, a rare time where he’s revealed internal votes. That majority, Berger maintains, means the provision should be in the budget, per an agreement with Moore. The Speaker, however, said he doesn't have the 61 votes necessary to actually pass the budget with gambling in the 120-member House.
Berger doesn’t believe the vote count Moore has laid out would hold up on the floor.
"I think there are a lot of people that have a lot of things in that budget and that it’s very easy to say I don’t want it in there in either a one-on-one conversation or, particularly, in a group meeting of some sort," Berger said. "I think that the votes would be there if it were put on the floor."
Moore said he doesn't think it would be a good idea to vote on the budget without knowing how it would turn out. He said he doesn't have 19 Democrats to help get a budget with gambling over the threshold.
"There have been other flashpoint-type issues that have been out there that have garnered less than 60 votes out of the particular caucuses that have gone forward," Berger said. "I would just say that this is something that is an aberration from what has been standard operating procedure."
Neither side, to this point, has been willing to budge, though in-person negotiations between Berger and Moore continued Wednesday with at least two meetings. Each chamber passed their own version of the budget earlier in the year, and work to bridge the difference has been ongoing for months.
The budget is more than two months late, delaying raises for teachers and state workers, Medicaid expansion, hundreds of millions of dollars for local projects and Medicaid expansion.
“The budget is too important to get hung up on any one single issue — on gaming, casinos or anything else,” Moore said. “All of the other pertinent issues from taxes to pay raises, to investment in capita, to you name it, community colleges, workforce development, all that stuff in that $33-billion budget was agreed to.”
Berger insists that it’s not, that the budget is a series of compromises and that without gambling it can all fall apart — a not-so-veiled threat to unwind member projects or other agreements.
Such talk has enraged members of the House Freedom Caucus. Rep. Mike Clampitt, R-Swain, said in an email that he was "appalled and outraged" at Berger, who Clampitt says has "resorted to holding the House members and the state’s budget hostage to get his casino bill passed."
"This is blackmail politics pure and simple. He is using his position as leader of the Senate to bully, browbeat and [threaten] to get his way," Clampitt wrote in an email to former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, who posted it on social media.
Clampitt confirmed its authenticity and said the statement was pretty clear about his position.
Moore said he sent members home for the week Tuesday afternoon because "nerves were frayed, tempers were flaring."
The House didn't consider several Senate bills it had on its calendar Tuesday. The Senate returned the favor Wednesday. This type of bill hostage taking is not uncommon at the end of legislative sessions and can be quickly remedied if a deal is struck.
“Lower the temperature, let everybody calm down and just try to work through the problem,” Moore said. “This isn’t about personalities. It isn’t about any of that stuff.”
Why casinos?
For all the high-minded talk about principles at stake, the debate in the end is about expanding gambling. The proposal would allow for four new casinos in select counties throughout the state and legalize video lottery terminals statewide. One of the counties that would be allowed to host a casino district — with a guaranteed minimum investment of $500 million — is Rockingham County, Berger’s home.
Lawmakers previously approved mobile sports betting earlier this year, which when enacted next year will allow gambling on college and professional sports by adults from phones and computers located in the state.
“The issue itself of gambling, I don’t think it would normally be associated with Republican Party priorities,” Bitzer said. “But something has obviously shifted in terms of the level of support, but also the level of ‘we’re going to get this and if we don’t, we will bring things to a screeching halt.’ It just seems surprising from a policy perspective this is the hill Republicans are battling over.”
The revenue from more gambling would be used to accelerate cuts in the personal income tax rate, Rep. Allen Chesser told a Nash County audience. Nash County and Anson County would also be allowed to host casinos under the proposal, which WRAL obtained in draft form.
Berger has long been a proponent of reducing taxes.
And, in recent months, Berger has pushed the casino deal, talking up the economic impact it could have in parts of the state where population and economic growth has not kept pace with North Carolina’s urban and suburban hotspots.
“I think it’s something he believes in strongly,” Moore said. “Phil’s a good man. He’s a friend. Obviously, we’ve got a difference of opinion on this, but that’s fine. There’s room for that. He feels very strongly this is a good policy. Clearly the one being in his region, I know, is very important to him, and I want to be able to be supportive of that. But I can’t sacrifice the whole state budget over that issue.”
His interest in expanded gambling, Berger said, stems from Virginia’s decision to put casinos along the North Carolina border, including in Danville, which is near Rockingham. The casino is drawing visitors and dollars from population centers in North Carolina. Virginia first approved the casinos in 2020, but the Danville facility opened in May. In its first two months, the casino brought in $30 million in revenue.
“Somebody can tell you that they’re gonna smack you upside the face,” Berger said, “but until they do, you know, that’s when the realization really sets in.”
Asked if that was a metaphor for what’s happening between the House and the Senate, Berger demurred.
”I don’t know,” he said. “Y’all make those things up.”
