RALEIGH (April 9, 2026) – There’s been an upheaval in leadership of North Carolina’s General Assembly with the defeat of longtime Senate leader Phil Berger in a primary that spanned Rockingham and part of Guilford County.1
It’s difficult to overstate the influence Berger has had during 15 years as Senate President Pro Tem, deciding budget priorities and which bills get heard. He has repeatedly won in budget negotiations with the state House – will there be more balance to those discussions going forward?
Here’s an overview of what the Senate has done during Berger’s tenure:
Appointments: Berger has loaded governing and advisory boards across state government with appointees prone to micromanagement – and staff positions with his former employees.2
Balance of powers: The legislature stripped Govs. Pat McCrory, Roy Cooper and Josh Stein of appointments to boards such as university Boards of Trustees and the State Board of Elections. It will take passage of legislation by both houses of the legislature to unwind.
Public schools: At the same time it has been ranked No. 1 for business, North Carolina has received abysmal rankings for teacher pay (43rd), funding per student (49th) and funding effort (50th).3
Hopefully future legislative leaders will see the critical importance to the state’s future workforce and economy of investing in public schools – and paying public school teachers properly.
Leandro: In a 32-year-old case, the state’s highest court repeatedly found the state isn’t doing its part to provide its children with access to a sound basic education – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Berger and former House Speaker Tim Moore intervened only after the courts ordered the state to pay those hundreds of millions – and after Republicans, including Berger’s son – won a majority on the N.C. Supreme Court.
And last week the court ruled 4-3 that it doesn’t have jurisdiction over education policy and dismissed the case.
Vouchers: At the same time, Berger oversaw a monumental expansion of vouchers that supply taxpayer dollars for private schools – chiefly by removing any income limits on which families can claim them.
Tax dollars for private school vouchers will expand to as much as $675 million in 2026-27.4 The expansion has siphoned critical budget dollars from public schools and is resegregating our schools.
Universities: See appointments above. Berger has politicized university governing boards – both campus Boards of Trustees and the systemwide UNC Board of Governors – loading them with lobbyists who are beholden to the legislature and cronies who in many cases seem focused more on ideology and micromanagement than on students.
Case in point: The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ outlandish announcement of the School of Civic Life and Leadership to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, circumventing the normal process where new programs are developed by the faculty.5
Establishment of the school was followed by generous funding from the legislature for the school. And all of the original faculty named to the school have now left.
In an era of rising college tuition, the Board of Governors did hold tuition steady at the state’s 16 public universities for nine consecutive years during Berger’s tenure. Berger also backed NC Promise, an initiative that reduced in-state tuition to $500 a semester at four state universities.6
Tax policy: The state’s personal income tax rate – currently 3.99% – is already scheduled to decline to 2.99% in 2028.7
Berger deserves credit for lowering tax rates that have helped fuel the state’s economic growth – revenues grew, though they are projected to decline next year.8 Where did the money go? See vouchers above.
Those dollars could otherwise go to pay our public-school teachers and the state’s share of Medicaid health insurance for more than 3 million (1 in 4) North Carolinians.9
And North Carolina remains the only state in the nation that hasn’t adopted a new budget for 2025-26.
Gerrymandering: Under Berger, and with ever-improving software, Republicans perfected the art of drawing districts. A memorable scene in the 2016 documentary “Democracy for Sale” showed former state Sen. Margaret Dickson and host Zach Galifianakis standing on opposite sides of a street in Fayetteville – and they were in different state Senate districts.
Though Berger denied he did it for the sake of President Trump’s endorsement in his primary, the legislature responded to Trump’s call to draw more Republican-friendly congressional districts. Legislators redrew the Eastern North Carolina district of Democratic Rep. Don Davis to make it more likely for a Republican to win it.10
Casinos: Alarmed by traffic driving through his county to a new Caesars casino in Danville, Va, Berger pushed in 2023 for a casino in Rockingham County – which did not go over well in a religious rural county and became a major issue in opponent Sheriff Sam Page’s campaign against him this year.
That’s what Phil Berger has done for North Carolina.
And the new parlor game in North Carolina political circles is guessing who will succeed him as leader of the state Senate.11
1 https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/berger-hand-recount-rockingham-county-nc-senate-district-23-vote-lead-march/; https://journalnow.com/news/local/government-politics/elections/article_7bf90518-a051-5d50-93d8-16621736806c.html#tracking-source=home-top-story.
2 https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/a-well-earned-smackdown/; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article315193602.html.
3 https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2025/.
4 https://publicedworks.org/2026/03/nc-voucher-funding-increases-for-2026-27/.
5 https://publicedworks.org/2023/02/goldstein-and-snider-how-not-to-start-a-new-school-of-civic-life-at-unc-chapel-hill/; https://publicedworks.org/2023/10/goldstein-lemons-to-lemonade-the-unc-school-of-civic-life/.
6 https://www.northcarolina.edu/impact/affordability-efficiency/nc-promise/.
7 https://www.osbm.nc.gov/facts-figures/economy/revenue-forecasting/consensus-revenue-forecast.
8 https://publicedworks.org/2026/03/storm-clouds/.
9 https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2025/04/09/nc-medicaid-expansion-reaches-650000-north-carolinians-enrolled-fewer-18-months-after-launch.
10 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article315182112.html.
11 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article315160586.html; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article315199712.html.
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