Prominent NC conservative on special session last week: ‘Would have been better to provide more time’

John Hood, president of the John William Pope foundation, told Vice News on Friday that Republicans in the North Carolina legislature may wish they had slowed their roll.

“These are significant changes to the government of the state,” he said. “It would have been better to provide more time.”

He was speaking about last week’s surprise special session in which Republicans, who have a super majority in the House and Senate, passed bills stripping Democrat Gov.-elect Roy Cooper of power, among other things.

The John William Pope Foundation is the grant-making arm of the policy empire controlled by North Carolina Republican megadonor Art Pope, who is also a top backer of outgoing Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

Hood told the news outlet that it wasn’t the changes Republicans were proposing that scared him, it was the scope of the proposals and the pace legislators were moving them into law that worried him.

You can read the full interview here.

Ultimately, Hood said, what the Republicans did last week doesn’t help create a functional government in North Carolina.

Rather, it continues “a cycle that harms our discourse in the long run.”