Why the race for Labor Commissioner matters to North Carolina business leaders

September 2nd, 2023

Thanks for joining us this Labor Day weekend.

Given the impending holiday, we thought it timely to discuss a little-followed but immensely important 2024 contest: the race for North Carolina Labor Commissioner.

We’ll get right to it.

*** 
The Labor Commissioner race rarely attracts the same level of attention as a senate or gubernatorial campaign. But the Labor Commissioner impacts every North Carolina business through regulatory edicts, enforcement of employment laws, and the most dreaded tactic of all – settling lawsuits.

When we last touched on this topic back in January, we wrote that for many years North Carolina has benefited from a Labor Commissioner who appreciates the challenges business owners face. That doesn’t mean the Commissioner has ignored labor concerns like workplace safety – it just means the Commissioner has taken a balanced, real-world view that there are usually many considerations to weigh when making regulatory decisions.

Come January 2025, North Carolina business owners might be in for an abrupt shock.

There is little standing in the way of new labor rules that a sympathetic agency head might enact. Sure, the legislature makes the laws and the executive branch is just supposed to execute them…

But well-funded interest groups file lawsuits all the time seeking to enact new laws, either via judicial decree or settling with a like-minded “defendant” like a Commissioner of Labor. One need only review recent press reports to conjure what might come about.

NPR, for example, has run more than five national stories advocating for more worker heat protections since just July 1. Here are some of the headlines:

• An economic argument for heat safety regulation
• It’s hot. For farmworkers without federal heat protections, it could be life or death
• Heat is killing workers in the U.S. — and there are no federal rules to protect them

And just this week, the Biden administration proposed a new rule requiring employers to pay overtime to salaried white collar workers and to automatically increase threshold each year.

Worker protections or employer mandates aren’t necessarily bad in and of themselves. It’s when more extreme labor organizations and sympathetic regulators push rules beyond the bounds of what’s reasonable that bad outcomes proliferate.

***

With the stakes thus set, here’s the current state of play for the 2024 Commissioner of Labor race.

Two Republicans are vying for the nomination: Raleigh attorney Luke Farley and Guilford County state Rep. Jon Hardister. (A third, state Rep. Ben Moss, announced last month that he would fold his campaign and instead seek reelection to the House.)

In an interesting twist, former Labor Commissioner Cherie Beasley and outgoing commissioner Josh Dobson endorsed different candidates. Beasley backs Farley, while Dobson backs Hardister – Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler is expected to follow suit on Hardister. 

Hardister has a substantial lead in the fundraising race, with $280,000 on hand as of June 30 compared to Farley’s $54,000 (most of which came from a personal loan).

There is only one announced Democratic candidate, Charlotte City Councilman Braxton Winston, who has less cash on hand than either Republican.

Winston’s campaign platform is not particularly controversial – it discusses the importance of worker safety and fair wages.

But, as Carolina Journal reports, Winston has been something of a flashpoint in Charlotte.

He was arrested during 2020 George Floyd protests, and he also vigorously opposed the city hosting the Republican National Convention, saying it would be “potentially violent [and] divisive.”

Winston also called single-family residential zoning “a tool of segregation” and suggested only racists would support the policy.

Earlier this year, he voted against allowing the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department to purchase ammunition, and just last month he equated the blame for the crack in the Carowinds roller coaster to both Labor Commissioner Josh Dobson and the Republican leaders within the General Assembly. 

Winston seems entrenched in the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and it’s a reasonable bet he would continue that behavior as Labor Commissioner.

***

Because the Labor Commissioner garners so little attention as a down-ballot race in a presidential election year, the open seat may well be decided by larger electoral trends.

Fundraising, too, isn’t all that indicative of whether the Democrat or Republican will win. Yes, Hardister has nearly $300,000 on hand, but that’s hardly enough to wage a proper statewide campaign, especially after spending on a primary.

The major party apparatus may offer its nominee some assistance, and on this count the Democrats are at disadvantage. The party raised less than Republicans so far this year. Worse, in a statistic that you will surely never read from the pens and keyboards of any Raleigh or Charlotte political media, the Democratic Party’s 2023 haul is well behind their 2021 and 2019 progress at the same time in the cycle. This comes after newly elected far left leadership was elected to lead the North Carolina Democrats – led by a personality that has been consistently championed through coverage by the state’s largest political media outlets, including WRAL, Axios Raleigh, News & Observer/Charlotte Observer, The Assembly, WUNC/NPR, and even the New York Times and Washington Post. 

In any event, North Carolinians will decide in November 2024 on a race that impacts the state’s economy far more than most understand.

We’ve thrived under a fair, balanced regulatory environment for decades – November 2024 may very well decide whether or not that continues.