For nearly a quarter century, when debates over voting laws, gerrymandering, or money in politics enveloped North Carolina, Bob Phillips has been in the thick of them. That era ends this month, when Phillips retires from day-to-day advocacy work.
As the leader of Common Cause North Carolina since 2001, Phillips has helped to shape anti-corruption laws and organize support for voting rights. He has worked with other groups like the League of Women Voters, Democracy NC, and the North Carolina NAACP to remove obstacles to voting, increase government transparency, and try to overturn election districts they argued were unfair.
Phillips has been a constant presence in the Legislative Building, in courtrooms, and at rallies. And during his tenure, Common Cause NC has gone from a small, nearly invisible operation to an organization with statewide reach.
Last January, an online town hall Common Cause sponsored about Judge Jefferson Griffin’s efforts to throw out more than 60,000 votes in his race for a seat on the state Supreme Court drew more than 600 participants from around the state. Thousands of people gathered in the cold to attend its rallies to protest trashing votes in that close race.
Phillips, with his typical modesty, doesn’t take credit for the group’s rising profile. He credits the organizers Common Cause has across the state and in the office with deepening the grassroots and making concrete what can be heady topics.
“We still have a presence at the legislature in lobbying the decision-makers, but we’ve also invested a lot in organizers,” he said. “That’s probably the secret sauce in connecting people.”
Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said Phillips has built a talented team in North Carolina and an atmosphere where they can do their best work.
“Whether you’re a volunteer or a staff person, he figures out what your superpower is, then he lets you go and run with it. He’ll put you forward,” Solomón said.
Mitchell Brown worked with Common Cause NC when he was a student at A&T State University in Greensboro in an effort to increase student turnout for the 2010 elections. He credits that work with his interest in voting rights. Brown went on to attend law school at NYU and is now senior voting rights counsel at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
“Bob is a very important reason why I’m a voting rights attorney today,” he said.
When Phillips came to Common Cause after years as a reporter and then as spokesman for former Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker, he already had deeper knowledge than most about how the legislature works. He says partisan politics were not as toxic as today.
Politics in North Carolina has undergone a tremendous shift in the last 25 years. Republicans have taken firm control of the legislature and have enacted laws such as voter ID, which the organization opposed.
“It has changed dramatically,” Phillips said. “I jokingly say sometimes the worst day I had in the first 10 years on the job would maybe be the best day today.”
Rally in Raleigh protesting Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of more than 60,000 votes in the NC Supreme Court race, Feb. 17, 2025 (Photo: Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline)And it’s hard to win a gerrymandering lawsuit these days. State and federal courts say it’s not their job to referee partisan redistricting.
In fact, Common Cause North Carolina is etched in legal redistricting history. It was a case that went to the U.S .Supreme Court, Rucho v. Common Cause, that resulted in the court saying it would not consider complaints over partisan redistricting. The “Rucho” in the case is former state Sen. Bob Rucho, who now sits on the North Carolina Board of Elections.
Still, Phillips looks back on some significant wins.
He counts same-day registration, which allows people to register and vote on the same day during the early voting period, as a victory the organization helped secure. North Carolina passed same-day registration in 2007, the first southern state to do so.
Though Common Cause NC is nonpartisan, Republicans deride it as built to aid Democrats. It’s true that Common Cause has sued Republican leaders many times in recent years over redistricting plans. Leading Republicans, including House Speaker Destin Hall, ridicule the strategy as ‘sue until blue.”
However, Phillips said its positions are centered on principles, not partisan politics.
For example, Common Cause NC helped push campaign finance and lobbying laws through the legislature in the mid-2000s despite initial opposition from Democratic House leadership, Phillips recalled. Democratic House Speaker Jim Black was under investigation for accepting illegal campaign contributions, and the measures were inspired by reports of his activities. Black was later indicted and sentenced to prison.
Though its push to have an independent group draw election district lines is now seen as a Democratic issue, it’s something Republicans wanted when Democrats were in control, Phillips recalls.
Back in 2007, Republicans, then in the minority, sponsored bills to create an independent redistricting commission. Among the sponsors were current Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, and former state Reps. Tim Moore and Thom Tillis, who went on to serve as House Speakers.
Democrats in the legislature buried those bills.
Independent redistricting is all but dead in North Carolina today, and after a series of friendly rulings by conservative courts, Republicans are exercising their considerable freedom to draw districts for partisan advantage.
It wasn’t that long ago that the declaration from a former House Republican redistricting leader that a congressional plan had 10 Republican seats and 3 Democratic seats only because they couldn’t figure out how to draw an 11-2 map drew gasps and made headlines.
Now, partisan advantage is a clearly declared goal.
“They were just blatantly open about it,” Phillips said.
Phillips says Republicans are disguising racial gerrymandering, which is still illegal, as partisan gerrymandering, which the Rucho decision allows.
Common Cause NC lost a federal lawsuit over legislative and congressional districts this year. It and other plaintiffs claimed new lines are racial gerrymanders, while Republicans asserted they used no racial data to create the new districts.
“Unfortunately, we’re at a time where many of the courts buy that,” Phillips said.
After Phillips returns from a long vacation, Solomón has asked him to come back to an advisory role for the national organization.
“”He’s someone whose advice and wisdom and strategic thought-leadership and knowledge base I was dreading the idea of losing,” she said.
Phillips said he has tried, and he hopes Common Cause will continue, to help promote civility in elections.
“Everybody wants to see our elections being more civil affairs than they are,” he said. “Can we suddenly, with a coalition, make that happen? Probably not. But we can get more people thinking about what’s needed in holding the folks that are running for office accountable.”
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