IN NOVEMBER Mitt Romney edged out Barack Obama in North Carolina by 92,004 of the roughly 4.5m votes cast. Four years earlier, Mr Obama defeated John McCain by 14,177 of the roughly 4.3m votes cast. Of North Carolina’s six most recent governors, three were Democrats and three Republicans. For years, the state has had one United States senator from each party. It has been a quintessentially purple state, a mix of Republican red and Democratic blue.

But now, for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has a Republican governor, a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court and Republicans controlling both legislative chambers. For the latter, credit is due in large part to redistricting done by statehouse Republicans. Democrats, however, can hardly complain; they did the same thing when they had the chance ten years earlier. Democrats enjoy a voter-registration advantage statewide and in ten of the state’s 13 House districts, yet they won just four of them. At the state legislature level, the Republicans picked up ten House seats and one in the Senate. On February 5th the Senate voted along party lines to approve a bill that would bar the state from expanding Medicaid and implementing health-insurance exchanges—both key planks of Barack Obama’s health-care reforms. Senate Republicans also want to abolish the state’s personal and corporate income taxes. To close the revenue gap they would raise the sales tax from 6.75% to 8.05%, quadruple the currently-lower tax on groceries from 2% to 8.05% and quintuple the tax on property transactions.

Whether they will find themselves helped or hindered by Pat McCrory, the newly-elected governor, remains unclear. North Carolina’s liberals may fear the worst, but Mr McCrory did not win three elections to the city council and seven to the mayoralty of Charlotte—North Carolina’s biggest city and a heavily Democratic one—by being an ideologue. Mr McCrory boasts that, as mayor, he “stepped on the toes of both the right and the left” in championing Charlotte’s ambitious light-rail line. He chaired the environment committee of the US Conference of Mayors. The Republican-controlled state Senate passed its anti-Medicaid-expansion bill over his objections

But Mr McCrory has more recently been dipping his toes in more partisan waters. During his campaign he joined North Carolina Republicans in bashing “Agenda 21”, an anodyne United Nations document on sustainable development that some on the American far right see as a stalking horse for world government. Since becoming governor he has derided “the educational elite”, and seemed to suggest that North Carolina’s excellent public universities should teach only courses directly related to “what business and commerce needs [sic]”. It seems that Mr McCrory, like his state, is turning right.