Pat McCrory is having a bad summer. Senate Republicans have dismissed the governor as irrelevant and misguided. House members have insulted him, too. His Secretary of Transportation left in the middle of the legislative session, leaving McCrory’s chief legislative priority, an infrastructure bond, in jeopardy.
Now, he trails his chief opponent, Attorney General Roy Cooper, in fundraising. Mid-year campaign reports show Cooper has raised an unprecedented $2.2 million since the first of the year. That’s almost $1 million more than McCrory, who brought in $1.3. Cooper has $3 million cash on hand, compared to McCory’s $2.4 million.
Some Republicans clearly want to throw McCrory overboard. They would rather find somebody else to be their standard bearer in 2016, either because they feel like he’s too weak to carry the ticket or because he’s too moderate, or wishy-washy, to lead the party. Others might be worried about a Bev Perdue situation.
In 2011, Gov. Bev Perdue suffered from low approval ratings in the midst of a very bad economy. Her opponent, Pat McCrory, had been running since he lost to her in 2008. Perdue raised $1.3 million during the first half of 2011, while McCroy almost matched her with $1 million. The report was seen as a testament of McCrory’s strength.
Perdue waited until January before deciding to get out. She left Democrats scrambling to find a candidate to replace her, setting up a competitive primary that eventually left the nominee, Lt. Governor Walter Dalton, at a financial and organizational disadvantage.
Like Perdue, McCrory can’t get his approval ratings out of the dumps. Cooper’s fundraising set a record, showing broad support and, arguably, dissatisfaction with the incumbent. McCrory’s $1.3 million is exactly where Perdue was at the same point in the election cycle.
McCrory certainly has time to recover but he’s got a lot of obstacles to overcome. The infighting and GOP slights have damaged him. He’s also caused his share of self-inflicted wounds and Republican policies aren’t helping. North Carolina is lagging behind neighboring states in its economic recovery and the GOP has embarrassed the state and scared off businesses with bills that defend Confederate monuments and discriminate against gay and lesbian couples. Even if he has opposed some of those policies, McCrory is still the public face of the GOP and he gets the blame.
Republicans need to decide how long they can wait before either fully embracing McCrory or trying to force him off the ticket. If they wait too long and the governor’s ratings don’t improve, then they could face a situation similar to the one Democrats faced in 2012. On the flip side, the candidate who is best organized and waiting in the wings is Lt. Governor Dan Forest whose views are so far outside the mainstream that he could drown the whole ticket. The GOP establishment would need to find a candidate with broader appeal, ensuring a competitive primary next May and giving Cooper the same breathing space that McCrory had in 2012. The GOP is stuck with a struggling incumbent and a bunch of bad alternatives.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Before castigating former governor Perdue as you have – without any pertinent facts backing your assertions, you ought to do some background research into what could possibly have caused her to bail at the eleventh hour, leaving both her party and the state in jeopardy. Beverly Perdue was a seasoned NC. political veteran and she would have easily beat the foppish McCory a second time. Stop making lame accusations and do some homework, here’s a hint: almost before the votes had been counted, the republikans lifted the moratorium on fracking. The big boys will get what they want and they want corporatism – which is the more congenial way of saying fascism, – or has no one noticed the overall intent of the legislation coming out of the republikan controlled NCGA? It’s so funny, no matter how large the elephant in the room is, everyone pretends not to notice it.
Classic hyper-partisan posting. Throw the word “liberal” around like a epithet, call the media source a “rag,” and, with regard to gerrymandering, claim that two wrongs make a right,
What else would you expect a liberal rag like ths one to say?
I’m certainly ready to show McCrory the door as much as anybody, but ultimately it won’t really matter who is governor if Republicans maintain their veto proof majorities in both houses, and their blatant gerrymandering will make it difficult to end that.
Exactly.
Youre upset about gerrymandering??? How do you think the democrats kept power in this state for 140 yrs…and now youre upset? GET A LIFE ! ITS THE GOP’s turn now!
It’s the GOP’s turn to do what they complained about? They complained about gerrymandering (which was not so egregious that it prevented Republicans from winning control) then when it was their turn to prove that they were better decided instead to gerrymander.
They complained about the lack of “home rule” in NC. Then when it was their turn to prove that they were better proceeded to take cities water systems away, impose new styles on elections on cities and counties, etc.
They railed against “wealth redistribution” and now it is their turn are promoting a system that will redistribute sales tax intake from cities to rural areas.
I’ll give them this — it took the NC Republican party less than 4 years to become as corrupt and indifferent as the Democratic party became in 140 years.
Yes, since its “the GOP’s turn”, we should automatically let them continue on their tear to destroy the state.
Perdue was incompetent, the far right thinks McCrory is a RINO not the same at all. If Cooper can beat McCrory I suspect he can also beat Forrest. So much depends on the national ticket…
You can stick a fork in McCrory and take that to the bank. Any comparison to Perdue is nonsense. it will take decades (if that is even possible) for North Carolina to recover from the shameless ignorance, ideology and stupidity of McCrory and the Republican controlled GA. More importantly, NC’s brand overall is in the tank.
“You can stick a fork in McCrory and take that to the bank”? Really? Before the last election, many said that about Tillis, and we all know how that turned out. Don’t sell NC voters short; they have proven themselves quite capable of political ignorance, of voting against their own interests, and of putting ineffective or narrow-minded people in office (e.g., McCrory, Berger, Tillis, Holding, Barefoot, Rabin, Wade, Good, Tucker, Stam, Dollar, and Rucho).
Good analysis.
The gov could face an additional salvo of immediate criticism, too, when the budget get settled. That budget will have allocations and provisions that will irk and chafe not just those to the left of center but many of the entire middle—and the middle is key to his re-election. And even if the gov vetoes the budget, it will be overruled, reflecting on his lack of influence and powerlessness. And the NCGA likely doing little on transportation (trying to “cash-flow” investments won’t scratch the surface of what needs to be done on roads/bridges) won’t help either, nor would the state’s continued lagging on unemployment and continued failure to rope in a major industrial re-location.