Governor Pat McCrory

Is sweating over his job, the North Caroline governor is in a tight political battle with the Democratic candidate.

Anti-transgender law backfires on North Carolina Republicans
HB2, the "bathroom bill" targeted at transgender people, may cost North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory his job.
The Star
By Daniel Dale
Sat., Oct. 8, 2016

WINTERVILLE, N.C.—Bill Hopseker is a Republican-leaning military veteran who describes himself as “the average American working person.” He thinks America is heading in the wrong direction. Outside a Sam's Club store in a small North Carolina town on Wednesday, he said he'll be voting for Donald Trump.

And that he will not even think about voting for the Republican governor.

"Doing something like this,” he said, “really tarnishes a person."

What Pat McCrory did is sign and defend a law banning transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice.

"I wouldn’t vote for anybody that does something like that. The logic, I just can’t figure it out at all. Why you would even care?” said Hopseker, 56. “Just because they were born that way – I don’t know. It’s not comprehensible for me. It’s just too stupid.”

The law, widely known as HB2 (for House Bill 2), is straight out of a long-successful Republican electoral playbook: pick a fight about LGBT people, rile up social conservatives, ride the fury turnout to victory.

This time, it is not working.

The backlash to HB2 has been so fierce that it might cost the governor his job. McCrory is down by an average of four points to Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper, and analysts say HB2 is one of the biggest reasons why.
[…]
In the end, what may doom McCrory is not North Carolinians’ views on bathrooms but their love of basketball.

PayPal canceled a 400-job expansion in Charlotte. More than 30 cities or states banned non-essential government travel to North Carolina. But no withdrawal hit harder than the NCAA decision to move seven college championship events, including March Madness.

PoliticalUSA reports that…

Except this time it isn’t working according to plan. It is noteworthy that Republicans likely wanted to legalize all manner of discrimination, but playing on unfounded fears of the transgender community was a mistake North Carolina Republicans will live to regret. The backlash to HB2 has been so fierce it has Governor Pat McCrory down between 4 and 6 points in polls to his Democratic challenger and attorney general Roy Cooper; analysts all cite HB2 as the reason the incumbent Republican is falling behind.

And hurricane Mathew I don’t think helped the governor because as Wired reported in September,

First, people are suing the crap out of these guys. North Carolina’s Republican leadership racked up at least $176,000 in legal fees so far, $47,000 of which is just lawyers for the beleaguered Governor Pat McCrory. Why do those numbers matter? They are paid with tax dollars, and they’re rising. In June, the North Carolina legislature approved diverting $500,000 from the disaster relief fund to Governor McCrory’s offices for HB2 litigation. Sure, this HB2 situation’s a disaster. But in a state that sees two, three hurricanes per year … they might have done other things with that money—especially as hurricane season gets underway.

Somehow I think that North Carolina will need all that $500,000 after Mathew.