Cooper's challenge

[caption id="attachment_3774" align="alignleft" width="150"] Roy Cooper[/caption]

by John Wynne, Politics NC, February 29, 2016.

Roy Cooper’s challenge is the same one shared by every non-incumbent: the burden of proof is on the challenger. He has to prove that McCrory’s governorship has been bad for North Carolina.

For incumbents like McCrory, it’s innocent until proven guilty. Roy Cooper knows a little about being a prosecutor and the case against McCrory is going to have to be his tightest yet.

McCrory’s job is easier, and the national economic recovery has been an asset. Regardless of whether it’s the economic climate nationally or a “Carolina Comeback” rooted in local policy changes, voters are feeling a little more optimistic nowadays. Things could change. A recession may be on the horizon. But at this point, it’s difficult to see McCrory losing because of a bad economy.

In better economic times, challengers like Cooper turn to another strategy, the “alternative path” strategy. The message is always the same: “Things are getting better, but some people are being left behind. We can’t just rest on our laurels. We can do better.” To work, it needs to tap into a restlessness that’s already there. When an incumbent governor loses in an upset, it’s usually because they fell victim to this strategy. The electorate turned out to be more restless than they thought.

This strategy tends to work because the incumbent’s campaign is caught off guard. They fail to respond because they don’t see the threat. Fortunately for Team McCrory, they’re unlikely to be caught off guard: this is, after all, the top governor’s race in the country.

McCrory’s response to Cooper’s message will ironically echo the 2012 campaign strategy of Barack Obama. Team McCrory will say that after decades of Democrat control, North Carolina is finally starting to get back on its feet. Look at all the progress we’ve made in four years. Unemployment down. X new jobs. More statistics. Do we really want to go back to the same policies that got us in this mess?

This is an effective line, because four years is really not a long time. And once voters see some progress, they’re very hesitant to suddenly make a change again. This hesitancy helped Obama in 2012 and it will help McCrory in 2016 unless the elections this year take place in a climate of severe economic anxiety.

Right now, the polls seem to bear that out. Three polls for the governor’s race were released in February and McCrory was ahead in two of them.

The latest controversy over Charlotte’s transgender bathroom ordinance also helps the governor. Despite what you might read in the editorial columns of our state’s newspapers, the bathroom provision is not something broadly supported by North Carolinians. McCrory has a firm stance on this issue while Cooper has been silent. He’s been silent about a lot of things, while has irritated some on the left – and is probably one reason the Winston-Salem Journal endorsed his primary opponent, Ken Spaulding.

The governor could still lose and this won’t be a blowout – not by any means. The state is too divided for that to happen. But the national economic recovery and the set of issues in this race slightly favor four more years for Pat McCrory.