Spinning McCrory's declining popularity

By Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, March 28, 2014.

It couldn’t have been a very happy Halloween for Governor Pat McCrory. His approval rating has fallen so much that even the Pope Civitas Institute, the partisan propaganda outfit almost entirely funded by McCrory’s own budget director Art Pope, was forced to admit it in their latest “public opinion survey.”

The latest Civitas Poll claims that 46 percent of voters now approve of McCrory’s performance and 44 percent disapprove. That’s ten points worse than the group’s findings in May.

A recent survey from Public Policy Polling found McCrory’s approval rating at 37 percent with 51 percent disapproving, which seems more in line with events of the last several months, from all of McCrory’s misstatements to the ongoing scandals at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Civitas folks had to admit some decline in McCrory’s approval or risk whatever is left of their credibility with the media. Civitas chief Francis Deluca, who it is worth remembering also runs the group’s political arm that helps get Republicans elected, said that McCrory was doing better than President Obama in the polls and was basically at a breakeven point in popularity “despite taking a beating from liberal activists.”

Apparently it was “liberal activists” fault that McCrory’s Administration gave huge pay raises to former campaign workers, gave a former DHHS Chief of Staff a huge severance package after only working for a month, and forced McCrory to sign all the far-right legislation passed by the tea party General Assembly.

If only the “liberal activists” would stop making McCrory be so extreme and govern so poorly, his popularity would improve.

One final note about the Civitas Poll. For several years, the group conducted monthly polls that were released at luncheons usually featuring a prominent Republican to help the audience understand that the Democrats were to blame everything that people didn’t like. But now that Republicans control the General Assembly the governor’s office the polls and the luncheons are held much less frequently.

It’s almost as if they don’t really want to know what people of think of what is happening to their state.

Questions that still Merritt an answer

Speaking of DHHS, no one has yet to explain a few things about former State Auditor Les Merritt, who is earning more than $300,000 a year as a contract worker serving as the CFO of the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disability, and Substance Abuse Services.

First, why is Merritt not a fulltime employee, like most CFOs? Merritt says the contract is not with him but with his company, which then begs the question who are his company’s other clients and do they pose any ethical conflicts?

Earlier this year Merritt resigned his seat on the State Ethics Commission after the media raised questions about a possible conflict with his position at DHHS.

But Merritt is apparently still on the board of directors of Wake Med, even though the hospital system receives millions of dollars in reimbursements from DHHS where Merritt holds a key management position. Isn’t that also a conflict?

Merritt and the rest of the Wake Med board fired longtime CEO Bill Atkinson in September not long after Atkinson sharply criticized the Department of Health and Human Services for problems in reimbursing the hospital for medical services and for focusing too much attention on inspecting abortion clinics.

No one has yet explained the real reasons for Atkinson’s dismissal but there’s little doubt that his comments about DHHS that surely must have angered McCrory and DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos did not help.

Before heading to the much, much greener pastures of DHHS, Merritt co-founded a nonprofit called the Foundation for Ethics in Public Service. Part of the way it fulfilled its mission according to its website was “receiving and independently investigating allegations of corruption in government.”

Too bad the group doesn’t still exist. It could investigate this ethical quagmire and clear up some things about one of its founders.

- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/11/01/the-follies-185/#sthash.fUuX7QF3.dpuf