Sometimes In Politics You Just Get A Gift

by Brad Crone, Campaign Connections and NC SPIN panelist, September 5, 2013.

The past few days in Raleigh have been a whirlwind no doubt.  Most of the attention has been on the high-stakes poker game the Governor played with the Legislature and lost.

The Republican lawmakers came back to Raleigh and clearly showed the Governor who really runs things in the state.

But the Governor didn’t take his defeat gracefully.  Rather than learning his lesson and marking up the stinging defeat to experience – he went off on a tangent, telling the Republican Legislature that he wasn’t going to enforce the drug testing law because it was an unfunded mandate.  Then said he would work to find an executive branch fix on the e-verify / immigration bill.

A few hours after his override setbacks, he announced he had found $10 million to fund pay raises for teachers with advanced degrees…only to leave his bewildered staff to explain to the press (who McCrory said last week didn’t have the sense to figure out complex business issues) how the Governor had just miraculously found $10 million.

(The press was smart enough to know the Governor can’t just pull $10 million out of the sofa cushions at the Executive Mansion.)

What is even more humorous was the timing.

Just a few hours before Governor McCrory’s education announcement  he was complaining about the “unfunded mandate” in the drug-testing for welfare applicants law…then he announced finding $10 million…like is just appeared out of thin air.

So was there a funding crisis for drug-testing? Or did he just find the $10 million to fix a problem he wanted to address but didn’t fight for when the General Assembly was in regular session?  (The press is reporting there is no new $10 million and the Governor will ask for the appropriation in next year's short session.)

There is a growing confidence crisis in the Governor … not with the Democrats … but with the Republicans. .  I’m hearing the GOP leadership on Jones Street is livid.

In the past few weeks, the Governor has offended  the agribusiness community, the various commodity groups, the Commissioner of Agriculture, the doctors, the hospitals, the real estate and homebuilders community and the state’s furniture industry – and these are all his friends.  Not to mention state employees, teachers, educators and the university crowd, who aren’t necessarily in the McCrory camp.

The Governor may want to shake things up in Raleigh but ruffling the feathers of the folks who brought you to the dance is a strange way of doing it.

Aggravating your friends can only add to the growing whisper campaign – One Term Pat.

For Attorney General Roy Cooper, sometimes in politics you just get a gift.