I did not watch the WRAL debate among GOP candidates last night, so I’m stuck relying on second-hand sources for what happened.
Having said that is sounds like former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr got off the best line, joking that Pat McCrory “hacked into” his education plan — a callback to McCrory’s brief hackers-put-a-typo-in-my-email dust-up.
Other than that, nothing seems particularly noteworthy about the event. No one stuffed the other guys or sounded completely out of it. Bottomline, still wide-open as you would expect in mid-January.
I will note, however, that thus far McCrory has crosswired his messages. His private spin, the one he must employ to get money is, “I’m electable.” Fine. But his public spin, the one primary voters need to hear — are hungry to hear — is an anti-status quo “I’m kicking ass and takin’ names” message. Now to the extent McCrory is going to the status quo for money — that’s a problem.
On a related note, as expected former state Rep. Ed McMahan has resigned his posts with the Republican Party to help McCrory raise money.
For a much better idea of where McCrory’s stands on statewide issues and where his campaign is headed, we should probably look to Pete Kaliner’s interview with McCrory that airs this Sunday on WBT.
One very direct and clear question Kaliner posed was on economic incentives. McCrory’s answer was very troubling. “We’d target industry that fills a gap in North Carolina that the free market is obviously not filling,” McCrory says. The mayor continues:
I’d possibly do incentives in an area of our state, or even in a city, that again, the free market is just not filling and we’ve had 20-years of continued blight and decay. You know, partially incentives, by the way, are — from a conservative standpoint — a tax cut. The question is why is it fair to give a tax cut to that person vs. everyone else — that’s the real debate. The word incentive is a tax cut. And that why I think if we cut the income tax for everyone, that becomes an incentive for industry to come, and that’s one of the things I’ve been fighting (for).
Sure sounds like more of the same in a policy area that is widely recognized as in need of serious reform. Besides, when you are handing out $1.2 billion in corporate welfare as this state has done, it becomes functionally impossible to do any kind of broad-based income tax cut of the kind McCrory says he supports.
The reform path is clear: Stop incentives first, then broad-based tax cut.
Bonus Observation: Democratic strategist Gary Pearce slams Victoria Smith’s handling of Governer-gate, all-but urging McCrory to replace Smith if he wants to win.
