No surprise there. He’d be a fool not to get into the governor’s race, given that polls for the last two years have consistently shown him beating Beverly Perdue. The latest has him up by 10 points. Her disapproval numbers are pretty solid as well, with 37 percent disapproving of the job she is doing and 47 percent well, not.
Her national press has been fabulous as well. In a piece called “Why North Carolina’s Perdue Is the Most Endangered Governor,” US News & World Report focused on Perdue’s bizarre actions and equally “bizarre” explanations her staff has been forced to make for them. And then of course there are the indictments of three of her campaign staff.
And who could forgot her bold determination to free nearly all of death row? Her veto last week of a bill to gut the disastrous Racial Justice Act could well result in upwards of 150 death row inmates getting out of the death penalty and 27 of them getting out of the death penalty and walking out of prison entirely.
How could anyone screw up the take down of this woman? You’d have to be pretty creative. But don’t count McCrory out. She narrowly beat him last time because he utterly, completely refused to go negative on her, even when she ran TV commercials trashing him.
We don’t do that in Charlotte. But to win, he must man up, or heck, at least strive to fight like a girl. With NJ Gov. Chris Christie fundraising for him, perhaps some of those cojones will wear off.
I write this not out of dislike for McCrory, but out of the sheer maddening frustration of months of watching him screw up a campaign he should have won. At one point, he was criss-crossing the state in his old Acura/Honda/whatever to events. The former mayor of Charlotte?!? At one point I suggested he was treating the campaign like a teenager treats his garage band. He was miffed.
If he wants this, he must man up this time. If he loses, she could set death row free upon innocent people. There are lives at stake here, Pat. Lives.
