Just the highlights:
• The governor vetoed his two bills today, apparently to show his independence from his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly. One bill would have allowed drug-testing welfare recipients under certain circumstances, the other would not have required immigration status checks on farm workers for a longer period of time.
McClatchy coverage and analysis:
Vetoing the bills tosses bones to those on the left for nixing the drug-testing bill and to those on the right for taking a tough stance on immigration, analysts say.
“These may be subtle signals to both sides of trying to take a more moderate- to middle-of-the-road course,” said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College. “But with the level of animosity that’s present now, these may not be big bones for them to chew on.”
Yup.
• And a curious statement attributed to McCrory about vetoing the bill loosening the farm-labor E-Verify requirement:
Every job an illegal immigrant takes is one less job available for a legal North Carolina citizen,” McCrory said in a statement his office released.
Except in agriculture, as ‘legal North Carolina citizens’ (is there such a thing as an illegal North Carolina citizen?) don’t seem particularly inclined to want to work in the fields harvesting vegetables in the hot sun for eight hours a day. And that’s true even in bad economic times. Now loosening the E-Verify requirement may well cut jobs available for migrant Mexican farm workers here legally on work visas but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the demographic McCrory was targeting.
• Poor McCrory poll numbers in a recent PPP poll (they often do polling for Democrats, but not in this case) prompts Renew North Carolina to release numbers from an internal poll showing McCrory doing better. WRAL-TV offers up details.
