McCrory's problem is real, not a media hit job
Published November 5, 2015
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, November 5, 2015.
That whirling sound you can hear all over Raleigh and even as far away as Charlotte? It's Gov. Pat McCrory's spin machine, running full tilt.
Stories in The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer, about the governor intervening to save a lucrative contract for a big contributor, were exaggerations, McCrory said, finding fault with "distorted" headlines.
That's become a McCrory fallback position: When confronted with a damaging story, blame the media.
The trouble with this one is, the media are repeating what members of the governor's own cabinet have reported.
McCrory did set up a meeting, which he attended, between friend and donor Graeme Keith Sr. and state prison officials, including Secretary of Public Safety Frank Perry. Keith's company had a contract to do maintenance at some state prisons. Prison system leaders wanted to cancel the deal, citing security concerns.
A prison department memo said Keith opened the meeting saying "he had been working on this project 'private prison maintenance' for over 10 years and during that time had given a lot of money to candidates running for public office and it was now time for him to get something in return."
Perry, a retired FBI official, says the memo is accurate and Keith made similar comments to him on other occasions. McCrory says that although he was at the meeting, he never heard Keith say it.
And one more problem for the governor: The FBI is investigating the circumstances surrounding efforts to extend Keith's maintenance contract.
In a text, Perry protested the deal and called it a "very bad decision," adding that, "Sorry, but this will soil our Gov."
It is doing just that. McCrory needs to embrace the classic advice that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. He needs to acknowledge that this doesn't look good, even if he's clean and above reproach. At the very least, this incident will confirm a lot of fears that the ages-old state government pay-to-play culture is still thriving.
Since he's a participant in this story, Perry's State Bureau of Investigation isn't a good candidate to probe the incident, nor is Attorney General Roy Cooper, who's running for McCrory's job.
That leaves it to the feds - the FBI for now and the U.S. Attorney's office if the FBI finds conflicts, or worse. A thorough investigation is essential. And so is full public disclosure of what it finds. This is no spinning matter.
November 5, 2015 at 11:17 am
bruce stanley says:
When government functions go from being privatized to run by the government, the cost goes up to taxpayers and performance does down (i.e compare USPS with UPS or Fed Ex).
