The Follies (of McCrory's crossover week)

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, May 1, 2015.

McCrory takes unannounced trip to California before crossover deadline

Last weekend as the crossover deadline in the General Assembly was approaching with scores of controversial bills up for grabs, Governor Pat McCrory took off on an unannounced trip to California for the weekend.

Nobody knew McCrory was going or at least nobody reported it anyway. The news of his trip instead came in a press release from his office Tuesday morning about McCrory’s appearance at panel with two other governors Monday about “building a 21^st century economy,” part of the Milken Institute’s 2015 Global Conference in Los Angeles.

McCrory didn’t only appear on Monday’s panel however. He was in Los Angeles on Saturday too, attending a gala called the Global Gourmet Games, an star-studded Hollywood event to raise money for medical research, where he could hobnob with celebrities like Paula Abdul and Kiss front man Gene Simmons. McCrory’s appearance was cited in a story about the event in the Los Angeles Times, an odd place for North Carolinians to learn about what their governor is doing.

No word on what else McCrory did in Los Angeles, who paid for his attendance at the fundraiser, how much the trip cost, and when he left or when he returned.

McCrory’s office doesn’t generally respond to reporters’ requests about his schedule or travel until months after being asked and no one covers the governor fulltime for any of the mainstream media outlets any more with sources that would have revealed the unusual trip with so much controversial legislation at stake in the House and Senate.

That’s not true everywhere however. The Denver Post reported last week, in a story by former News & Observer reporter John Frank, that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper was travelling to Washington and then back to Los Angeles to appear on a panel at the same conference McCrory was attending, all as the Colorado legislative session was also entering a crucial stage.

North Carolina taxpayers also deserve to know what their governor is doing and how he is spending their money and not have to wait for a carefully crafted press release to tell them.

Lawmakers give McCrory permission to do his job

Speaking of Governor McCrory, he has been celebrating the news that the agreement for the state to sell the Dorothea Dix land to the City of Raleigh for a destination park finally looks like a done deal. And while it is certainly something to celebrate, even that comes with a reminder that McCrory is not really running things in Raleigh.

Last week the Raleigh City Council approved the final details of the agreement, prompting a news release from McCrory’s press office praising the council’s predictable vote. The Council of State is expected to give final approval to the deal at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

But the deal only seems a sure thing now that a handful of Senators have given it their blessing by pulling back a bill that would put the Dix property up for sale to the highest bidder, as the three Senators believe the sale price is too low.

The senators sent out a press release recently too, announcing they were no longer pursuing the matter. That led to a telling headline in the Asheville Citizen-Times, “Ralph Hise, other senators to allow land deal.”

Nice of them to give governor of North Carolina permission.

McCrory’s sagging approval rating

And finally, the results of the latest Elon University Poll can’t be playing too well in the governor’s office. It shows that that just 37.7 percent of registered voters in North Carolina approve of the job Governor McCrory is doing while 42.9 percent of the state’s voters approve of President Obama’s performance.

Obama’s disapproval rating is higher than McCrory’s—more voters say they don’t know how McCrory is doing than are unsure about Obama—but having a lower approval rating than the president the Republicans continue to demonize can’t be very comforting to McCrory’s political advisers.

All in all, not a very good crossover week for the leader of the alleged “Carolina Comeback.”

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/05/01/the-fitzsimon-file-the-follies-of-mccrorys-crossover-week/