Fitzsimon File

The battle between Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory to be North Carolina's next governor is starting to seem very familiar. Perdue is part of the ruling Democratic Party establishment in Raleigh and will get credit and blame for what Democrats have done in the last 8 years whether she deserves it or not.

Perdue can point to investments in public schools, higher education, and economic development, as well as the expansion of children's health care and early childhood programs, a hike in the state minimum wage, and a state budget picture more stable than most.

But Democrats have also been plagued by scandal at the state level, the former Speaker of the House is in federal prison and a Democratic House member is behind bars after being expelled from the General Assembly earlier this year. 

The state's mental health system has been a disaster. The cozy relationship between Senate Democrats and business lobbyists has stopped a lot of progressive legislation and poisons debates about tax fairness.  The Senate, where Perdue rose to power, is still tightly controlled by a handful of leaders and the budget is still put together largely in secret. Free and open debate is rare.

None of that is necessarily Perdue's fault, just like she can't claim credit for the all the good decisions made by the General Assembly and the Easley Administration.

McCrory is trying to run like Republican challengers always run, as an outsider,  attacking what he calls "the culture of corruption in Raleigh," and stoking fears about crime and  immigration, and complaining about waste in state government.

That's not a surprise. One of McCrory's key advisers is Jack Hawke, former head of the State Republican Party and more recently the Director of the Pope Civitas Institute, a polling and propaganda arm of the Right.  One of Perdue's consultants is Mac McCorkle who helped Easley handily win two gubernatorial elections.

The formula boils down to basics. The Democrats want the election to be about health care, education and economic development. The Republicans want to talk about taxes, government waste and whatever current hot button issue energizes their base. This year it's immigration instead of gay marriage or abortion.

But as much as Hawke wants McCrory to play that traditional role, there's a problem in one area that is always central to rhetoric of the Right, the anti-tax fervor that may defy logic and common sense, but plays well in some parts of the state, especially when it is not directly confronted.

McCrory has played his anti-tax role often in recent months, appearing a rally at the legislative building in June sponsored by the right-wing organization Americans for Prosperity. The group touted McCrory's appearance by announcing that he had signed a pledge to support the misnamed Taxpayer Protection Act, a constitutional amendment that hamstrings state government by putting arbitrary spending limits on the state budget based on a flawed growth formula.

McCrory has also signed a no-new-taxes pledge according to Americans for Tax Reform, a group headed by anti-government zealot Grover Norquist.  Both pledges are absurd, but standard fare for most Republican candidates these days.

But McCrory supported an increase in the local sales tax in Charlotte 10 years ago to pay for a light rail system and opposed efforts by the market fundamentalists last November to repeal the tax increase.

McCrory said in a recent interview that he would support giving the state's other urban areas the right to raise a local tax to pay for mass transit. Norquist and anti-tax crusaders in North Carolina like Americans for Prosperity have blasted Democrats who supported local option tax hikes after signing the silly pledge for breaking their word.

Maybe Norquist and his North Carolina propaganda partners haven't noticed the inconsistency on McCrory's part or maybe they have and aren't inclined to mention it.

It would upset the campaign formula after all.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.