#ncpol: Patrick Milhous McCrory
A tendency to use the government bureaucracy to snoop on and intimidate perceived opponents. An enemy’s list. Screaming fits at press aides regarding his coverage.
Campaigning as a conservative, but governing as a statist. No real ideological moorings,
That’s how a lot of people would describe the late president Richard Milhous Nixon. A lot of that could easily apply to our state’s current Republican governor.
Pat McCrory does have one advantage that I’m sure Nixon had in his time. He has his own media outlet owned and operated by campaign contributors and loyalists, ready to disseminate his reelection campaign’s opposition research. (Considering how long it takes for regular folks to get information out of state government, it is *AMAZING* how quickly Jones + Blount manage to get it.)
The latest smear attempt by state-run media involves the governor’s nascent primary challenge from former state Rep. Robert Brawley. Brawley has little name ID outside of the Charlotte area, and has little money. But like Nixon did with little-known senator George McGovern in 1972, McCrory has decided to go nuclear.
First off, the governor’s crew tried to cast Brawley — a respectable conservative during his two tours in the state House — as a crony of Jim Black. Never mind that McCrory has publicly described Jim Hunt as his “mentor” and that video exists showing McCrory giving love to Jim Black that ol’ Pat stops just short of licking the felonious former speaker’s face.
We’ve also had a smattering of CharMeck GOP loyalists going out of their way to publicly attack Brawley personally — questioning his ethics and morality.
We also appear to be overlooking the close relationship between the governor, his brother and former Charlotte mayor Patrick Cannon — who was last seen being hauled off by the FBI to federal prison on bribery-related charges.
Now, we’re apparently trying to paint Brawley as a pal of child molesters. “[…]Brawley tried to get prison time reduced for convicted child molester […]” screamed the headline on state-run media. (Our friends at The Plotthound were not much better — running with “Brawley wanted sentence reduced for child molester.)
What is really going on? Well, I read deep into state-run medias account:
[…] The emails show that Brawley tried to have the inmate, John Thomas Patterson, moved closer to the Mooresville area or have his sentence reduced. Brawley wrote the original email from his personal account and had his legislative assistant forward it to Ryan Combs, legislative liaison for the N.C. Department of Public Safety. Combs authenticated the emails Thursday. […]
“John Patterson is a friend of mine and a great teacher,” Brawley wrote in one email sent in September 2014. “Can we find a way to help him? Either moving him closer to Mooresville, where his family is or reducing his sentence?”
[…] Patterson was convicted in 2014 of first degree sexual offense with a child, a crime that carries a mandatory life sentence in North Carolina. According to Amy Dyson, a detective in the Iredell County sheriff’s office, Patterson was a fourth grade teacher who was prominent in the Mooresville community, especially at a local Presbyterian church, where he played piano and served in leadership positions. He was also convicted of 86 counts of indecent liberties with a child, each of which resulted in three-year sentences.
[…] He is serving a life sentence plus more than 250 years in a prison in Bertie County.
Wow. This Brawley character MUST be a terrible person, huh? 
Let’s find out a little more:
”[…]When Combs, the legislative liaison, informed Brawley of the severity of Patterson’s crimes and the fact that multiple victims’ families requested he be kept far from the Mooresville area, Brawley allowed that he had not considered the victims.
Saying his objective was to keep families together, Brawley wrote that “perhaps I was a bit thoughtless not to think about the possible affects [sic] on the victims [sic] family. Tommy was a friend growing up and we have mutual friends who would like to help but the victims [sic] family should receive first consideration. Again thank you and this ends my involvement.” […]
“TRIED”, huh? This sounds more like inquiring on behalf of constituents — and then stopping once he got an answer. (It’s not like harassing bureaucrats to keep your friend’s prison maintenance contract or towing contract alive.)
It’s a tried and true tactic by political pros to blitz primary opponents early on — to damage them so severely that they never prove to be competitive. That’s probably what’s going on here.
However, Team McCrory should view the Brawley challenge as the personification of the governor’s problem with his party’s base. Hitting Brawley harder than he has ever hit Bev Perdue, Jim Black, Walter Dalton or Roy Cooper is not going to help fix it.
I am sure there is a lot of “where else are they gonna go?” sentiment within the governor’s reelection campaign. (As I am sure there was in Mitt Romney and John McCain’s presidential campaigns.)
People can stay home. They can leave ballot lines blank. McCrory won a lot of Democrat support in 2012 because — in many cases — his record was to the left of Walter Dalton’s (education, for instance). McCrory has been raking in campaign dollars from Democrats, and appointing them to all kinds of state boards and commissions. He’s facing a much more conventional Democrat in Roy Cooper in 2016.
Does he really think all of his new D-buddies are going to stick with him and not run to Roy? And how bad would that defection hurt coupled with losing 10-20 percent of the GOP base vote in November over a vicious primary campaign?
“And how bad would that defection hurt coupled with losing 10-20 percent of the GOP base vote in November over a vicious primary campaign?”
Well, the good news for Pat is that he never had my vote in the first place, so he can’t lose it. I’ve never voted for him. Not in a Primary, not in a General. His kind of “Republican” is absolutely toxic to what should be a Conservative Party, and we’ll continue to have credibility problems with the electorate until we’ve purged corporate/big government puppets like him from our ranks.
If we have a convention fight or Trump gets the nomination don’t worry about it.. we’ll lose the governorship and super majority. If we allow ourselves to continue to war on each other it will be a bad 4 years. Don’t get me wrong I like Trump and am relieved someone is taking up our cause but his negatives are too high to win. If we have a convention fight someone will go away pissed and might not vote.
The establishment has been at war with conservatives for several election cycles. The worst was what they did in Mississippi in the Senate primary last year, and Richard Burr funded some of worst dishonest dirty tricks in Mississippi right out of his campaign account. Our GOP ”leaders” in DC are at war with conservative Senators and Congressmen. The establishment hates conservatives in their own party more than they do Democrats. Now we have out and out Obama Republicans like this Faison guy trying to primary conservatives to put in Solyndra Republicans.
@ Peter the establishment started this war. The establishment has done nothing they were elected to do. The establishment makes promises after promises of what they will do and in return do nothing. But, they will tell their base to go to he$$ and appease democrats every chance they get. If burr is the nomination I am voting democrat. He is no different than Kay Hagan other than show votes which mean very little.
I’ve never been a single issue voter & always held my nose & voted for RINO Pat when living in Charlotte & more recently for gov. His championing of the P3 toll road & total lack of interest in taking a closer look at the ridiculously 1-sided contract w/ Cintra & their dubious history in both the US & Spain mean that for the 1st time in >40 yrs of voting, I’ll be voting for a Dem in a statewide election. Time to hold my nose & punch the card for Cooper unless Brawley can pull off a miracle.
I would never compare a conservative like Robert Brawley to George McGovern. A better analogy to the 1972 election would be to compare Brawley to Nixon’s conservative primary challenger, Congressman John Ashbrook (R-Ohio) whose campaign symbol was the No Left Turn sign and who blasted Nixon for having ”run on George Wallace’s platform but carried out Hubert Humphrey’s”.
Brawley’s chances of actually beating McCrory in the primary are about like Ashbrook’s were of beating Nixon, which is why I wish Brawley would have run for his old State House seat again. We need principled conservatives like him in the House to stand up to liberal Tim Moore.