As I mentioned last week, North Carolina state house speaker Thom Tillis may have been caught in a macaca moment from two years ago. In an interview that aired just two months before the 2012 elections, the man trying to derail Kay Hagan’s bid for a second term in the U. S. Senate claimed that the “traditional” population of North Carolina and the nation isn’t growing that fast. Apparently Tillis’ definition of “traditional” Americans and “traditional” North Carolinians doesn’t include blacks or Hispanics.
Hagan struck fast and hard in response. Her campaign’s Facebook page includes no fewer than three posts condemning Tillis’ remarks, and on Wednesday she demanded that Tillis apologize for “classifying some North Carolinians as traditional and implying others are not.” In response, Tillis campaign spokesman Jordan Shaw claimed that his boss was merely saying that there’s a lot his party has to offer for all North Carolinians, “whether they are natives of the state or newcomers and regardless of their demographics.” Let’s review what Tillis said:
The traditional population of North Carolina and the United States?is more or less stable. It’s not growing. The African American population is roughly growing but the Hispanic population and the other immigrant populations are growing in significant numbers. We’ve got to resonate with those voters.
Uh huh. By telling them they aren’t “traditional” North Carolinians? Late Thursday, one of Rachel Maddow’s bloggers, Steve Benen, discovered that Tillis not only has a habit of offending minorities, but women as well. Benen noticed that earlier in June, state representative Susi Hamilton claimed Tillis’ staff helped kill an amendment to a budget bill that would have extended the state’s film tax credit program. In response, Tillis claimed that Hamilton’s position was “born out of emotions.” Tillis was playing to the old stereotype that women are overly emotional creatures–not exactly the best way to win them over.
Benen also noticed that Tillis blew off campaign ads from EMILY’s List attacking him as one of the field generals in the Republican war on women. Speaking for Tillis, Shaw harrumphed that any talk about a war on women is “not grounded in reality,” and that EMILY’s List was engaging in liberal “scare tactics.” But there’s one problem–the facts support the ads. During the primary campaign, Tillis agreed with the other Republican candidates that states should have the right to ban contraceptives–though he refused to say whether North Carolina should ban them. And last July, Tillis and his friends in the state legislature buried anti-abortion language in a motorcycle safety bill. And just this past week, another North Carolina Republican, Congressman Mark Meadows, pitched a fit about Obamacare’s requirement that maternity care be covered. The kindest interpretation of Tillis’ behavior is that he hasn’t had to do any heavy lifting in a campaign at any level before. In 2006, he ousted a two-term incumbent in the Republican primary for a crimson-red district north of my hometown of Charlotte. No Democrat even filed, so for all intents and purposes Tillis’ primary win handed him a seat in the legislature. He has been reelected three times, all unopposed. Indeed, Tillis’ run for Senate will be the first time he has ever faced a Democrat in a partisan election campaign. Well, if this keeps up, Tillis will learn the same hard lesson that Elizabeth Dole learned in 2008–North Carolina is not the same state that sent Jesse Helms to Washington for 32 years. Let us know what you think at the Liberal America Facebook page!
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
edited by tw
