While a number of Republican establishment figures can’t seem to get far enough away from Donald Trump, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory is a notable exception. On Wednesday, McCrory announced that Trump will have his full support if he wins the Republican nomination.
McCrory’s deputy campaign manager, Ricky Diaz, told The Winston-Salem Journal that his boss “will support the party’s nominee”–even if it’s Trump. Diaz added that McCrory is not willing to endorse anyone in the March 15 primary, but believes “the process should work on its own.”
The governor himself reiterated this in an interview with Time Warner Cable News on Wednesday night.
This is simply breathtaking, considering that it came just over 72 hours after Trump declared that “it would be very unfair” to denounce racist knuckledragger groups who were supporting him when he didn’t know enough about them.
What is equally breathtaking is that McCrory is willing to even consider backing Trump even in the face of Trump’s outrageous behavior on the campaign trail. Apparently McCrory has no problem backing a man who plasters someone’s private cell phone number on social media, mocks disabled people when he almost certainly knows they are disabled, and tacitly encourages outright thuggish behavior from his supporters. Any ONE of these incidents should have gotten him drummed out of the race long ago. But apparently McCrory is perfectly fine with it, if he’s willing to even consider backing Trump as the nominee at this point in the campaign.
I suspect that McCrory was speaking as the nominal leader of the North Carolina Republican Party. In most years, it would be understandable for a Republican governor to take a publicly neutral stance in a primary. He forgot, though, that he is the governor of ALL North Carolinians, not just Republicans. By hinting that he is willing to back Trump, he is effectively telling the people of North Carolina that he is perfectly fine with having someone running for president who has proven time and again that he is morally unfit for office.
I’m very familiar with McCrory, since he was mayor of my hometown, Charlotte, from 1995 to 2009. He portrayed himself as a moderate. However, that mask has long since fallen off. Indeed, back in 2013, Nate Silver concluded that based on McCrory’s issue statements and the identities of his donors, he was actually to the right of Sam Brownback, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Jan Brewer, and Nikki Haley. Now that takes some effort. But I thought that he still had some standards. Apparently he doesn’t, if he’s even thinking about backing Trump.
Fortunately, North Carolinians have a chance to make McCrory pay the ultimate price for even thinking about supporting Trump. McCrory is up for reelection this November, and Democratic state attorney general Roy Cooper is running against him. Join me in sending Cooper some love, even if you aren’t from North Carolina. We deserve a governor who is going to speak for all of North Carolina, not just the narrow interests of his party.
