Photo: Jordan Green for The Telegram
By Jordan Green, For The Raleigh Telegram
JAMESTOWN, NC – Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory is expected to make his run as a Republican candidate for North Carolina Governor official later today. McCrory has served as mayor of Charlotte for 14 years, the longest serving mayor in the city.
Many voters know McCrory due to his run for governor in 2008 against Democrat Bev Perdue. But who is Pat McCrory? Where is he from and where does he stand on the issues?
Pat McCrory graduated from Ragsdale High School in Jamestown, and his family attended the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro. During a speech last year at a dinner honoring the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, he joked that as a teenager he couldn’t visit Daddy-
Speaking with his elderly friends from Jamestown at the same dinner, McCrory lamented that his parents’ home had fallen into disrepair since their death. The eccentric woman who purchased the house from his parents had taken to wearing his mother’s clothes, McCrory said, and now vandals had stripped the place’s copper gutters.
“It’s very sentimental for me, especially seeing several couples here who were very close to my parents,” he said in an interview at the time.
“It’s very difficult to go by my old home. It has great memories. I mean, I’m home right here. I grew up a mile and a half from where we’re standing when a lot of this was dirt fields off of High Point Road. I will consider the Jamestown-
Republican leaders in North Carolina know their party will have a battle on their hands in this year’s presidential election year with the Democratic National Convention coming to Charlotte. The event will likely pump up enthusiasm for Democratic voters in the state.
But the Democrat’s choice of selecting Charlotte also gives McCrory a strong card to play if he is selected as his party’s choice to run as governor.
“There’s two things they won’t tell the national audience,” McCrory said last year. “One is that this city actually had a Republican mayor for the last 14 years. They’ll keep quiet about that because they’ve only had a Democratic mayor now for the past [two years]. And the second thing the president won’t tell you is they’re in a right-
McCrory has pushed for a conservative fiscal policy in North Carolina and has opposed Democratic Governor Bev Perdue’s recent proposal for a 3/4ths cent sales tax increase to support educational efforts. McCrory has also supported North Carolina legislation seeking to exempt the state from the federal healthcare reform pushed through by the Obama administration.
McCrory has also denounced Governor Perdue’s veto of a bill that would have reduced economic development funds to help pay teachers. The former Charlotte mayor has also championed two Republican causes: Lifting the cap on charter schools and requiring voters to produce ID.
As a public speaker, McCrory can be poignant.
While cleaning out the Charlotte mayor’s office in 2009, McCrory said one of the last things he boxed up was a photograph of his father.
His father had been fighting cancer when McCrory was first elected mayor in 1995, but came down to Charlotte against doctor’s orders. McCrory said he had been out late celebrating his victory, and received a phone call from his father the next morning at 7 o’clock saying that he wanted to see the mayor’s office. McCrory and his siblings went to pick their father up. The mayor-
“And that picture remained my entire 14 years behind my chair,” McCrory told the audience last year at the Reagan dinner in Greensboro. “I looked at it every single day because he always said, ‘Make me proud. Make me proud and don’t do anything stupid while you’re here either.’ And my dad died a week after I was elected mayor.”
McCrory can also be funny, a trait not shared by all politicians.
At the dinner last year, he told a story about attending a speech by President George W. Bush years ago when a Secret Service agent quietly instructed McCrory to go backstage. The Secret Service has mistook McCrory for US Senator Richard Burr, who needed to catch a ride back to the airport with President Bush. McCrory played along so that he would be able to enjoy the experience of riding in a limousine with Bush.
McCrory said the limousine took them out on the runway. Bush embarked on Air Force One. Burr hopped in another car to go to the terminal to catch a commercial flight. And McCrory found himself standing alone on the runway.
“The reason I’m telling you this story is that in 2008 myself and many other candidates felt stranded after election night,” McCrory said at the Reagan dinner last year.
In 2008, McCrory lost in a close election for governor to Democrat Beverly Perdue, with a popular Barack Obama becoming the first Democrat candidate for President to win the state’s electoral votes in decades.
“It was a very, very difficult time for all of us who fought hard. And many of you worked so hard for me. And I will always appreciate it the rest of my life. The pundits after that night, as we were all stranded out in the middle of the runway… were saying, ‘The Republican Party is dead. They will never come back. This state will always be Democratic and this nation will always be Democratic. And God help the Republican Party.’”
With Republicans taking control of the state legislature in North Carolina in 2010 elections for the first time in over 100 years, GOP supporters have taken heart after being defeated by the Democrats in 2008, said McCrory at his speech in Greensboro last year.
“Well, two years later, guess what we get. We brushed off our pants,” added McCrory. “We swallowed our pride, like I had to do when walking back from Air Force One, held my head up like that’s the way it’s supposed to work. And we got to work.” ::
EDITOR’S NOTE: Portions of this article appeared last year in the Raleigh Telegram including the interview with McCrory as part of the coverage of Pat McCrory’s speech at the Ronald Reagan 100th birthday dinner in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Article Posted: January 31st, 2012.
