Voter backlash to Trump, bathroom law has put conservative N.C. legislature in play.
Source: Washington Post
Voter backlash to Trump, bathroom law has put conservative N.C. legislature in play.
By Amy Gardner
September 11 at 6:00 AM
APEX, N.C. — The owner of a small vodka distillery near this traditionally Republican enclave in suburban Raleigh says he is so fed up with GOP leadership in the state capital that he took leave from his job to try to defeat a state senator.
A popular local weatherman in the state’s Appalachian Mountains with no experience in politics threw himself into a race to unseat a four-term GOP member of the state House.
And the daughter of a legendary former governor is taking her first crack at a run for office by challenging a Charlotte-area state House Republican with a promise to renew the legacy of her father, Jim Hunt, as a champion for education funding.
An unusual political battle is raging across North Carolina, where national and state Democrats have recruited an army of candidates and are pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to loosen a years-long Republican grip on a state legislature that has turned an otherwise evenly split state into a bastion for some of the country’s most conservative laws. Among them: a limit on transgender access to bathrooms that was ultimately repealed under pressure from business leaders, congressional district maps that courts have ruled were designed to curtail the voting power of African Americans and education spending levels that have sparked mass protests at the state Capitol.
“North Carolina has been a beacon in the South, and I had to try and stop this Republican leadership from tarnishing our brand,” said the leader of the campaign, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has seen the GOP’s legislative supermajority override his vetoes 20 times since he narrowly ousted a Republican incumbent two years ago.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/voter-backlash-to-trump-bathroom-law-have-put-conservative-nc-legislature-in-play/2018/09/10/346e3190-b1f5-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html
