North State Journal for Sunday, July 10, 2016
A6
north STATEment Neal Robbins, publisher | Drew Elliot, opinion editor | Ray Nothstine, deputy opinion editor EDITORIALS | Drew Elliot
Don’t blame Roy Cooper for playing politics It is doubtful that Cooper made just one phone call to retard our economy, but it’s impossible to say how many more jobs are on his hands.
Roy Cooper doesn’t have many options in his campaign for governor. Despite holding office in Raleigh for 29 years, he is not well known outside the capital. Cleaning up the Duke lacrosse case, the one shining moment of Cooper’s career, was almost a decade ago. In a strange way, this explains why he talks about bathrooms all the time. Not because he really wants to, but because he doesn’t have much choice. Even if voters know who a politician is, beating an incumbent is still difficult. It’s even harder when there is a general feeling that things are going well. In North Carolina, gas prices are down, the economy is growing at a nationally recognized clip, unemployment is down, and the corruption that was once a constant in state politics has all but disappeared. Gov. Pat McCrory doesn’t get all the credit for each those accolades, of course. But that hardly matters in politics. A politician trying to unseat an incumbent must convince voters that it’s worth it to make a change. So in the aftermath of Charlotte’s bathroom ordinance, Cooper saw an opportunity to hurt McCrory — but it wasn’t a perfect one. Cooper needed a way to make identity-group politics relatable for the average voter, so he reached for two of the oldest levers in politics: fear and money. He needed to scare voters into believing that backlash from House Bill 2 would cost the state jobs and turn the economic clock back to the days of double-digit unemployment. Was it really Cooper who personally orchestrated all this? While at first that idea seemed far-fetched, it’s starting to look like he did. The first evidence came in May, when the Wall Street Journal revealed that Cooper had called at least one company to play up the H.B. 2 issue. That phone call, confirmed by his campaign, led to Deutsche Bank AG’s decision to halt an expansion in Cary that would have brought 250 jobs to the Triangle. Take that, my fellow North Carolinians! It is doubtful that Cooper made just the one phone call to retard our economy, but it’s impossible to say how many more jobs are on his hands. And worse, this kind of political meddling is becoming a pattern for Cooper. Recently a group of lawmakers from both parties was working together on changes to House Bill 2, the bipartisan bill that was passed in response to the Charlotte ordinance — an ordinance that was passed by Democrats over bipartisan opposition. The bipartisan group was making headway. Then Roy Cooper started working the phones again, Charlotte television station WBTV reported. Discussions ceased. “We were told Cooper was making personal phone calls to the 10 Democratic members saying if they wanted to be on the team in November they needed to vote against the bill,” a legislative source told the reporter. To maintain the fiction of the state being led down the wrong path by pigheaded, all-or-nothing Republicans, the last thing Cooper needed was fellow Democrats consorting with Republicans. The threats worked: 22 Democrats voted against a bill whose substance they had publicly supported — all in the name of politics. As petty as it sounds, that is how Cooper wanted it. First working to prevent jobs from coming to the state, then working to prevent legislators from collaborating. For Cooper the North Carolinian and the leader, it’s reprehensible behavior. But as a politician, it’s hard to blame him. He has few cards to play, so he has to make them look as good as they can look. Win the election at any cost. Damn the citizens. Full speed ahead.
visual VOICES
statements that matter “Violence cannot lead us forward.”
MADELINE GRAY | NORTH STATE JOURNAL
“In less than 72 hours, we’ve seen two lives and two souls of black men — dead, and now we’ve seen five lives and five souls of policemen — dead. We see two fathers, two sons, two brothers in the community, just trying to make it, being killed by those who are supposed to protect and serve. But we also see five officers, five public servants, five members of families, killed and shot while trying to protect and serve. ...
We’re seeing it too much. Rather than love and humanity, we’re seeing hate and inhumanity: violence and death and terrorism. And whether it’s the violence and police terror by those who misuse the badge, or the violence and terror against those who wear the badge and are doing their sworn duty, it is wrong. Violence will only beget more violence…. In this moment we must mourn for those killed and the families left behind. We must denounce violence and embrace nonviolence. Violence cannot lead us forward.” From a speech given by the Rev. William Barber, state president of the NC NAACP. Barber spoke to the media in Raleigh on Friday morning following the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and the deaths of five policemen in Dallas this week.
BE IN TOUCH Letters addressed to the editor may be sent to letters@nsjvonline.com or 819 W. Hargett St. Raleigh, N.C. 27603. Letters must be signed; include the writer’s phone number, city and state; and be no longer than 300 words. Letters may be edited for style, length or clarity when necessary. Ideas for op-eds should be sent to opinion@nsjonline.com.
EDITORIALS | Ray Nothstine
Sam Ervin, Hillary Clinton, and the rule of law Equality under the law is just an ideal, a quant notion from the past, something that an “old country lawyer” might talk about.
North Carolina’s Sam Ervin became a household name when he presided as chair of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973. Ervin, who described himself as “an old country lawyer,” marveled viewers of the hearings with pithy quotes, often from Shakespeare or the Bible. One of his enduring legacies was reminding Americans nobody was above the law. “Divine right went out with the American Revolution,” declared the former judge and senator. Ervin called the president a “servant of the Constitution and not its master.” He continually reiterated that the same laws bind those at the very top of government as every other citizen. While most Americans know that there is a different set of rules for many officials in government, perhaps it has not been so brazenly flaunted as it was with the Hillary Clinton email case this week. FBI Director James Comey essentially announced that Clinton met all the criteria for a felony in her handling of classified documents but was then let off the hook for lack of clear intent to commit a crime. Comey conceded in his press conference and in front of congressional lawmakers that the former secretary of state was “extremely careless.” The FBI director even added, “To be clear, this is not
to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.” Meaning virtually anybody else would be held to some level of accountability for his or her actions. Questions remain about thousands of emails that were probably intentionally deleted. On top of that, the secretive meeting last week of former president Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix Airport only added to the bad optics in what appears to be a clear double standard. Then a jubilant Hillary Clinton traveled with President Barack Obama to Charlotte just as she was deemed cleansed of her crimes. “If Main Street Americans did what Secretary Clinton did, they’d get a ride to prison. Instead, this week, Secretary Clinton got a ride on Air Force One,” declared Congressman Mark Meadows. While criminal charges of any sort appear unlikely now, Clinton has been further exposed as a serial liar. This is nothing new, though. She still stands a good chance of becoming the next president. Donald Trump may be even better at repelling voters than Hillary Clinton is at losing them. Still, it’s disconcerting to hear the
head of the FBI declare that Clinton may not be “sophisticated enough” to understand material as being marked classified. Many of the reasons that Clinton claims that she should be president have been eviscerated. Much of her campaign inevitably will go forward on the strength that at least she’s not Donald Trump. It might even be enough. But regardless of ideology, she serves as a powerful and visible image that Americans are not equal under the law. Equality under the law is just an ideal, a quant notion from the past, something that an “old country lawyer” might talk about. Ervin wasn’t right about everything, but he was right about justice and equality under the law. He once said, “A person who is worthy of being a leader wants power not for himself, but in order to be of service.” It almost seems surreal that as Americans we have to relearn that.