Republican lawmakers and strategists in the state say the GOP is badly losing the public relations battle. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has staunchly defended the law. | AP Photo 2016 North Carolina Republicans brace for 'bathroom law' blowback GOP strategists say their party is defined by the controversial law and it will cost them in November.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republicans in North Carolina are increasingly worried that the state’s new “bathroom law” blocking protections for the LGBT community will cost the GOP dearly in November’s elections.

They say the reason is simple: The party that took over North Carolina as champions of small government is now seen by moderate voters as the party of the bathroom police.


Republican lawmakers and strategists in the state say the GOP is badly losing the public relations battle over House Bill 2, the law banning local nondiscrimination ordinances, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in March. That trend only worsened Monday, when U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the law “state-sponsored discrimination” and compared it to Jim Crow-era laws while announcing new legal action.

The GOP argument that the law is about public safety has been overrun by a coalition including some of America’s biggest businesses, which says HB2 discriminates against transgender people by, among other things, forcing them to use bathrooms that may not correspond to their gender identities — and the law has come to define the Republican Party in North Carolina.

“The reality is that HB2 hurts,” said state Rep. Charles Jeter, the GOP lawmaker responsible for maintaining his party’s majority in the state legislature. “It doesn’t matter that I’m opposed to it or that I’ve called for its repeal … because the mailer to voters [in my race] is going to say that I was a part of the Republican majority that passed the most discriminatory bill in the state. HB2 is going to have reverberations for our party no matter what we do, in November and probably beyond that.”

Another top Republican strategist in the state said the GOP’s recent run of success in North Carolina may have pushed the party too far.

“The question that will be answered in November is whether the Republicans in the General Assembly overplayed their hand, after feeling empowered by impressive gains in the last three election cycles,” the strategist said. “Republicans could lose their veto-proof majority in one or both [legislative] chambers, with a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the governor’s race.”

Another Republican legislator likened the blowback over the law to the furious public response to the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which helped the GOP make major gains in North Carolina.

“It’s like Obamacare with Obama, which so defined everything about Democrats who were in office when it passed in 2009. And you saw what happened to them in 2010,” said a Republican legislator from an urban district. “I think you always have concerns if perception boils down to one thing equaling another.”

McCrory has staunchly defended the law, especially after the Department of Justice told the state last week that it was in violation of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX, jeopardizing billions of dollars in federal funding. North Carolina and the Obama administration are suing each other over the law and the federal government’s response to it.

“It’s the federal government being a bully,” McCrory said on “Fox News Sunday.”

But McCrory, who faces a difficult reelection race against Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, has also taken some steps to distance himself from HB2. McCrory issued an executive order last month that extended anti-discrimination protections for state workers to include sexual orientation and gender identity, though it left the primary provisions of HB2 intact.

“The governor has made clear that there are aspects of HB2 that, you know, he didn’t ask for that were put together,” said Chris LaCivita, the governor’s campaign consultant. “He’s done, up to this point, what he can do on some of those issues.”

McCrory has not previously been known as a social issues warrior; in fact, he had previously opposed a religious-freedom bill and vetoed a bill that allowed judges to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. LaCivita noted that the Republican legislature, not McCrory, had called the special session to pass the new bill.

“It was not the governor,” LaCivita said. “So if [Jeter] has any concerns about that, he should take that up with his speaker.”

Yet that hasn’t lessened the heat McCrory feels as he runs for a second term.

“Had [McCrory] been a strong leader, he still could’ve fixed this,” Cooper said. “He could’ve vetoed the legislation and said it was too broad and it would hurt our economy, like Gov. Nathan Deal did in Georgia, but he chose not to.”

The Democratic Governors Association started airing TV ads last month targeting McCrory and Republicans for “taking North Carolina backwards,” highlighting economic fallout as companies like PayPal have backtracked on planned expansion in North Carolina since McCrory signed the law.

“The reality is that HB2 hurts,” said state Rep. Charles Jeter, the GOP lawmaker responsible for maintaining his party’s majority in the state legislature. | AP Photo

“The perception in politics is that the Republicans did this,” said Jeter, who represents a district just west of Charlotte, noting that 11 House Democrats also voted for it. “I disagree with that perception, but guess what? I’ve got as much a chance of changing that perception as I do convincing my 15-year-old daughter that I know what the hell I’m talking about. You know, you deal with the political realities you’re dealt.”

National Republicans are trying to steer the governor’s race back onto friendlier turf. The Republican Governors Association has also hit the airwaves early in North Carolina, with a TV ad branding Cooper as a politician who voters literally can’t afford to elect.

“30-year career politician Roy Cooper’s increased taxes on just about everything,” the narrator says in the RGA ad. “Fill up your car? Higher gas taxes. Work hard? Higher income taxes. Shop for your family? Higher sales taxes. Career politician Roy Cooper: higher taxes on families.”

“The left loves bathrooms because it enables them to avoid talking about [McCrory’s] economic success story,” LaCivita said.

But other North Carolina Republicans have been eager to keep the conversation on HB2 going because it is popular in rural areas of the state, which have become GOP bastions as the Democratic Party has shifted into the growing cities and melting-pot suburbs.

“You’re talking about probably a 90 percent favorability in my district, so you really have this rural-urban divide on this issue,” said state Rep. Mike Hager, who represents a rural western North Carolina district. “I think it’s going to help [down-ballot] because it drives out the grass roots.”

Dallas Woodhouse, the state Republican Party’s executive director, was even more bullish, noting that he has “no down-ballot concerns about anything in North Carolina.”

“I would much rather be in the position of the Republican Party that are standing up for the safety and security of young children, for young teenage girls to not have grown men who could abuse this law to go into their locker rooms,” Woodhouse said. “If [Democrats] want to be on the other side of that, that’s a politically perilous place to be.”

Cooper, for his part, has never been known as a social-issues progressive. The longtime state attorney general has been in elected office for decades and got his start as an old-school Southern Democrat. But he has embraced the fight over HB2.

“When I saw [HB2], I could not believe they were going to pass that legislation,” Cooper said. “I spoke out immediately and said discrimination was wrong, period. We should not write discrimination into our law and it was going to hurt our economy, but they passed it anyway and the governor signed it that night, and that has come true.”

