N.C. Republican Candidate Claims She's Being Persecuted by 'LGBTQ Mafia'

North Carolina GOP Congressional candidate Kay Daly claimed that she’s being targeted by LGBT rights activists in a recent message posted to her Facebook account.

Referring to equality groups as the “P.C. GAYSTAPO” and the “LGBTQ Mafia,” Daly wrote, “The homosexual extremists and their lavender lobby are coming after me again.” The Republican hopeful, who is currently running in the state primary race for a seat in the Senate, further alleged that LGBT groups are “outraged that I proudly support the North Carolina law that says grown men can’t use the girls’ restrooms in government facilities.” Daly, however, offers no proof to substantiate her claims.

The post links to a fundraising email in which Daly further argues that transgender people are “perverts and deviants.” She said, “It is God who selects your gender, not you.”

The candidate’s correspondence took particular aim at the Charlotte City Council, which voted in February to extend the city’s existing nondiscrimination protections to its trans residents. That 5-4 decision was overturned by statewide legislative action in March, when Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law House Bill 2. The law struck down local ordinances across the state that offered equal access in public accommodations, including city parks, restaurants, and restrooms.

Daly claimed that the Charlotte ordinance would have allowed transgender people “to choose which bathrooms and locker rooms they want to use based on their own fancies, rather than on their genitalia.” She further called it “complete poppycock” and an “absurd” law “passed by an extremely liberal city council.”

In the email, Daly argued that few Republicans “will stand up to the Left on these issues.” The candidate, who vocally supports Sen. Ted Cruz on her Facebook page, believes that this includes GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and North Carolina Gov. McCrory.

“A few days ago Donald Trump himself threw in the towel on the issue,” Daly wrote. “North Carolina’s own Republican governor has cravenly cowered from the storm by issuing an Executive Order that gives special employment rights to homosexuals and transgenderrhoids.” The Republican is referring to an alleged alteration to HB 2 announced on April 12. The supposed changes to the law do little to fix the provisions LGBT advocates found most objectionable, as The Advocate previously reported.

This isn’t the first time that Kay Daly has made headlines. In a 2015 campaign ad, Daly literally took aim at Renee Ellmers, the Republican incumbent whose Senate seat Kay soon hopes to occupy. The commercial claims that Ellmers, who has served in Congress since 2010, is a “feminist” who “voted to let homosexuals pretend they’re married,” “to fund planned butcherhood,” and “to let convicted illegal alien child molesters stay in America.”

The commercial additionally says that Ellmers is a “RINO,” a popular abbreviation for “Republican in Name Only.” At the end of the television spot, Daly appears with a rifle in her hand. “I'm hunting RINOs,” she says. “Care to join me?"

In a separate email sent to supporters, Daly further described her opponent as a “fiscal child abuser,” claiming that Ellmers and Congressional Republicans “are hopelessly addicted to the crack of spending other people’s money.” She continued, “It’s an entirely new kind of slavery: the kind where you force children to work to pay off money you spent before they were even born.”

Daly, who has been described as “the next Phyllis Schlafly,” is the founder of Coalition for a Fair Judiciary. Right Wing Watch describes the organization dedicated to “confirming the nominations of conservative, ‘constitutionalist’ judges, and to combat ‘judicial activism.’” Originally known as “Americans for Ashcroft,” the group was formed in 2001 to support the appointment of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court, beginning with John Ashcroft.

In a recent endorsement posted to Facebook, James Dobson, founder of the right-wing anti-LGBT group Focus on the Family, described Daly as a “faithful warrior in the fight for the traditional values and religious liberties.” “Kay is one of us,” he said. “She has proven it over and over in word and deed, often when others with less courage have sounded the retreat.”

North Carolina’s Congressional primary vote will take place on June 7.