RGA Pours Big Money Into North Carolina For Pat McCrory; Bob McDonnell Endorses

Republican governors convene, stake claims early on NC

A group of Republican governors and party donors is currently meeting privately in Charlotte.

They are holding a policy summit on the same turf Democrats will use to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term.

The Republican governors did not allow any media access to their meetings Thursday.

When Democratic governors met in Charlotte recently, they locked out the media, too.
But the Republican presence in Charlotte is a clear signal that the city will be ground zero in a tooth-and-nail battle for voters in North Carolina.

The governors were hidden away inside the luxury resort at Ballantyne, but rising star Bob McDonnell, the governor of Virginia and a potential vice-presidential choice, surfaced Thursday afternoon.

When he toured a Coca-Cola plant, it was with Pat McCrory, who was campaigning for governor.

“I’m here today to strongly endorse Pat McCrory for governor because I believe he’ll be a marvelous partner over these next couple of years,” McDonnell said.

Political experts said the endorsement for McCrory is part of a much larger strategy by Republicans to stamp their presence in Charlotte ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

Analyst Michael Bitzer said after losing the presidential race in North Carolina in 2008, it’s “game on” for Republicans.

“They read the tea leaves and they saw what happened when Obama came in with his grassroots and they’re making the claim early on, ‘This is going to be a competitive fight. Get ready for it,’” he said.

McCrory, who even lost his home town during the 2008 swell of support behind Obama, made it clear Thursday that he will not be caught off guard again.
“The fact of the matter is, the Obama machine is going to be very, very powerful in North Carolina and I’m not going to underestimate them,” he said.

Bitzer said voters should get used to the attention from both parties.

“It’s going to be money; it’s going to be resources; it’s going to be appearances. Everything’s going to be coming into this state,” Bitzer said.

Virginia’s governor, who heads the Republican Governor’s Association, promised the party will raise and spend what it takes to help McCrory in a battleground state that will continue to have a high profile through November.


Va. governor: "McCrory's a good bet to take state's top job"

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell became the latest high-profile GOP governor Thursday to boost Pat McCrory’s gubernatorial bid, saying North Carolina is “at the very top of the list” of states where Republicans stand a good chance of taking the governor’s mansion away from Democrats.

McDonnell, who appeared alongside McCrory at a Coca-Cola plant in Charlotte, follows New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. All of them have come to North Carolina to campaign or raise money for the former Charlotte mayor.

Like the others, McDonnell is likely to be considered when presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney picks his running mate.

But unlike the others, McDonnell heads the Republican Governors’ Association, which has already spent more than $800,000 on TV ads linking McCrory’s Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, to unpopular Gov. Bev Perdue.

Surrounded by cases of Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite, McDonnell said the RGA will continue to pour dollars into the state to help McCrory. He leads Dalton in two polls released this week – by 6 percentage points in one (by Public Policy Polling) and by 9 in another (by Rasmussen).

“Whatever we need to do to help Pat win, we will do,” McDonnell told local reporters after he and McCrory got a tour of the soft drink plant. “We rank this as one of the absolute top races in the country.”

Asked how much the RGA was willing to spend in North Carolina, McDonnell answered: “I have an idea, but I can’t tell you. We believe in Pat. We will be in it for the long haul. The climate is right for us to win.”

McCrory, who lost a close race to Perdue in 2008, contrasted Virginia’s 5.6 percent unemployment – the lowest in the Southeast – with North Carolina’s jobless rate of 9.7 percent, one of the highest in the country.

“We need to change the culture of North Carolina government and make it more job-friendly,” McCrory said. “I’m convinced it’s going to take an outsider – someone from outside the (Raleigh) beltline – to fix the state government.”

He pledged to follow the example of next-door neighbor McDonnell by “unleashing the private sector” through tax cuts, a reduction in regulations and a pact with Virginia and South Carolina to develop energy resources off their coasts.

Meanwhile, an advocacy group funded by the Democratic Governors Association, whose vice chair is Perdue, is expected to start helping Dalton some with a $217,000 TV ad buy that will go after McCrory.

In other remarks Thursday, both McCrory and McDonnell acknowledged that their respective states are likely to be among the 10 or so Electoral College battlegrounds in this year’s presidential election.

As to why Thursday’s event was held at a Coke plant, here’s one possible explanation: Republican McCrory will be the honorary starter at this year’s Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The grand marshal will be West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat.

“We usually try to have one (Democrat) and one (Republican) – to balance it out,” said Allison Patient, Coca-Cola Consolidated senior director of corporate affairs.


VIRGINIA GOVERNOR AND RGA CHAIRMAN BOB MCDONNELL ENDORSES PAT MCCRORY FOR NORTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR

Today, Virginia Governor and RGA Chairman Bob McDonnell endorsed Pat McCrory and his bid to be North Carolina’s next Governor.

“I am proud to have Governor McDonnell’s endorsement,” said Pat McCrory. “There’s no better model for economic success and leadership at the state level than our neighbors to the North in Virginia. Under the Governor’s leadership, Virginia has added more than 110,000 net jobs and the unemployment rate has gone down more than 20 percent. That’s the kind of leadership I think we desperately need in North Carolina.“

“There is no gubernatorial race more important to the RGA this cycle than North Carolina,” said Governor McDonnell. “I know that with Pat McCrory’s leadership, North Carolina’s economy can get back on track. As Mayor of Charlotte, Pat saw the city add tens of thousands of jobs and as Governor, I know he will bring that same results-oriented leadership to Raleigh.”

The two leaders toured Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated’s Snyder Production Center in Charlotte before speaking with the press.

When Governor Bob McDonnell was sworn in as the 71st Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia in January 2010, he inherited $6 billion in budget shortfalls. He brought Democrats and Republicans together to close the shortfall without a single tax increase, producing a $400 million surplus in the first fiscal year of his administration.

“Governor McDonnell has proven that government can work,” added Pat McCrory. “Both parties can work together to achieve real reform, promote economic growth while still making investments in key priorities like education.”

“The choice in this election is clear,” said McDonnell. ”North Carolina can elect someone who has been a part of North Carolina’s broken government for 16 years, or they can elect Pat McCrory – a leader who will bring an outsider’s perspective to Raleigh and fix North Carolina’s broken economy.”


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GOP Plans To Use McDonnell's Winning Strategies For 2010 Sweep...It Just Might Work

GOP to Geithner: Step down. Congressional Republicans issued a blistering review of the Obama administration's economic policies Thursday and suggested Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should lose his job. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

GOP eyes McDonnell's Strategy


After four years of grappling with how to appeal to voters, a group of top Republicans believe they’ve found a winning formula for 2010. Call it the McDonnell Strategy.

The shorthand: run on economic policy, downplay divisive cultural issues, present an upbeat tone, target independent voters and focus on Democratic-controlled Washington—all without attacking President Barack Obama personally.

It’s an approach that elected Bob McDonnell to the Virginia governorship earlier this month.

While Republicans posted two hard-fought gubernatorial victories on Nov. 3, McDonnell’s path to victory is the one that most encourages the GOP, a remarkable case of a social conservative who made his name in politics as an abortion opponent yet managed to reverse a Democratic trend in Virginia and shellack his opponent by nearly 18 percent while largely steering clear of cultural issues.

As rejuvenated GOP governors gathered at a resort outside Austin for their annual strategy session there was little doubt who they wanted to spotlight. McDonnell was shown off at nearly every public event, paraded before the reporters, consultants and lobbyists here as the example of how Republicans can find swing state success in the Obama era.

New Jersey Gov.-elect Chris Christie was also offered as a reminder of the party’s twin triumphs this month, but it was McDonnell who was in demand. Swarmed by new friends, some of them with business interests in Virginia, the commonwealth’s next governor was usually the last official to leave the mix of cook-outs and plenary sessions that marked the Republican Governors Association (RGA) conference.

“McDonnell’s stock was very high already and he found a way to get it even higher,” said Nick Ayers, the RGA’s executive director.

That was in part because Ayers’ boss—and a man who is seen among the establishment Republicans here as something close to the GOP’s de facto national leader–made sure to hold up McDonnell as a model.

Mississippi Gov. and RGA Chairman Haley Barbour laid political hands on his new colleague.

“I thought McDonnell was a master in talking about the things families were talking about around the kitchen table,” Barbour told reporters. “And he never got off on personalities. He never got away from talking about the important issues and how he would address them – and that’s what winning candidates do.”

And, Barbour noted, McDonnell ran with a smile.

“Winning candidates don’t go chasing down rabbit trails and they’re not shrill and they’re not accusatory,” said the Mississippian and former Republican National Committee chairman.

With the struggling economy on the minds of voters, McDonnell focused his message on fiscal issues from the campaign’s outset, touting a bumper sticker-friendly slogan: “Bob’s for Jobs.”

When his rival, Democrat Creigh Deeds, seized upon McDonnell’s graduate school thesis—a document that appeared hostile to working women and gays—the Republican kept to his economic arguments.

In an interview, McDonnell recounted his strategy.

“I never shied away when I got attacked on pro-life—I said, ‘Yeah I’m pro-life, I’ve governed myself that way for 18 years [in the political arena] and I’m going to be a pro-life governor,” he said. “Now let’s talk about jobs and the economy. So it was more a matter of focus, not a matter at all of backtracking on things that we believed in.”

The key, McDonnell said, was locking up the Old Dominion’s many centrist voters, who tend to be fiscally right of center but wary of social extremism.

“If I did a decent job reminding the base about 18 years in the vineyards working hard for the conservative cause, they’d be with me,” he said. “But if I was going to win I had to capture a strong majority of those independent voters.”

To inoculate himself against charges that he was out of the cultural mainstream, McDonnell noted that he went up on TV with positive images portraying himself as a guy-next-door suburban Dad and military veteran.

And while he relentlessly tied his opponent to national Democratic policies on spending, energy, and organized labor, the former state legislator and state attorney general was cautious when it came to Obama, who is still personally popular among many voters.

“What I ran against was just ‘Washington’s policies,’” McDonnell explained, holding up his forefingers to make the quotation sign. “And everybody knew what that meant. I thought the president wasn’t going to be a personal target and I think that served us very well.”

While not advocating retreat from the party’s culturally conservative platform, the consensus view among the establishment Republicans here is that McDonnell’s method of not highlighting such issues as abortion and gay rights offered path to victory. Those topics were virtually ignored here.

“What most people want to know about candidates and officeholders is this: ‘Will you keep my taxes reasonable, hopefully decreasing; can you help me get my kid to a school so he or she can get a decent education?’” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.

Said McDonnell: “The message of fiscal conservatism was the heart and soul of my campaign.”

But other Republicans with less sterling credentials among the party’s Christian conservative base than McDonnell could have a more difficult time downplaying the issues that animate so many GOP activists.

Nor is it certain that other candidates will enjoy the sort of yawning disparity in energy as hungry and out-of-power Republicans did in Virginia this year.

McDonnell conceded he had better terrain to run on, describing an “enthusiasm gap [that] was 180 degrees different from last year when Republicans were on the short end.”

But he took partial credit for tamping down enthusiasm for his Democratic rival—and in doing so suggested a tactic for how his party could split the opposition in similarly purple states next year.

“We put our opponent in such a box on state issues like taxes and federal issues like [the Employee Free Choice Act] and cap-and-trade that he was kind of out carved out in no man’s land,” McDonnell boasted. “So I think we actually created to some degree the lack of enthusiasm for the other side because he was never really appealing to his base.”

The way McDonnell won, and where he did it, has boosted the spirits of many in his party, and he said that he’ll stump for Republican candidates out-of-state next year.

He downplayed any talk of national ambitions.

“I’m laser-focused on Virginia,” said McDonnell, adding: “No trips to Iowa.”



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