Category: Pat McCrory

This meeting is adjourned

You be the judge. Was Mayor Pat McCrory unnecessarily curt, or avoiding a politically sticky situation or just being time-efficient after a long meeting Monday night, when a delegation from the gay/lesbian alliance appeared before Charlotte City Council?

Here’s the background: The council’s 5 p.m. dinner meeting was to be followed by a Citizens Forum, a regular event where the council hears from the public but doesn’t take action or engage in much discussion, though upon occasion a council member will ask questions or make comments. Only one speaker had signed up, a man from Durham.

He turned out to be Joshua Lee Weaver, accompanied by a dozen or so local folks from Charlotte’s gay and lesbian community. He sought the council’s approval of “A Resolution in Support of Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples.” (He must have had Charlotte confused with Chapel Hill or something.) With his allotted 4 minutes at the microphone, he asked for their support and read the resolution.

When Weaver finished, Mayor McCrory said quickly: “Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned.” And council members began packing up. Weaver said something like, “Well, I was hoping for some feedback.” McCrory said he appreciated him being here, but didn’t comment on the substance of the proposal.

Afterward, Weaver said two municipalities had passed the resolution already – Chapel Hill and Carrboro – and Durham was considering it. He said other cities would be asked to pass it but wasn’t sure which he’d approach next.

Observer reporter Julia Oliver asked McCrory after the meeting if he’d put the resolution on the agenda and McCrory said he wouldn’t.

To be fair, McCrory and several council members afterward did go speak to Weaver afterward, and to some in the group accompanying him. I noticed Susan Burgess and Anthony Foxx, and there may have been others. Council member Andy Dulin sent a letter to the Observer today saying he doesn’t support civil unions – “One man, one woman is what I believe” – and noting that none of the seven Democrats at the table said a word to Weaver. He’s right. Of course, the mayor closed the meeting before anyone had time to say a peep.

McCrory’s next project?

I hate to interrupt the great comment thread going on at “Developers bend city official’s ear” but here goes:

Hizzoner Pat McCrory stopped by the paper today to talk about what he plans to do with his remaining eight months in office. Headlines: Economic development [recruit more companies to bring more jobs], city spending [try to cut what needs to be cut in the city budget], public safety [he’s against crime and supports the police chief]. Motherhood and apple pie were probably on the list too.

But near the end of the conversation he talked about having recently gone to Atlanta for an event sponsored by Georgia Tech, to look at mega-regions. There’s a lot of theorizing going on among people who study city and metro region growth that county and state lines are all but irrelevant if you look at how economies work. It’s essentially the “Citistates” theory of folks such as Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson. Now folks are talking about mega-regions. One mega-region, dubbed “CharLanta,” is the urbanized crescent running from Atlanta through Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., Charlotte, the N.C. Triad and on to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area.

McCrory said he and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agreed to try to get a project going, possibly with Georgia Tech and UNC Charlotte, to look at “the bigger picture vision thing.”

Now I’ve not always agreed with McCrory, but in transportation, he’s usually on target or pretty darn close, in terms of what’s needed. And he’s right about the need to look long-term and big picture.

One major need in the CharLanta corridor: Better passenger rail service. A significant attribute that sets apart the DC-to-Boston corridor is its clearly superior rail service. The whole Southeast region ought to get together and make the world’s best pitch, to anyone in D.C. who will listen, that it’s our turn for some of those rail dollars. After all, North Carolina got shafted in the federal transit-stimulus-divvying formula.

I don’t know how McCrory plans to spend his time post-mayorship, but working to put a mega-region coalition together might well be a project in need of a champion.

Foxx reels in big-name backers


At-large City Council member Anthony Foxx announced today he’s running for mayor next year regardless of whether incumbent Mayor Pat McCrory wins the governor’s race.

Foxx, a Democrat, told me he’s rounded up enough early support to go for it. Among those supporters, he said — and I was prying, he wasn’t just tossing out these names — are retired Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. and local Democratic Party bigwig Cammie Harris. McColl usually — but not always — backs Democrats.

Foxx told me he had decided just within the past few weeks, although he’s been thinking about running for months. But he sent letters to supporters or potential supporters late last week. “I would defind that as the point of no return.”

He’ll probably face impressive opposition, likely Republican council member John Lassiter (if McCrory is ensconced in Raleigh) and possibly Democratic state Sen. Malcolm Graham, who’s also been thinking about running for mayor for some time. Both are generally well-regarded and, in my experience, do a good job as elected officials, as does Foxx.

“Why now?” I asked Foxx. He gave a thoughtful and even visionary answer, which in a politician is refreshing. (Note: Lassiter and Graham could probably do the same. Many elected officials can’t.) Part of it was a discussion of the current problems the city faces and how many of them are, in fact, regional problems: The economy. Transportation. The environment.

“When I ask people where the city’s going, it’s a microcosm of the country,” he said. “People don’t know where we’re going.”

Foxx grew up in Charlotte, went to Davidson and NYU law school. He’s been on the council since 2005.