The Struggle to Turn North Carolina Blue

Living in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, one cannot escape North Carolina news because (i) some of the newer "bedroom communities" for the area are located just across the Virginia/North Carolina border and (ii) local news coverage includes northeast North Carolina.  As a result, it is easy to watch a struggle going on in North Carolina that mirrors Virginia: modern, progressive, urban parts of the state are trying to out vote the rural areas that embrace religious extremism, the GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda and which view outsiders and modernity with a mindset not so far removed from that on display in the old movie "Deliverance."  For progressives, it's hard dealing with the batshitery that such backward areas support.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the ongoing struggle.  Here are excerpts (note the elderly voter who bemoans what has become of the GOP):

Charlotte, the largest city, the “research triangle” cities (and college towns) of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and cities like Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Asheville are turning more blue than red, partly from an infusion of new workers in finance, health care, technology and education. But the state as a whole is more of a tossup.

Last year, Republicans took control of the governor’s mansion and increased their majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, giving them total control of state government in Raleigh for the first time in over a century. The new governor, Pat McCrory, thought to be a moderate when he was Charlotte’s mayor, helped lead a sharp turn to the right. He signed laws that slashed unemployment benefits; opted out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion; toughened voting requirements; made it harder for abortion clinics to operate; and repealed a law that allowed death row inmates to have their sentences converted to life in prison without parole if they could prove racial bias in their cases.

The resulting backlash — a series of weekly sit-in protests known as “Moral Mondays” — has given pause even to Republicans such as Sally Dalton Robinson, whose family has been central to the life of Charlotte and the state. Her husband, Russell, was a founder of one of the state’s largest law firms; his grandfather was the principal author of the state’s 1868 Constitution.

“Russ and I see so much the same way,” said Mrs. Robinson, who is 80. “Our whole voting lives, we’ve been registered Republicans, and we don’t intend to change.” Her husband’s great-grandfather came over to Goldsboro, N.C., from Ireland before the Civil War and was a Republican when that meant opposing secession and slavery, supporting President Abraham Lincoln, and being at dangerous odds with their neighbors, who were overwhelmingly white Democrats.

“What we feel is that the Republican Party we have voted for and supported most of our married life has really gone off and left us — that’s sad to us,” Mrs. Robinson said. “A lot of that — not all — is social issues. I’m very opposed to what Republicans in this state have done in terms of abortion, making it harder. I’m opposed to putting into the Constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman. I think it’s very detrimental that we’ve cut back on the days that we have for early voting.

She added: “I grew up in a city that was very segregated, and I did not question that as a child. When I would get on the bus as an 8-year-old to go to town, the African-Americans were seated at the back and I was seated at the front. I didn’t question it. It’s hard for me to take that in about myself, but it’s true.”

North Carolina, like Sally Dalton Robinson, has changed. Still, in 2014, it’s a state that is still weighing what it wants to be now and will be in the future. This midterm election could give us, and the rest of the nation, a clue.