Taco Tuesday was oddly slow, but Elizabeth Turnbull wasn’t worried. If roasted pork on homemade tortillas failed to lure diners on this pollen-dusted spring evening, the 42-year-old restaurant owner could count on private parties. Three companies had booked her space for next week.
Firms and universities around North Carolina’s Research Triangle buoyed her Cuban eatery when tables otherwise sat empty. With a new Google office in town and Apple projected to expand nearby, she expected group orders for crispy octopus to only grow — as long as politics didn’t get in the way.
Turnbull, a registered Independent, was alarmed when candidates she viewed as bad for business, all MAGA devotees prone to trumpeting conspiracy theories, recently clinched the Republican nominations for crucial state offices. There was Dan Bishop for attorney general, who’d echoed false claims the 2020 election was stolen. There was Michele Morrow for the top education seat, who’d commented “Death to ALL traitors!!” under an illustration of former president Barack Obama in an electric chair. And there was Mark Robinson for governor, who’d declared that transgender women should be arrested if they enter the ladies’ restroom.
As far-right contenders dominate the GOP ticket in a state known for its flourishing economy, the business community is bracing for potential fallout — the kind that stung North Carolina eight years ago when industry rebelled against America’s first “bathroom bill.” That decree, which restricted public restroom use by “biological sex,” crumbled just 12 months later after PayPal, CoStar, Deutsche Bank and Adidas all scrapped projects. Bruce Springsteen and other artists canceled shows. The NBA and the NCAA shuttled games and tournaments elsewhere.
The law’s defenders blamed Democrats for whipping up a national controversy that spooked investment. Backlash to HB2 cost the state almost $4 billion, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said at the time, citing an analysis by the Associated Press that measured the impact’s 12-year tail.
Today, however, Republicans dismiss concerns about a repeat . . . . Yet the demand to embrace inclusivity has swelled, too. The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce rebuked “partisan ideologues that cause division and create controversy” in an unusually biting statement last month, saying the March primary results offer a “startling warning of the looming threats to North Carolina’s business climate.” Officials there did not put a dollar amount on projected losses.
Rhetoric widely condemned as discriminatory could remind executives of the HB2 chaos and chill recruitment efforts, said Michael Walden, an economist at N.C. State University, who tracked the damage in 2016.
“You lose jobs,” he said. “You lose construction activity. You lose an additional tax base. You lose some prestige.”
Centrism, beloved in boardrooms, is eroding across the country but hanging by a thread in Raleigh, where the Democratic governor adds fragile balance to a Republican legislative supermajority. High-income workers flocking to urban centers have pushed the state left, though not enough to flip power regularly. The November elections could unleash a consequential reset as lawmakers tackle abortion access, education curriculum and LGBTQ rights. Social policy could hold steady, strategists predict, or veer sharply right.
And that, Turnbull thought, could determine if her business blossoms or tanks.
Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in a tight race, had especially freaked her out. He’d climbed from laboring in a furniture factory to serving as the current lieutenant governor, and she could see why people respected that. But why did he have to quote Adolf Hitler on Facebook and refer to homosexuality as “filth?”
Then at one February campaign stop, Robinson charged back into the bathroom fight, asserting he aimed to protect women. . . . Robinson’s team argues he’d nourish the economy by cutting taxes, slashing onerous regulations and curbing unnecessary spending, offsetting any upset from his positions on LGBTQ issues. . . . . “There are certainly cases where they’ve said stuff in the past that is problematic or is easy to take out of context or was done in frustration,” Woodhouse said. “But they’re serious people with serious proposals.”
Turnbull disagreed. Scanning the candlelit bar of COPA, the restaurant she started with her husband in 2018, she mulled what they stood to lose. Like, perhaps, the guy sipping red wine at her quartz counter and typing on a MacBook, who she’d never seen before.
Was he here for a conference, the kind that might again get canceled if transgender people could get arrested for their restroom choice? Or maybe he was one of Google’s fresh hires, who probably had the budget to splurge on three tacos for $15.
The core of COPA’s clientele was “highly educated professionals,” she said, the bracket of spenders Apple was supposed to draw here by the thousands over the next two years. That deal was well underway before Robinson announced his candidacy. But if he won and started signing laws Big Tech detested …
Turnbull recalled then-Gov. Pat McCrory (R) applauding PayPal’s decision to hire 400 workers in Charlotte — only to doom that 2016 plan weeks later by enacting the restroom restrictions.
“There’s a real, tangible ripple effect,” Turnbull said. “We lose our ability to recruit companies and people with the income to eat here.”
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