Happy Tuesday, everybody! Let’s just jump right in.
1. Pat is down, and HB2 ain’t doing so hot, either. That’s according to a poll released this week by a new firm called RABA (stands for Red America, Blue America) Research. It shows that half of registered N.C. voters disapprove of HB 2; and that Gov. McCrory is trailing his Democratic challenger in November, State Attorney General Roy Cooper, by five points.
The Charlotte Observer breaks out the numbers for us:
On a question about repealing HB2, 48 percent supported repeal, 34 percent didn’t, and 18 percent weren’t sure.
The poll had Cooper leading McCrory 41 percent to 36 percent in the governor’s race. Libertarian Lon Cecil had 6 percent support, and 17 percent weren’t sure.
Stein leads Republican Sen. Buck Newton in the race for state attorney general, 40 percent to 33 percent, with 27 percent not sure.
The poll of 688 registered voters was conducted April 27-28, and has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
Results of a poll from the conservative Civitas Institute yielded markedly different results regarding opinions on HB 2:
As The Charlotte Observer points out…
… its question was much different. Sixty-one percent in the Civitas poll agreed that the Charlotte ordinance “creates a loophole that gives sexual predators access to women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and women and girls feel unsafe and uncomfortable being forced to share the women’s bathroom with a biological man who may or may not identify as female.”
Civitas did also have Cooper and Stein ahead.
Oh, yeah, we almost forgot to point out that last part. Both polls show Josh Stein beating Republican Buck Newton in the race for attorney general.
Meanwhile NPR ranks the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Richard Burr and challenger Deborah Ross as the ninth most watchworthy race in the country, in the likelihood of a Drumpf at the top of the ticket:
The Tar Heel State is moving up on both parties’ lists amid the flurry of controversy over the state’s anti-discrimination law, commonly referred to as the “bathroom bill.” That law blocks transgender persons from using the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify. Former state Rep. Deborah Ross certainly wasn’t Democrats’ top choice to challenge Sen. Richard Burr, but she did outraise him in the first fundraising quarter. The incumbent, however, still has a cash advantage with $5.8 million in the bank. If this one emerges as a presidential battleground (remember, Obama won it in 2008), it could certainly have down-ballot effects.
The main point of the NPR piece is that The Donald is “a drag on the GOP.
But, hey…
2, The GOP’s got bigger problems than Drumpf. Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post does the math and the analysis, and concludes that no matter how odious the creature running for president may be, his party would have a tough time putting together a winning electoral map in any case:
Instead they are, largely, demographic problems centered on the GOP’s inability to win any large swath of non-white voters. New Mexico, a state in which almost half the population is Latino, is the ur-example here. In 2004, George W. Bush won the Land of Enchantment in his bid for a second term. (His margin over John Kerry was 588 votes.) Eight years later, Barack Obama won the state by 10 points over Mitt Romney; neither side targeted it in any meaningful way.
What has become increasingly clear is that any state with a large or growing non-white population has become more and more difficult for Republicans to win. Virginia and North Carolina, long Republican strongholds, have moved closer and closer to Democrats of late. (Obama won both states in 2008 and carried Virginia in 2012.)
As Drumpf is fond of saying, “That’s just terrific.”
3. “Groundbreaking” is such a overused cliche. But we’ll use it, in this case, to describe this sharp new political ad calling for the repeal of HB 2. It’s featured at LGBT Nation:
From a release announcing the campaign: “In this new ad, Zeke Christopoulos – a transgender man who lives in Asheville, North Carolina – and two of his professional colleagues discuss their concerns about the discriminatory House Bill 2, which knocked down existing non-discrimination protections for LGBT people and banned transgender people from using public restrooms.
“One of Zeke’s co-workers, Patricia Hickling Beckman, shares her initial reactions to learning Zeke transitioned from female to male, and Zeke explains the absurd possibility of what could happen to him under HB 2 when a transgender man like himself uses a public bathroom,” the release says.
The ad is “a joint product of the American Unity Fund, Freedom for All Americans and Equality North Carolina, state and national organizations working toward repeal of House Bill 2.”
You can watch it here:
