#NCGov: Shame on Democrat @WalterDalton for playing the race card on @PatMcCroryNC

I am so not surprised by this (hat tip: @thesavvy):

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Republican Pat McCrory says North Carolina politics has reached a new low after a video released by Democratic gubernatorial rival Walter Dalton accuses the former Charlotte mayor of being insensitive to black residents.

McCrory told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that Dalton should be “shameful” for approving such a video, which was emailed to Dalton supporters, It may turn into a television ad by the campaign’s end.

The video includes several black speakers. Former state civil rights group president Skip Alston accuses McCrory of not understanding the African American experience in North Carolina. The voices refer indirectly to McCrory’s support for bills requiring photo identification to vote and cuts to education.

Here’s the online ad:

It’s your standard garden variety race card playing, with black liberals claiming McCrory the white Republican is out of touch with “African-Americans” in North Carolina – complete with stark imagery of the street battles between black people and white people in the 50s and 60s during the height of the civil rights movement.

That Pat McCrory is a racist is not true, of course, especially if you consider the fact that the big (liberal and “modern”) city of Charlotte elected him multiple times as mayor and he was well-liked by both parties (most of the time), including the more liberal black politicos here. But then again, Democrats on the whole have never ever let little inconvenient facts like that interrupt a good attempt at nasty character assassination of a good and decent – and well-respected man.

For out of staters, let me show you why this is happening:

Snapshot of polling for the race to replace Gov. Perdue.

To get a more complete picture, click this RCP link where that screencap came from. You’ll see that McCrory has had a double digit lead for most of this campaign. Not helping Lt. Gov. Dalton is the fact that his boss Gov. Perdue has been a disaster for this state, so much so that she declined to run for another term, so Dalton started off at a distinct disadvantage and has been desperate to gain ground in the battle for the Governor’s chair. Clearly, his last few months of trying has not worked.

As a side note, I don’t have numbers on campaign cash on hand but I suspect Dalton is way behind McCrory. (Update: Confirmed.)

So it’s come to this. And Walter Dalton should be damned ashamed for going this route. Haven’t we had enough of these types of gutter political tactics in the state of North Carolina? Unfortunately, some of our more high profile races here earned notorious places in the national spotlight in the past due to the deeply negative turns they took (the 2008 Dole/Hagan Senate race where Dole launched a disgusting personal attack on Hagan’s faith is the most recent one that comes to mind), and enough is enough. Yes, politics is rough and tumble and all candidates should anticipate and expect having to counter their fair share of hits and jabs and to have their associations questioned, but the phony race-card playing, the unwarranted questioning of people’s faiths, and the like need to be thrown out and buried deep underground – never to return.

We will never move forward here (and, in fact, nationwide) as long as politically opportunistic Democrats continue to live in the past on the issue of race, and as long as they continue to paint their opposition – who simply have DIFFERENT ideas than them on how to resolve the issues that plague lower income black people – as “raaacists” rather than actually debating the substance/merit of their ideas. It’s time for baseless personal attacks against political opponents in this state to stop and stop now. The future is on the line, yet here Democrats are insinuating – without any real evidence – that the GOP opposition are racists, and want to suppress the black vote … in spite of the fact that poll trends give that opposition a clear double digit advantage going into the final weeks before the election to a point that even if they WANTED to “suppress the black vote” they wouldn’t have to!

Character matters, and in this particular department both Walter Dalton and his campaign are showing that they are – unfortunately – sorely lacking. Time for them to grow up – and get real.

North Carolina voters deserve better than this.

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