The committee was chaired by two Republican lawmakers from Wake County, Rep. Paul Stam and his former staffer and now state senator, Chad Barefoot.
Campaign Finance Results for Committee: COMM TO ELECT CHAD BAREFOOT
 |
| http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/members/viewMember.pl?sChamber=S&nUserID=369 |
First introduced by at least Chad Barefoot and Paul Stam
...the rewritten [other] bill “seemed to overhaul a wide range of nondiscrimination ordinances, housing regulations and workplace regulations that some cities and counties have adopted.” The new version also barred the establishment of a local minimum wage.
...Democrats used a procedural tactic to get the wildly amended [other] bill [with the discrimination etc... in it] sent to the Rules Committee. And there, in their last act of legislative sanity, Republicans joined Democrats in a 14-7 vote to keep the bill off the House floor.
Who were the seven yes votes?
...the Charlotte ordinance gained new life because of a city council reconfigured by Charlotte’s local election last fall.
...Someone in Gov. Pat McCrory’s political camp saw the ordinance coming back and saw an opportunity. McCrory should vigorously oppose it on the basis that it granted transgender women who were born male access to women’s bathrooms and raised a security threat to women and girls. That stand would help the former moderate Charlotte mayor gain strength with skeptical conservatives and evangelicals.
Meanwhile, McCrory’s strong opposition would put his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Roy Cooper, in a no-win situation. He could join McCrory in opposing the ordinance, but that would cost him liberal support. Or Cooper could support it and risk turning off moderates.
McCrory went all-in on the bathroom aspect even before the Charlotte ordinance passed. He joined a lawsuit in Virginia in which he sided with local officials who are fighting a federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of a 16-year-old student. The lawsuit backed by the Obama administration seeks to allow transgender students to use the school bathroom that conforms to their gender identity. Cooper declined to get involved in the Virginia case. That prompted a Nov. 24 news release from Republican Senate leader Phil Berger headlined: “Shame on AG for putting politics above student safety.”
After Charlotte passed the ordinance with the transgender protection provision, the McCrory campaign began pressing Cooper to take a stand on it. Cooper eventually said that existing law covers any bathroom dangers and that he saw no need for a new law to block the ordinance.
...Those who thought they had backed Cooper into a corner didn’t realize that they were putting McCrory’s re-election chances into far greater jeopardy. In the haste and secrecy of the March special session, the get-Cooper bathroom gambit got combined with the Stam-Barefoot wish list [from the other failed bill]. The mixture was explosive. It blew up into a national story, chilled the state’s appeal to businesses, entertainers and tourists and has McCrory backpedaling while declaring no retreat.
Pat McCrory tried to use hate and corporate wishes to get reelected
to the detriment of North Carolina's work force protections
Phil Berger, Paul Stam, Chad Barefoot, Trudy Wade, John Faircloth,
Jon Hardister, John Blust, Roy Carroll, Marty Kotis and friends
were on board with the strategy of using hate and screwing poor, old etc... workers
to get themselves and Pat McCrory reelected
and Roy and Marty's employment costs to fall, thereby increasing their profits,
and Tony Wilkins is okay with it
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/ned-barnett/article72280037.html#storylink=cpy
