Listen to the audio version here.
Governor Pat McCrory and Democratic challenger Attorney General Roy Cooper visited Wilmington for the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s Power Breakfast series, where they battled on the topic of House Bill 2, commonly known as the “bathroom bill.”
Roy Cooper was quick to criticize GovernorMcCrory’spassage ofHB2, saying it wrote discrimination into the law and cost the state jobs and revenue:
“You just had investors come into our state who control two trillion dollars worth of investment. Two trillion, with a ‘t.’ They said that House Bill 2 was hurting our economy and not only that, that it was the equivalent of state-sponsored recession. We haven’t seen the full force and effect of this, but it is coming, and we have already suffered. It’s going to continue until we do something about it."
McCrory said Cooper was merely using HB2 as a political football, to distract from the growth North Carolina experienced under his tenure as governor.
"I personally think it’s not the city government’s business or the state government’s business or the federal government’s business to tell you in business what your locker room, shower, and restroom policy should be. That’s not the rules in North Carolina. It’s none of our damn business. You can do whatever you want.”
For now, McCrory says that at state facilities, people will choose their bathroom or locker room based on their gender—“of what it is, not what you think it is.” He quoted North Carolina’s state motto: to be, rather than to seem.
Copyright 2016 WHQR
