NCGOP compares H.B. 2 boycott calls with ‘hostage-taking’

The state and national NAACP are calling for economic boycotts of North Carolina over House Bill 2 and other conservative public policy issues. Republicans condemned the action, and one top party official compared the action to hostage-taking.

The Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP, announced at a news conference Friday that the national NAACP would not hold any national functions in the state, would encourage other organizations to follow its lead, and might consider calling for divestment of investments in the state.

“What has happened in North Carolina makes this state a battleground … for the soul of America,” Barber said.

At press time, Gov. Roy Cooper had not weighed in on the NAACP’s threatened boycotts. But business trade associations, including the N.C. Chamber of Commerce, the N.C. Association of Realtors, the N.C. Travel Industry Association, and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, offered public support for a compromise proposal on H.B. 2 that Cooper and the NAACP have rejected.

“The NAACP, and Mr. Barber, and their supporters today have said if we don’t get our way when we want it, and we can’t do it through the traditional channels of trying to change hearts and minds at the legislature, or through elections, we will take it out on innocent North Carolinians and their pocketbooks, and we will engage in economic hostage taking, and it is a crying shame,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party.

“You have to wonder if you were to go out and talk to people who are engaged in the hospitality industry, engaged in the tourist industry, in the service sectors, many of which are people of color, whether this type of thing is helpful to them, people who are not involved in the political process, to really hold them as economic hostages,” Woodhouse said during a news conference at party headquarters in Raleigh.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, was quick to denounce the boycott call, and had harsh words for Gov. Roy Cooper.

“For months, Roy Cooper has [paid] lip service to wanting to repeal H.B. 2, all while pandering to his far-left base to raise a beaucoup of cash, trash-talking his own state, and sabotaging every effort to repeal it,” Berger said in a written statement.

“It’s time for him to show some leadership as North Carolina’s governor, condemn William Barber’s attempt to inflict economic harm on our citizens, and work toward a reasonable compromise that keeps men out of women’s bathrooms,” Berger said.

Woodhouse also was critical of the governor.

“I think what’s a shame is that we’ve now had about four compromises that have been shut down by Gov. Cooper. Just this week a bipartisan compromise came forward, and he wasted no time trying to break it apart,” Woodhouse said.

That bipartisan compromise is found in House Bill 186, filed on Wednesday. Primary sponsors of the legislation are Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, Marvin Lucas, D-Cumberland, and Ken Goodman, D-Richmond. Other Republicans and Democrats have signed onto the bill.

The bill would repeal H.B. 2, and allow local governments to establish their own nondiscrimination policies, but private facilities would be exempt from bathroom use policies. The state would still control policies of multi-use bathrooms in public buildings.

The legislation would allow opponents of local ordinances that extend anti-discrimination protections to transgender persons to place a referendum on the ballot to repeal the ordinance, so long as they collect a sufficient number of signatures from voters in that jurisdiction.

Cooper wasted no time shooting down the bill that members of his own party support.

“We must repeal House Bill 2, and I remain committed to getting that done,” Cooper said in a written statement. “But I am concerned that this legislation as written fails the basic test of restoring our reputation, removing discrimination, and bringing jobs, and sports back to North Carolina. I will keep working with the legislature.”

Cooper spokesman Ford Porter also used the hostage analogy in responding to the boycott call.

“While Governor Cooper continues to urge business to come to North Carolina in spite of H.B. 2, Republican legislative leaders need to stop holding our economy hostage to this disastrous law,” he said in a statement.

Woodhouse accused the governor of not just refusing to work towards resolution of the controversy, but inflaming it.

“It seems like to me he is working hand-in-hand with these folks to inflict economic pain on the people of North Carolina, that he is an unindicted co-conspirator of this kind of economic hostage-taking,” Woodhouse said.

“I think the governor needs to step up, and get the people who support his party, people that have more than once claimed him as a victory in this past election, … to stop engaging in this type of behavior,” Woodhouse said. “If Gov. Cooper cannot do it, and doesn’t have the leadership capability to do so, he should find somebody who can.”

H.B. 2 was not the only item the NAACP cited in its complaints against North Carolina. The organization also called for an end to what it claims are racially gerrymandered election districts, a dispute that is in the courts, and repeal of legislation passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly dialing back some of Cooper’s executive oversight.

Woodhouse said organizations supporting H.B. 2 repeal have been unable to build a winning electoral coalition, yet have published “a very detailed agenda” for a host of actions to be taken. He said cost estimates of those actions would double the size of the state budget and double the taxes levied to pay for them.