North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has refused to concede in the state's gubernatorial election, which he is trailing in by several thousand votes two weeks after election day. McCrory is seen during a St. Patrick's Day Parade in 2007 when he was mayor of Charlotte. Photo by
James Willamor/Flickr.com
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- With just over a month until he is to take control of the state, North Carolina Governor-elect Roy Cooper has appointed the heads of his transition team, despite Gov. Pat McCrory's refusal to concede the race.
McCrory has declared that massive voter fraud led to his narrow loss, which is close enough that he is expected to demand a legally permitted recount. Cooper, meanwhile, has a chorus of Democrats in the state asking McCrory to concede the loss considering it has been two weeks since the election and Cooper's narrow lead has grown in that time.
Cooper's campaign claims his lead has grown to 7,902 as absentee and provisional ballots have been counted, more than a thousand more votes than the less frequently updated website for the State Board of Elections' total of 6,703 -- still, a significant number more votes than McCrory received.
"In light of the Republican-controlled state and local Board of Elections summarily rejecting McCrory's frivolous requests, it's just time for Gov. McCrory to concede," said Morgan Jackson, Cooper's campaign strategist. "It's time for him to stop wasting taxpayer dollars. It's time for him to stop putting up needless delays and to finally put the people of North Carolina above his own self-interest."
McCrory has yet to concede the race, claiming massive voter fraud -- he says dead people, felons and individuals who voted in other states voted in North Carolina -- in 50 of the state's 100 counties is the cause for his loss.
Complaints by the McCrory campaign to at least eight county election boards have been rejected, though some are holding hearings to examine evidence of the governor's claims, and the state has refused to take over reviews of his election protests.
While voter ID laws signed by McCrory before the campaign were struck down by the courts, and his complaints are being ignored, his team expects the margin of votes between the candidates to remain less than 10,000, which will allow McCrory to ask for an automatic recount.
The campaign may not officially end for a few more weeks as vote counts are finalized, no matter who wins. Few have hope, however, that any recount or other legal action will change the election's outcome.
"They've been working a long time, so they want to see it out to the final note of the symphony. They have the right to do that," said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican strategist in North Carolina. "I've been involved in two of these recounts before, and both were smaller margins than this one, but at the end, very little changed. And right now, not much has changed so far. I doubt it'll change the outcome."
