North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory made his case for Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump at a rally in Winston-Salem on Monday, lending credence to the potential benefits of electing an outsider candidate by telling his own story since being elected in 2012.
As he took the stage though, McCrory first took a dig at his critics over House Bill 2, the transgender bathroom law which has kept his state in the headlines and kept major entertainment events out in protest in recent months.
“Let’s be safe now, we’ve got a big crowd so if any of you need to leave suddenly, we’ve got exits this way, exits this way and exits this way and if any of you need to use the restroom …,” McCrory said trailing off, drawing laughs and jeers from the crowd.
The roughly 4,000 attendees lined up more than four hours before the rally in a heat index of 106 degrees. Other speakers included North Carolina Republican leaders like Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest, U.S. Rep. Robert Pettinger and U.S. Rep. Virginia Fox.
McCrory touted Trump’s position as a Washington outsider as the key to creating change in his brief speech to introduce Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. McCrory said that he, like Trump, was the outsider North Carolina needed to turn things around when he was elected in 2012.
“Let me tell you briefly why this election is so important to me and why we need someone from the outside to clean up Washington,” McCrory said. “We need an outsider because right now as governor I’m responsible for the public safety of North Carolina and yet we have no idea about the Syrian refugees coming to our country.”
The rally comes as Trump is edging ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the first national polls following the Republican National Convention and as the Democratic Party deals with the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz after an email leak revealed coordination between party officials to defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Would you rather be here or would you rather be with crooked Hillary Clinton?” Trump said as he took the stage. “What a mess they have going.”
CNN’s post-RNC national poll shows Trump leading Clinton 44 percent to 39 percent in a four-way match up including Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson (9 percent) and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (3 percent). The same poll shows Trump leading by three points, 48 percent to 45 percent, in a head-to-head matchup against Clinton, a six point bounce post-convention.
CNN’s poll did not have enough data to reflect the changes in the key battleground states like North Carolina, but political analyst Nate Silver’s model as of Monday has Trump taking North Carolina if the election were held today. However, Clinton still leads in Silver’s “polls-plus” model which takes into account the historical likelihood of post-convention boosts in support to fade.
Much of Trump’s speech was a tongue-in-cheek eulogy for Sanders’ “political revolution” saying Sanders had “given up.” Trump said that while he disagrees with “crazy Bernie’s” policy proposals, Clinton has done major damage to the relationship with Sanders supporters by picking Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate, whose record stands in stark contrast to that of Sanders.
Trump said that Sanders supporters should come to his side if they want to see real change.
“Here’s the story, she’s got bad judgement so she picks a guy who’s the opposite of Bernie and crazy Bernie is going crazy he doesn’t know what to do,” Trump said. “He’s losing his legacy because he’s just so — you know I always tell my kids never give up, never ever give up.”
Trump cited Kaine’s support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a key issue where Sanders supporters should feel betrayed by the choice of Kaine.
“[Sanders] is campaigning with Hillary now and to show you how she pays him back, she goes out and picks a guy who’s against everything he stands for,” Trump said.
Though there was some chatter online about staging a “Chicago-style” protest, very few protesters made themselves heard at the rally. One protester piped up early on which the crowd, now ready for such disturbances at this point in the campaign, was quick to single out. Trump called the protester a “dying remnant of a Bernie person.”
Among the attendees was NC State student AJ Bronk, a senior studying marketing, who was seeing Trump for the first time.
“I feel like he’s got the experience with all the real estate things that he’s done so he definitely has the business side,” Bronk said.
Bronk said that he thinks Trump with a real chance to win in November.
“I knew from the start he’d be a good nominee, that he’d be someone who is a people-person who can get stuff done,” Bronk said. “I’m really excited.”
In closing, Trump promised that he would come back to North Carolina so much that people would get tired of him, setting off sustained chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” in the packed Winston-Salem Fairgrounds Annex.
Trump signed autographs while the Rolling Stones classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” played in the background, a song which can have two totally opposite meanings depending on your political persuasion.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to a Bernie Sanders supporter at his rally held at the Winston Salem Fairgrounds Annex Monday, July 25, 2016. This was Trump's first rally in the state after announcing his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence.
