How McCrory hired his lead guitarist

Pat McCrory says Jack Hawke came to him.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate said that his new campaign manager became interested because of the endorsements of former Republican governors Jim Martin and Jim Holshouser.

He said Hawke came to his campaign headquarters about three weeks ago, but not necessarily because he was looking for work.

"I don't think that was his sole purpose," he said. "He was actually talking about Civitas, and we just hit it off extremely well and kind of mutually we said we might make a good team."

McCrory also said that his much-quoted "garage band" remark at his campaign kickoff was misunderstood. At the time, McCrory said he wasn't going to hire "high-priced consultants" to tell him what to say.

But he told Dome last night that he was referring to the early stages.

"When I was saying garage band, I literally meant it because we had just put a team of five people together when I announced in Jamestown, but I knew that we were going to be gradually building upon that team and bringing in true professionals like Jack Hawke," he said.

He said that he will be running a grassroots effort and a pretty extensive media campaign.

"We are still running a garage-band type of campaign, but we've moved onto a big arena," he said, laughing. "We get to play the arena occasionally."