Liberal group: Pat McCrory needs to cut ties with consulting firm

A liberal advocacy group is asking Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory to cut ties to a political consulting firm linked to a controversial plan to tie President Barack Obama to the incendiary comments of his ex-pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Brian Nick, a McCrory strategist and spokesman in Charlotte, and Fred Davis, the campaign's TV ad man, work for California-based Strategic Perception, which crafted a plan titled "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: the Ricketts Plan to End His Spending For Good." Nick, Davis and others at the firm are listed as members of the "Team of Pirates" who would put the plan into action.

"Why is Pat McCrory surrounding himself with consultants who are devising schemes to inflame political campaigns with the controversial remarks of a pastor?" asked Gerrick Brenner, executive director for Progress North Carolina Action, a group critical of McCrory and the Republican legislature.  "He should reject these kinds of tactics or explain why he will continue to pay consultants who are thinking up ways to divide us on issues which have nothing to do with improving our nation."

Nick issued a statement from the campaign that didn't directly address Brenner remarks. "We'll leave the slanderous comments and political theater to Governor Perdue and Walter Dalton's political allies," Nick said. "Pat's campaign is solely focused on fixing North Carolina's broken government and broken economy."

The campaign of his Democratic rival Walter Dalton called on McCrory to disavow the plan last week, calling the ads "race-baiting." McCrory's campaign dismissed the charge and declined to comment.