As mayor of Charlotte, Pat McCrory vetoed a minimum wage for city employees in 2001.
The long-ago City Council dispute has come up again in a different context, with the Republican gubernatorial candidate facing an attack ad from an independent group that argues that he opposes raising the state minimum wage.
In a memo backing up its claims, the Alliance for North Carolina cited news coverage of the 2001 dispute.
McCrory's campaign says the attack is unfair. They argue that he supports raising the state minimum wage, but only if it is coupled with tax breaks or tied to the cost of living in order to lessen the impact on small businesses.
Still, McCrory made some provocative statements during the long-ago fight to pay Charlotte city workers at least $9 an hour.
"I just got back from East Germany where they're trying to get away from socialism," he said, according to a May 26, 2001 article in the Charlotte Observer. "I've got some very liberal council members who are going the opposite direction."
Campaign manager Richard Hudson said that remark was not directed at the state minimum wage.
"The living wage for the city of Charlotte is very different from a minimum wage for the state of North Carolina," said campaign manager Richard Hudson. "We're not talking about going from $5.15 to $6.15; we're talking about a proposal for a $9 an hour wage for city employees."
More after the jump.
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In 2001, a coalition of advocates for the poor called Helping Empower Local People was pushing for the city to raise the minimum salary for city of Charlotte workers to $9 an hour.
The measure was calculated to affect 218 of the city's more than 5,000 workers, and cost about $144,000 to bring salaries up to $9 as well as another $335,000 to adjust other salaries to remain proportionately higher.
McCrory argued that the hike would include part-time workers and students who work for the city during the summer. He also said it would send a bad message to students, who might be tempted to drop out to work for the city.
On May 30, the Charlotte City Council voted 6-5 in favor of the hike, which McCrory then vetoed.
The veto may have backfired, since it led to HELP joining forces with a conservative group to defeat a referendum for a new $342 million arena.
McCrory's Democratic opponent in the fall election, former council member Ella Scarborough, also made it a campaign issue, though not very successfully, as McCrory won with more than two-thirds of the vote.
Many city workers ended up getting raises anyway, and by October McCrory was touting the fact that only a dozen regular employees earned less than $9.
Still, he maintained his opposition, saying the proposal would force city taxpayers to subsidize those municipal jobs.
"I don't believe politicians should be setting wages in either the private and public sector," he said in an Oct. 14 article in the Charlotte Observer.
The Alliance for North Carolina cited that quote in its memo. Hudson said it was not aimed at the minimum wage in general, but rather just at the Charlotte proposal.
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