The national GOP might be scaling up its minority outreach operation, but the same can’t be said of North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R).
Amid rising tensions with the state’s Latino community over McRory’s opposition to providing ordinary drivers licenses to young illegal immigrants granted protection from deportation, the governor’s office announced it was closing its Office of Hispanic/Latino Affairs. The governor’s chief of staff told the Charlotte Observer that “we don’t segment our constituents by race or cultural background any more than we separate them by age or gender,” but Latino leaders are upset, saying it demonstrates a lack of interest in their concerns.
“The message from Raleigh is that Latinos in North Carolina don’t matter,” Jess George, executive director of the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte told the paper. “To close the office of Hispanic affairs only goes to confirm what many people suspect in our state, which is that, despite movement with the Republican Party at the national level towards more bipartisan solutions around comprehensive immigration reform, North Carolina conservatives don’t seem to have gotten the same memo.”
