Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said it’s been difficult for him to find work since leaving office because of backlash over the transgender bathroom law he signed last year.
Mr. McCrory told WORLD in a podcast interview Friday that House Bill 2 “has impacted me to this day, even after I left office. People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot’ — which is the last thing I am.”
The ex-governor, who was narrowly defeated by Democrat Roy Cooper in November, told The News & Observer on Monday that he thinks he’s being treated unfairly.
“That’s not the way our American system should operate — having people purged due to political thought,” he said.
“If you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil,” he said on the podcast. “It’s almost as if I broke a law.”
The N.C. Democratic Party appeared unsympathetic to Mr. McCrory’s plight, issuing a statement Monday that said, “North Carolina has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity and thousands of jobs as a direct result of House Bill 2, but I guess we can start adding Gov. McCrory’s career to the total as well,” The News & Observer reported.
Mr. McCrory has been the target of backlash since singing the law in March that struck down local nondiscrimination ordinances and required transgender people to use public bathrooms according to the gender on their birth certificates.
Mr. McCrory declined to say where he’s working now, but told The News & Observer that he’s keeping his options open.
“I’ve currently accepted several opportunities in business to do work that I’d done prior to becoming governor in consulting and advisory board positions, and I’ve also been exploring other opportunities in academia, nonprofits and government,” he said. “And I’ll hopefully be making some of those decisions in the near future.”
Mr. McCrory said he’s also “had ongoing discussions with the Trump administration, but at this point in time nothing has come to fruition.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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