The power struggle between Governor McCrory and the City of Raleigh took a strange turn over the weekend when the City sued to eject McCrory from the Governor’s Mansion.
Late last week, an associate Raleigh City attorney discovered that due to a recording error over a century ago, the City of Raleigh actually held the deed to the Governor’s Mansion and had been leasing the property for one dollar per year. With that information, the City Councilors convened on Good Friday and voted unanimously that the old house would be better served as an indoor “destination” park, and that McCrory should be ejected and sued for back rent.
The Governor was served with the ejectment papers on Sunday. The process server is reporting that former Governor Bev Perdue’s garden been graveled over and fracking equipment has been set up on the property.
To sort out the legalities of all of these goings ons, we consulted Pembroke Law School professor and renowned constitutional law scholar, Hector Shmalwitz, for his opinion. The professor thought that the City was in the right. “There are many legal issues here, but one thing is clear: the Governor is not master of his domain.”
It is also not clear that McCrory will be able to put up a strong legal defense because he dismissed half of the Attorney General’s Office the week prior.
Catawba College Political Science professor Charles Wormwood, however, thinks that the Governor will weather this latest political storm. “Generally speaking, voters hate lawyers, lobbyists, and candidates who aren’t candid with them. Mr. McCrory worked for a law firm, appeared to do lobbying work, but hasn’t ever told us the truth about it. Nonetheless, he was elected governor. That’s a quite a campaign hat trick. If he can pull that off, he can convince us of anything, like turning away nearly a billion dollars in federal unemployment and Medicaid funding is a good thing for North Carolina. Finding new digs will be a cake walk for him.”
That is the question for the near term: where will the Governor live? At the advice of budget director Art Pope, McCrory slashed spending on the upkeep of State-owned buildings. For anyone who has ever been to one of Art Pope’s variety stores, this is not really surprising. But, it does narrow down the choice of livable State buildings.
Perhaps it would be fitting if he took up residence at Dix.