An Interview with Gov. Pat McCrory

“In fact, one of my best training grounds was being a basketball referee. That taught me how to make tough decisions under tough circumstances where you already knew you were going to make half the people mad most of the time.”

Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory came to his state’s capital with a diverse set of experiences; he’d worked at Duke Energy, served as Mayor of Charlotte, and even refereed basketball games on weekends nights while in his 20’s. His tenure as Governor saw the restructuring of North Carolina’s income tax, pay hikes for teachers, and challenging natural disasters such as Hurricane Matthew. Since narrowly losing re-election to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper in 2016, Governor McCrory has returned to Charlotte and now hosts a popular morning radio show.

On August 11th, Governor McCrory joined Merion West’s Erich Prince to discuss how a business background informs governing, the role that polarization and the media play in politics today, and his advice for the record number of people looking to get involved in politics in 2018.

You worked at Duke Energy for 29 years, thus accumulating considerable experience in the business world. In what ways do you find your business background informed how you viewed issues while in office?

I think one good thing about business experience is, first of all, you usually have some management experience, which I had. You have budgetary experience, which I got in business. Also, you understand capitalism. So many of the people who get involved in government usually work for law firms—or are retired teachers and government workers. I think that the experience of understanding basic finance, management, capitalism and problem-solving—more than anything else—is a main contributor to meeting those kinds of skill sets in government or politics.