Good Riddance! LGBT-Hating NC-Gov Concedes Defeat

Nearly four weeks after the election, North Carolina Governor Pat McRory has (finally!) conceded defeat in the last unresolved gubernatorial election of 2016. The Republican trailed Democrat North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper by just over 10,000 votes (out of nearly 4.5 million cast), which is just enough to forestall an automatic recount. McRory had claimed massive voter fraud and had initiated a recount in heavily Democratic Durham County but when few votes turned up he gave up on Monday. Republicans found the result in the Governor's race hard to swallow because Donald Trump won the state's 15 electoral votes by nearly 4 percentage points and U.S. Senator Richard Burr also won re-election. But McRory earned widespread notoriety and opprobrium for championing a controversial bill called HB-2 which overturned an LGBT civil rights ordinance in Charlotte, NC and explicitly permitted discrimination against LGBT individuals in the state.

Gee, maybe the difference between the electoral fortunes of Trump, Burr and McRory in North Carolina was a repudiation of explicit hostility to civil rights?