When Pat McCrory was fighting to keep his light-rail system on track last fall, Robert Pittenger tried to derail it.
Pittenger ran TV ads urging voters to reject the tax that funds the system, the signature accomplishment of McCrory's 12-year tenure as Charlotte's mayor.
Voters overwhelmingly endorsed the tax, and ridership has beaten expectations.
The split underscored differences between the two Charlotteans, now the Republican nominees for North Carolina's highest offices.
McCrory is running for governor against Democrat Bev Perdue. Pittenger, a state senator, faces Democrat Walter Dalton in the contest for lieutenant governor. It's apparently the first time that one party's nominees have come from the same city.
Though McCrory and Pittenger aren't running as a ticket, they'd be expected to work closely if elected. The lieutenant governor, who serves as president of the state Senate, can be an effective ally for the governor in pushing his agenda through the legislature. And so their candidacies invite comparisons of their records and political philosophies.
McCrory championed light rail despite ballooning costs. Pittenger argued the money could be better spent on roads. McCrory has backed an array of tax incentives for businesses. Pittenger generally opposes them.
McCrory believes in using government for purposes such as directing growth through land-use decisions. Pittenger advocates less regulation and smaller government.
"McCrory and Pittenger personify the Republican coalition in North Carolina," says John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation in Raleigh. "McCrory and Pittenger both are right of center, but they differ on some issues. They are going to agree more than they disagree."
The two downplay their differences.
"We have different styles," McCrory says. "In many ways, we'll complement each other." Pittenger, he adds, is more interested in the "financial side of government" while he's stronger in "management, visionary (and) strategic problem-solving."
"Pat and I agree on 95 percent of all the issues," Pittenger adds. "I don't think you'll find anybody who agrees on everything."
Degrees of conservativeness
Elected 10 times with support from independents and many Democrats, McCrory is considered a moderate Republican. Conservatives have criticized him for pushing light rail, building an uptown arena and even writing a 2001 letter welcoming a gay pride festival.Pittenger, a real estate investor, once worked for Campus Crusade for Christ and raised money for former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, the controversial figure from the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal. He has pushed for lower taxes in Raleigh. Few question his conservative credentials.
"The (question) is whether Pittenger is going to lend his street credibility as a conservative to McCrory," says Bill James, a conservative Republican and Mecklenburg County commissioner.
McCrory backed a hike in hotel taxes for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, as did Pittenger. He vetoed a proposed car rental tax in 2005 and a property tax hike in 2006, though the Democratic-controlled council overrode both.
As mayor, McCrory can point to a list of accomplishments. In a Democratic-controlled Senate, Pittenger has few.
As a member of the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, Pittenger emerged as the most outspoken skeptic about global warming, and warned of government mandates it could foster.
McCrory, who worked for Duke Energy, chaired an environmental committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors that drafted the resolution on greenhouse gases, though he refused to sign it because it left out nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Both have had problems working across the aisle.
Tensions between McCrory and council Democrats flared in December over committee appointments. Some Democratic legislators panned McCrory's caravan to Raleigh last year as grandstanding. Those same lawmakers tend to view Pittenger as a partisan ideologue.
Friendly but not close
Personally, the two are friendly though not particularly close. They travel in different social circles and belong to different country clubs. Pittenger is wonkish about policy, McCrory less so.
For a time, they shared a shadow rivalry over the prospect of replacing fellow Charlotte Republican Sue Myrick in Congress.
North Carolina has had only one governor from Charlotte in the past 200 years, Democrat Cameron Morrison, elected in 1920. No Charlottean has ever served as lieutenant governor.
That both candidates hail from the Queen City is especially unusual in a state that once preferred its leaders to reflect its geographical balance.
"The fact that McCrory and Pittenger won tells us something about the changing map of North Carolina," says Hood. "It's more of an urban and suburban story and less of an east-versus-west story."
McCrory won just one county east of Raleigh and pulled most of his votes from the Piedmont. Ferrel Guillory, a political analyst from UNC Chapel Hill, says he doubts that either geography or the "Great State of Mecklenburg" label will hurt in the fall.
"North Carolina is looking like Charlotte more and more every day," he says. "(Pittenger and McCrory) will be judged by their views and their character and all the others issues voters use to judge candidates."
Whatever their differences, both say they'll work together.
"Yes, we are distinctive," says Pittenger. "We have differences. (But) I cheer him on and he cheers me on."
Decision 2008
