President Obama speaking to the American Legion in Charlotte last summer.
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Erik Spanberg
Senior Staff Writer- Charlotte Business Journal
President Obama returns to Charlotte on Wednesday afternoon with a speech at ImaginOn uptown addressing equal pay and other working issues for women.
His trip coincides with the administration tying its message to Equal Pay Day, the date in each year when women equal what men earned in the previous calendar year.
Expect the president to discuss female entrepreneurs and business owners, the need for pay and income equality, education and training and the case for raising the minimum wage. North Carolina, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, ranks 23rd among the 50 states for employment and earnings and 32nd in opportunity to climb from poverty.
Women earn 78 cents for every $1 paid to men, according to the Washington think tank. In North Carolina, the gap is smaller, with women earning 83 cents for every dollar.
“In North Carolina’s case, the lower-than-average wage gap is not because women are doing better,” Jessica Milli, senior research associate at the institute, told me Wednesday. “It’s because men and women are doing worse” in North Carolina overall.
The first legislation Obama signed into law as president was the Lilly Ledbetter Act. The law, named for an Alabama woman who lost a Supreme Court case over unequal pay, makes it easier for victims of pay discrimination to file a claim.
Obama comes to a state that, while considered purple in its balance of Democrats and Republicans, has become overwhelmingly Republican beyond major urban areas such as Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad. Ten of the 13 members of the state’s congressional delegation are Republicans, and the GOP controls the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the state legislature. In November, then-N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis defeated Kay Hagan, giving Republicans both of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate.
Gov. Pat McCrory and other Republicans attribute gains in employment and other signs of improving economic health to the policies they have embraced in the four years since the GOP won control of the legislature. Lower individual and corporate income taxes, reduced unemployment benefits and changes in regulation have all been passed during McCrory’s first term.
“It is fitting that President Obama will be visiting North Carolina on tax day to see firsthand the economic turnaround that can be achieved under smart economic policies aimed at unleashing the private sector,” Claude Pope, chair of the N.C. Republican Party, said in a prepared response to Obama’s visit. “Because of the policies enacted since Governor McCrory took office in 2013, including tax reform that lowered income tax rates, North Carolinians have seen bigger paychecks, more efficient government, 200,000 more jobs and the largest drop in unemployment rate in the country. These types of policies are in stark contrast to the failed Obama agenda of higher taxes and bigger government that’s crushing the middle class.”
Equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage and narrowing the income gap are likely to remain hot topics in the next presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton, seeking to become the first female president, raised the issue during her campaign kickoff video released Sunday. Republicans and Democrats disagree on how best to improve economic fortunes, while elected officials and candidates from both parties claim to have the best policy answers.
Mike Walden, economics professor at N.C. State University, told me Wednesday that, while several programs aim to help women and working mothers, the issue remains difficult. Earned-income tax credits and child-care credits have helped at the federal level, he said. Those federal programs remain, but state lawmakers eliminated the North Carolina versions as part of tax laws that took effect in 2014. Republican legislators across the state have said lower overall tax rates and a higher standard deduction offset those changes.
Obama and his administration have become frequent visitors to North Carolina and the Charlotte area. The president carried the state in 2008, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee to do so since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Democrats nominated Obama for a second term in 2012 at Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena, host of the Democratic National Convention. Despite the DNC’s success, Obama failed to carry North Carolina in his successful re-election bid.
The president spoke at the Charlotte Convention Center in August as part of the American Legion’s national meeting. At that appearance, he vowed to overhaul the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after a slew of reports about lengthy delays and other problems with medical care.
“But what we’ve come to learn is that the misconduct we’ve seen at too many facilities — with long wait times, and veterans denied care, and folks cooking the books — is outrageous and inexcusable,” Obama said in that speech.
In North Carolina, home to a large concentration of veterans, recent reports show continuing difficulty in lessening the lengthy wait times at veterans clinics and hospitals. An Associated Press report this month found wait times two to three times higher in Wilmington than nationally.
Vice President Joe Biden came to Charlotte in February. Anthony Foxx, a former Charlotte mayor who became Obama’s transportation secretary in 2013, accompanied the vice president as part of an appearance touting taxpayer investments in roads, bridges, trains and other transportation projects.
In recent polls, more voters continue to view the second-term president with disapproval rather than approval. This month, Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, a left-leaning group, reported results from its latest survey of registered North Carolina voters (351 Republican primary voters and 370 Democratic primary voters). Fifty-three percent said they disapprove of the job Obama is doing, while 42 percent approve and 5 percent are unsure. The margin of error is 3.6 points.
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Erik Spanberg covers government, sports business, hospitality and airlines for the Charlotte Business Journal.
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