Now, about that new brand: what is it we--and outsiders--think North Carolina is all about?

• Author: Otterbourg, Ken
• Position: THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION - Interview

When he ran for governor, Pat McCrory often sounded like an advertising executive calling on a potential client who was thinking of changing agencies. The product was faltering, and the brand was stale. "I'm telling you," he said in an interview with this magazine last year, "that the brand of North Carolina economic development has been diminished in the past five to 10 years and, in many ways, we're still living off the past brand, which we can be proud of, but we haven't updated that brand in comparison to what our competitors are doing across the borders. The brand now is one of very high income and corporate-income taxes and not favorable in regulation, particularly [for] midsize and smaller companies."

A year later, here we are. North Carolina's rebranding is underway. The Republican-dominated General Assembly is leading the charge, pushing McCrory to the right of the more centrist tones he struck during his campaign. Along with the predictable new laws that cut taxes and reduced unemployment benefits, McCrory and the legislature have restricted access to abortions and the voting booth and tightened growth in education spending. The efforts have created a protest movement, the "Moral Monday" gatherings that weekly rocked the Legislative Building, and they have fueled a story line of North Carolina's falling (or was it pushed?) from its moderate perch.

The New York Times slammed the state in an editorial headlined: "The Decline of North Carolina." It read, "North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build." The Wall Street Journal fired back, praising the state's stab at tax reform and McCrory's courage in. challenging the status quo.

Well-starched newspaper editorials are one thing. Maybe so, too, were the often-nightly tirades on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. But The Daily Show on Comedy Central is a different animal. On Aug. 5, guest host Jon Oliver spent most of his monologue satirizing the state, including asking whether it is now the crazier of the two Carolinas. Nobody wants to be mocked.

This is a war of words and ideas, but it is in the end about North Carolina's brand, what we as individuals think of when we think of our state and--as important--what people elsewhere think of the place we call home. It can sound simplistic...