North Carolina has long had the image of being a modern, forward looking state, one of the most advanced in the old Confederacy, despite the fact that Jesse Helms was one of its Senators for three decades.
It actually had signs of having escaped the Confederate mentality, and had pride for its Research Triangle—Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham, and its top rated universities, including, but not only the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and Duke University.
But now North Carolina has been hijacked by a right wing Republican Party, and is being systematically destroyed as a state of change and positive images, looking more like Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, all of which it had far surpassed in every way possible, but now all lost by the lack of understanding of its voters as to what they were doing in electing a Republican legislature and Governor.
So just in the year 2014, eight months so far, the North Carolina Republican government has done the following:
Massive tax cuts and cuts in business regulations, which will make the state poorer and more subject to corruption
Stricter regulation of abortion clinics
The end of teacher tenure
Refusal to expand Medicaid
Dramatic cut in unemployment benefits
Making the death penalty easier to apply
Allowing concealed guns in bar and restaurants
Strict Voter ID requirements, including prohibition of same day registration and cutting early voting
These are the results of the Republican Party gaining control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time in a century, along with electing a Republican governor, Pat McCrory.
So North Carolina goes to the Right, and those who are not upper class will suffer in the process, and North Carolina moves backward to the 19th century mentality of the Confederacy!