Governor’s Crazy Reason For Denying Representation To Minority-Heavy District: ‘Not Much Goes On’

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) dismissed concerns that a district with a majority of non-white voters may go unrepresented for an entire year, suggesting that delaying the special election until November would not hurt citizens because Congress gets nothing done in the fall anyway. Though Rep. Mel Watt (D) resigned his seat on the first day of the legislative year to become director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Governor Pat McCrory (R) announced last Monday that his replacement will not be elected until November 4.

The comments came on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown on Wednesday. Host Chuck Todd grilled McCrory on why nearly 1 million citizens in North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District — which which includes a long swath of central North Carolina running from Charlotte to Greensboro and has a majority of voters who are minorities — will have no representative for more than 300 days. McCrory noted that under his state’s election law, he could only have sped up the elections by a couple of months at best:

TODD: I have to say, I’m sort of dumb founded that, you know, I know people have a low opinion of Congress, but to have… basically to disenfranchise nearly a million people, and not having representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, that’s — that is not a healthy thing. For a year. A whole calendar year, Governor.