With 300,000 new jobs in tech and manufacturing and one of the healthiest economies in the nation, it would seem that the state of North Carolina is open for business – and business is good.

But, there will always be naysayers, especially in the world of politics.

To put it more specifically, Democrats in North Carolina, who had a chokehold on the state for 20 years before Republican Pat McCrory took over the governor’s mansion in 2013, have made it their mission to derail all the good done by the McCrory administration by any means at their disposal.

McCrory walked into a $2.6 billion debt to the federal government, courtesy of big government, tax-and-spend Democrats. Bev Perdue was an absolute disaster as governor.

McCrory hit the ground running when he took office, cancelling the debt with commonsense tax cuts and as a result, the state has flourished.

His Democrat challenger for the governorship, state Attorney General Roy Cooper, only consented to one debate, despite calls from Governor McCrory for further debates.

Knowing that they can’t stand against McCrory’s jobs record, Democrats have sought to wrest control of the state back by an influx of out-of-state money and resources, and by hiding Cooper behind attack ads on social issues.

In specific, HB2, or the “bathroom bill” that was signed into law by Governor McCrory in late March 2016, has become a favored bone of contention, with liberals insisting that not only is it a “civil rights” issue, but that the state is about to topple into the abyss of economic ruin, as a result.

For those who haven’t kept up to date on these things (and there shouldn’t be many of you), North Carolina’s HB2 restricts cities from making unilateral decisions to deem all public and school bathrooms as gender neutral.

Meanwhile, a state economist has another take on the effects of HB2 on the state’s economy.

After making his quarterly forecast for the North Carolina economy, Dr. John Connaughton from UNC Charlotte said he believes HB2 has had a limited impact on the state’s overall economy.

“It’s hard to say that it has had an effect. Sure, it’s had some effect but I think its minor in its impact,” Connaughton said

Those effects include PayPal choosing to pull a planned operations center from Charlotte, the NBA relocating their All-stars game, and several artists, such as Bruce Springsteen and Demi Lovato, choosing not to play planned concerts in the state, in protest.

So these are one-off events. Yes, they cost the state revenue, but are these equivalent to the 300,000 new jobs in tech and manufacturing that are here for more than just a day, or the canceled federal debt, complete with surplus?

In delivering his report on the economy at a forum in Charlotte, Connaughton pointed to the falling unemployment rate in the state and said the economy is actually growing in North Carolina, however slowly.

He said he does not see HB2 as being a factor.

“In the greater scheme of things, it is hard to say the economy is not doing well when we finally got below the U.S. unemployment rate again.”

The facts are, North Carolina has done so much better under McCrory, and the civil rights boogeyman that Cooper and his supporters are trying to conjure up just isn’t there.

If anything, it’s the other way around. That thing social justice warriors insist will not happen? It keeps happening, as Brandon Morse pointed out in his earlier piece here.

So not only is Governor McCrory on point, fiscally, he’s showing a lot of commonsense on the social level, and we have precious few governors who show the same amount of tenacity towards the full gamut of conservative concerns.

His latest ad suggests he’s not backing down, either.

Commonsense. Sadly, it’s a flower that doesn’t grow in everybody’s garden. Governor McCrory is keeping the main thing, the main thing. Anything else from the camp of liberals is simply desperation.