The jinx was on Pat McCrory last week. When his campaign emailed out a press release and misspelled the word governor (spelling it governer) a little contrition would have solved the problem. But McCrory’s Campaign Manager, Victoria Smith, compounded the error with a second mistake, saying the misspelling was sabotage – they’d been ‘hacked.’

Then, minutes later, McCrory’s campaign made a third mistake. The reporter asked another spokeswoman. She said the misspelling was an error by an overworked graphics designer.

The reporter diligently called McCrory’s manager back; in the blink of an eye she made a fourth mistake. She said: The spokeswoman was new. She was wrong. They’d been hacked.

Then the jinx struck with a passion. While talking to the manager the reporter was also, apparently, looking at the sabotaged press release on a computer screen; in front of the reporter’s eyes, though the mysterious ways of the Internet, the error was corrected. GovernEr became governor. The startled reporter asked how that happened. McCrory’s manager said the hacker must have corrected it. (Fifth mistake.)

At the end of the day, when Pat McCrory finished explaining his vision for the state at his announcement he weighed in to clean up the mess. There was no hacker.

The moral? The next morning McCrory’s hacker made the front page of the News and Observer. McCrory’s announcement was in the second section and Gary, on behalf of Democrats, wrote a blog saying, ‘Pat, whatever you do hold onto that campaign manager.’

During his announcement Mayor McCrory said he was going to run a “garage band” campaign with no high-priced consultants and no one to tell him what to do. Maybe he’s carrying it a bit too far.

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