State Sen. Jim Forrester believes the North Carolina General Assembly has moved too far to the left of the political spectrum.
"The (state) Senate is as liberal as I've ever seen it," Forrester said at the monthly meeting of the Iredell County Young Republicans on Tuesday night in Mooresville.
"Slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies are running Raleigh," Forrester added.
Forrester, a physician whose 41st District takes in a part of Iredell County, said the time is ripe for the GOP to gain the majority in the state Senate for the first time since the late 1800s.
The Democratic Party rose to dominance then mostly as a backlash to the Republican Party's more liberal views regarding racial integration.
So it may be viewed with some irony that Forrester said the GOP would likely have taken back control of at least one chamber of the General Assembly in 2008 had it not been for what he called the "Obama Tsunami."
Forrester said that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's 2008 campaign invigorated an erstwhile disconnected bloc of the electorate.
"It brought a lot of blacks out who don't normally vote," he said.
Forrester made brief mention of former U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance, who was released from prison last June after serving four years on mail fraud and money laundering charges.
Forrester said authorities were at first reluctant to investigate Ballance — a former state representative and state senator — because he is black.
"And they were afraid of being accused of being racist and that kind of thing," Forrester said.
Forrester pointed to two current state senators as an example of the left-leaning agenda in state government.
He said state Sen. Julia Boseman — the first openly gay person ever elected to the North Carolina General Assembly — "took a bunch of money from a big lesbian group."
Forrester said a male senator is rumored to be gay and is currently fighting off charges that he shot another man.
Boseman and the other senator, both Democrats, have each said they do not plan to run for re-election.
"And I say good riddance to them," Forrester said. He said that neither of the two legislators showed any support for bills Forrester proposed to ban same-sex marriage in the state.
Forrester noted that he "is not against homosexuals." He said he has gay patients who see him in his medical practice "and I treat them like everyone else."
County Commissioner Ken Robertson spoke at the meeting and said that despite the fact Forrester is not chronologically young, "I would match his energy and commitment to anyone in this room."
Forrester filed earlier this month to run for his 11th term in the North Carolina Senate. Forrester was running unopposed as of Wednesday afternoon.
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