- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Tonight on "Unspun," sometimes history is made not by passing a law, but by winning an election no one thought you could win.

Well, in 1987, Charlotte elected its first female mayor, a milestone that changed the city's political landscape and helped open the door for a new generation of leaders.

Next, our Pioneers in Politics and Business Series features a woman who changed who could get elected.

But has the pendulum swung too far?

In today's America, welcome to the Spin Game.

Believe me, I know, I'm Pat McCrory.

When I was governor and mayor, I played the Spin Game.

I was played by the Spin Game.

But aren't we all done being spun?

Let's take the spin out of the world we're in here on "Unspun."

(lively music) Good evening.

I'm Pat McCrory.

Sue Myrick led the city of Charlotte during a period of rapid growth and change.

She later made history again as the first Republican woman from North Carolina elected to the United States Congress, where she served for nearly two decades.

Along the way, she developed a reputation for speaking her mind, challenging the status quo, and never being afraid to take an unpopular position.

From City Hall to Capitol Hill, she saw Charlotte evolve from a growing Southern city into a national financial center, and she helped shape many of the political debates along the way.

Sue Myrick, it's great to have my old friend, my old mayor, and my old Congresswoman on "Unspun: Pioneers of Politics and Business."

Thank you so much for taking time.

- It's good to be with you.

- You know, I've always thought that you're not given the credit for the influence that you had on politics, not only in Charlotte, but North Carolina.

So the first question I wanna ask you is, what made you get involved in politics, especially first City Council politics?

- Well, it's an unusual story because I'm a grassroots person, and we were trying to buy a lot down in Fourth Ward.

This is when they were redeveloping it in the early '80s.

And you had to bid.

We were the highest bidder.

And then I heard through the grapevine that one of the City Council people was going to argue for a friend who wanted to build apartments, that apartments were a better use for it than a house and an office, which we were doing.

And so I was at the zoning meeting.

And I was totally ignorant.

I went to the meeting, didn't know you had to sign up to speak.

And fortunately, I knew the mayor from business, and he said, "Well, Sue, would you like to say something?"

So I did.

I got up and gave him a piece of my mind, and I just said, "Hey, look, we played fair and square, and we should get the property."

And that was basically it.

But bottom line was we did get the property and we did build a house and an office down in Fourth Ward.

So that got me interested in the fact that, you know, government controls your life in a lot of ways, and that was one way I hadn't thought of before.

So they were looking for somebody to run at that time.

And I had a friend in politics and he suggested I run.

And so I had no backing, no money, no anything other than my family and friends who were my campaign team, but I ran against four incumbents.

And I only lost by a couple hundred votes, so that gave me the courage to run the next time.

And then the next time I won.

- So you were actually probably one of the first community activists running for elective office in Charlotte, and then many followed you.

Al Rousso, by the way, in a way, was a community activist due to his jewelry store being torn down.

And you were because of a zoning decision in Fourth Ward.

I'd never heard this story before.

- It was an interesting one, because we really wanted to be a part of the Fourth Ward redevelopment and live down there.

And that, of course, was before it was really even cleaned up.

And so it was an experience and a half, but it really was a good one for us.

And it was, we built a house that was big enough for the kids, and then our office was a separate building connected by a sun porch on a different street.

It was an L-shaped property, so it was perfect for what we did.

- Then you made the big decision to run for mayor against a popular mayor, Harvey Gantt, the first African-American mayor in Charlotte's history.

Well respected.

But you had some local issues that you didn't think were being heard.

In fact, my first memory of you is holding up a sign on a road going "Build more roads."

I think on Independence Boulevard.

And no one did that in Charlotte politics.

- Right, we did.

I just held signs in the road.

It was transportation, Pat, because we were having then what we thought were big problems in Charlotte, and they were.

Which of course have continued.

But we did a lot to try and improve the roads, and we were able to, you know, after I was elected, we were able to get a bond referendum with no tax increase to really put $100 million into it.

So that was my campaign issue.

And I was not running against a person.

I was running against the policies and the issues that we were facing as a community.

- I was watching the election returns with an old Republican, Barbara Boyce, who you knew real well.

A name from the past.

And here we had a Republican mayor being elected in Charlotte for the first time, a woman being elected, who was a Republican, and an activist, a community activist.

It was revolutionary watching that night in the old convention center.

I remember to this day.

And it had an influence on me, by the way, just to let you know.

So when you got into mayor's office, I noticed that not only did you deal with roads, but crime became a major issue for you.

And you were the first mayor, I think, to really focus on crime.

And we had a serious crime problem.

- Well, you know, it was a very big issue with me, because drugs were coming in and nobody wanted to admit that we had a drug problem in Charlotte.

You know, we were on major interstates.

We had an international airport, railroads.

There were lots of ways that people could transport drugs.

And everybody kept saying it can't happen in Charlotte.

But I knew it was.

I went out on the street corners and confronted the drug dealers in the neighborhoods, that type of thing.

And it was very obvious it was happening.

And so we organized drug marches, we organized neighborhoods.

We tried to do everything we could in the schools to get people and parents involved.

We had seminars for parents, and it was very hard to get parents to come and learn about what was happening with the drug situation.

It was just the beginning of it.

And of course, since then, all over the country, all over the world, it's just gotten worse.

So that was my biggest regret, was not being able to solve that problem.

Everything else that we said we wanted to do, basically, we were able to accomplish with the good help of the community.

A homeless shelter, which was very much not in favor of uptown leaders- - That was the George Shinn, the George Shinn homeless shelter, which was a big deal at the time.

- It was.

But it was really a wonderful experience.

Our church, First Methodist Downtown, had a day shelter that we had started along with some other, you know, people in churches.

And really, it was a place where they could go during the day to get off the streets, but then at night, they had to leave with nowhere to go.

And so the Christmas Eve right before, I was elected, but not sworn in, we were having a service of carols and scripture or whatever for the people that would come there, men at that time.

And I just looked around that room, and I thought, you know, there's somebody's son.

They've got a mother.

They had a mother.

They really had a family at one time.

They were singing Christmas carols.

They knew the words to the Christmas carols.

And that really touched me.

So I stood up and said, "This time next year, you will have a place to sleep."

And I had no idea how it was gonna happen.

And, you know, everybody thought, "How in the world?"

But it's a very long story.

We don't have time for it tonight, but the community came together and helped in a great big way.

Spiro Hondros in particular, Bank of America, they helped us find a place, because Hugh McColl didn't want it where I wanted to put it, which was a free building from the Naval Reserve that they would give back to cities.

But they found a place for it, and it all came together.

And before the next Christmas, they moved in.

- You ought to be very proud of that.

And I must say, you opened the door for future mayors, including me, to deal with crime.

You were a role model in that area.

So we followed up and ended up reducing the crime, but you were the first one.

In fact, I remember you walking down the streets marching.

A mayor marching in Charlotte had not been done.

And you were marching with mainly African-American ministers like Reverend Barnett, I remember, and near Dalton Village, Clanton Road area.

I have these memories.

It's a long time ago.

And you literally had to wear a- - Right, it was a place where we could reach the people and try and get them involved.

And you know, like I said, we organized different groups in town to be a part of it, different neighborhoods and so forth.

So it was an effort that was to draw attention to the issue and try and get people to stand up and help, and help us in the neighborhoods to get rid of the drugs that were being brought in, that type of thing.

- You had to wear a bulletproof vest, I recall.

I mean, you were threatened because of the... You were going after the drug dealers and they were threatening.

And I think you were obviously the first mayor, maybe the last, to have to wear a bulletproof vest.

It was a serious matter.

- Well, I had contracts on my life.

I had been told that, and I knew that.

And, you know, so it was very obvious with my family.

They insisted on it.

I wasn't in favor of it because they're very uncomfortable, or they were at that time.

But it was something that was necessary.

And so I wore it all the time.

It was just one of those things you had to do for the job at that point in history.

- Well, I remember marching with you, and you were right out in the front, not scared of anything.

You stepped on a lot of toes.

- I did.

- Tell us a little bit about you stepping on the toes of more established Charlotte.

And I really consider you the first community activist to step on the toes of established Charlotte.

Give me one example of where you did that.

- Well, you know, the powers that be in Charlotte used to get together and decide who was gonna be mayor.

And I was the outsider.

And so I knew that, and I knew they weren't supporting me, and I knew what my chances were, but I just, at that time, I felt that that's what God wanted me doing with my life.

And so I stepped forward to be obedient, not knowing I was going to win.

But before I was elected, I went to every one of the business leaders and sat down with them and said, "Look, I know you're supporting my opponent, but I just want you to know when I am elected that I intend and want to work with you."

And that was a way of getting an introduction to them.

They were very kind and nice to me, but of course, they were supporting my opponent, which was the usual.

- So you made another decision after being mayor of Charlotte.

You became very visible, and you decided to run for the US Senate.

A long line of Charlotte mayors who attempted to run for statewide office and not making it, including me, on most occasions.

What did you learn from traveling statewide being the Charlotte mayor?

- Well, you know, that it's... I ran because it seemed like an obvious decision.

I'd spent a lot of time in Washington testifying.

The things that you did later on, of course.

And so it just seemed like an obvious to step up and run.

But it wasn't to be.

And it was a good learning experience, which totally turned Ed and I off to politics.

I wanted nothing more to do with it.

Because a lot of people who had been supporting me just faded away, and, like lemmings, jumping off a cliff.

So that support, you know, disappeared.

And it was very discouraging.

But you learn lessons from everything.

And I had no intent, honestly, of running for anything else again.

I wanted to go back to business and be a normal person.

- Well, you joined a long line of Charlotte mayors, Eddie Knox, to Richard Vinroot, to Harvey Gantt, to Pat McCrory.

The list goes on of people learning about the state.

But it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and you learned some things.

What was the one thing that you did learn, do you think?

- I learned again that money rules the world.

And I was running against an opponent who was self-funded.

And it's very hard when you don't have money and have to depend on contributions from regular people to support you.

- This was Senator Lauch Faircloth, I believe.

Lauch Faircloth.

Lauch Faircloth, I believe.

- It was Lauch Faircloth.

And he funded his campaign, and they did all kinds of nasty, dirty advertising and underground things against me.

And the underground campaigns were the worst, saying nasty things about my kids.

It was just horrible.

And that's what turned us off so badly that people believed it.

At that time, I had one person in the whole state call me and say, "Sue, is any of this true?"

And so people just believe it.

But, you know, I learned from that.

- We've all learned from that.

- We learn from all experiences.

- Yeah, we've all gone through that.

But you were the first pioneer.

And then you got back into politics, which surprised a lot of people.

And you decided to run for US Congress when Alex McMillan suddenly said, "I'm not gonna run again."

And this was at the beginning of the Newt Gingrich Revolution.

I know I considered running at one time, and my dad talked me into saying, "No, you can be Mayor of Charlotte."

And it worked out.

You got to be US Congresswoman.

I got to be mayor.

But what made you decide to run for US Congress and end up becoming the first female US Congresswoman in North Carolina?

- Republican Congresswoman.

There was a Democrat before that for a while, but I did not intend to do it, but people started calling me and saying, "We wanna support you.

You need to run."

And I said, after that Senate race, I couldn't get elected dog catcher.

And so finally, after I kept up for a long time, I said, "Hey, you raise the money and do a poll, you'll find out my negatives are so high, I couldn't be elected, and that'll get me out of it."

And so they did the poll.

It turned out that my positives were extremely high.

My Name ID was 98%.

And I had very low negatives, to my surprise.

So then we had to make a decision, was this a smart thing to do?

And Ed and I talked about it, and it very simply came down to we have a lot of grandkids, and if we can make life better for them for a few years, we'll give it a try.

And I was the last person in a five-person primary with no money again, because I wasn't planning on running.

But people stepped up and helped me to raise money.

And we were able to win.

- And you beat primarily David Balmer.

I remember David Balmer, a state rep who had gotten some, a young man in leadership, and then he got in controversy.

And it was a Republican primary was determining the race, basically, and you won.

And you ended up serving more than a couple years in Congress.

You ended up having a- - That wasn't my intent, but you know, when you get there, there's so many issues to work on.

And it moved so slowly, which is a frustration.

I mean, Congress, it just doesn't move well.

And then now we are working together.

I left because I couldn't get anybody to work with me across the aisle.

I always worked across the aisle and did bipartisan bills.

But it just didn't happen anymore.

And I was beating my head against the wall.

And then one day I woke up and I thought, "I don't need this.

I have another life."

And so I just said, "I'm not gonna run anymore."

And it was sad for that reason, but now, you know, it's even worse.

And my friends up there, and there aren't many of them left that were there then, but they all say, "You thought it was bad when you left.

You wouldn't believe what it's like now."

- Well, I'm gonna talk about that in just a second, but I do wanna ask you, what was your proudest moment or accomplishment during your tenure as a US Congressperson?

- I was able to get Medicare to support paying for working women who didn't have insurance, excuse me, to get treatment.

I learned when I had breast cancer that there were a lot of women that would get seen by the CDC, and diagnosed that they had breast cancer, but they had to tell them, "I'm sorry, we can't help you."

And so I did a bipartisan bill.

It said simply, "We'll take some Medicaid dollars that are being spent anyway, and we will apply those to working women without insurance that they can get surgery or chemotherapy, whatever help they need."

And we had to, of course, pass it through the House and the Senate.

We got it through with only one vote on the House side against it.

The Senate approved it completely.

We had to get it ratified by all 50 states, which we did.

And it's been reauthorized several times since then.

And really that helped us save a lot of lives - Absolutely.

- because I had people from all over the country calling me and just saying thank you for that.

- And I saw that many years later as governor.

There's no doubt about it.

And Aldona Wos, my Secretary of Health and Human Services, was a big supporter of that.

As we go through the last three minutes of this incredible dialogue, it's just great seeing you.

- You too.

- I wanna get your reflection of local politics here in Charlotte and then national politics.

Let's first start.

Now that you live outside of Charlotte, what is your reflection of the state of politics in Charlotte based upon your experience as a City Council member and mayor?

- It's very sad, Pat.

I sit back and watch it, and I just think, you know, why does it have to be this way?

Again, it's so divided.

It's the same way.

It's hard for a Republican to get elected anymore in Charlotte.

But you know, when we were there, we put our politics aside.

When we were elected, the politics stayed outside and we worked together, Democrat and Republican, to do what was best for Charlotte, and had good working relationships.

And Charlotte overall had a great relationship with the business community.

And, you know, we were able to accomplish a lot together.

And that's what's missing today.

Now, I know Charlotte's larger, and some of that goes by the wayside, but it just is very sad to watch it.

You still had that when you were mayor.

- Yeah, I was very fortunate.

We had a 6-5 City Council one way or the other.

I enjoyed that divide, because it made us work together.

I think it's more difficult when one party's involved, whether it be in DC or in Charlotte.

In the remaining two minutes, what about Washington, DC?

Now that you've left Washington, you're observing.

What's not working?

What needs to work?

And what would you do different?

- It's back to bipartisanship.

And the whole point is they have a mental attitude that if it's a Republican or Democrat idea, it's a bad idea.

So just automatically nobody wants to jump on board.

And I don't know how you change that, because it's kind of a reflection of our society.

Look how divided our society is today.

And that's what Congress is, a microcosm of society.

So it just, unless people decide they're gonna do it, and there are a few who do it and work bipartisan bills, but you don't hear about it, because that doesn't get in the headlines like all the standing up and arguing does.

So it's just sad for our country, it's sad for our state, and it's sad for our local politics, because now it's everywhere, not just in Congress like it was back then.

- So in the remaining minute, if there's one thing you could change, either at the city, state, or federal level, based upon your experience, what would you try to change if you were in charge now?

- Well, it's not really a law.

It's just trying to get people to work together, because until you do, nothing's gonna happen that's positive for everybody.

- What advice do you have for the new mayor, Rob Harrington, in the remaining 30 seconds, who's just kind of stepping in temporary 18-month mayor?

- Well, I think it was a good idea, because he's been involved in the community and he understands the community and he has friends in the community.

So that helps a lot.

He works within the community.

And I think that helps a lot for him to, you know, jump in with both feet and take the role for whatever period of time he has it.

- Sue Myrick, I consider you a friend.

You were a great colleague of mine when I served as a City Council member, and you were mayor, and we worked together.

You helped get me mass transit money.

The city, you, and Mel Watt worked together in a bipartisan way, and Jesse Helms worked together in a bipartisan way.

And I've visited your office many times, and I'll always appreciate it.

You made a difference on the light rail line and many roads here in Charlotte.

And thanks for being a member.

- We also, you know, bought the railroads that had been abandoned, the lines coming into Charlotte way back when, Pat, when I was mayor.

And we were able to have those there available for light rail.

So you carried it forward and.

- I remember, you reserved the corridor.

Sue, it's an honor to see you again, and thanks for being a pioneer of politics in Charlotte and our state and our nation.

Thank you very much.

- You're welcome.

Have a great night.

- You too.

(lively music) Sue Myrick was a pioneer in many ways.

Yes, she was Charlotte's first woman elected to mayor.

Yes, she was the first Republican elected mayor upsetting Harvey Gantt in his third run at the office.

But I think her biggest contribution has been overlooked.

She changed who could get elected.

Before Sue Myrick, Charlotte's prim and proper politics was largely dominated by established civic and business leaders.

People whose names were already well-known in the community.

Sue came from a different place.

She was a neighborhood activist, an outsider.

She campaigned in ways Charlotte politics had never really seen before.

She stood in the middle of a busy intersection on Independence Boulevard, holding a sign that simply said, "Build more roads."

Political insiders rolled their eyes.

The pundits dismissed her.

The media didn't think she could win.

The voters had a different opinion.

Long before the word populist became part of our daily political vocabulary, Sue Myrick understood something many politicians didn't.

People wanted someone they believed was speaking for them, not just speaking to them.

And she won.

Her election changed the trajectory of local politics.

Over the next several decades, Charlotte's elected leadership shifted away from being dominated by business and civic leaders toward community activists and neighborhood advocates that brought an important new voice to the table.

You know, neighborhoods deserve to be heard.

Working families deserve to be heard.

But now I wonder, have we swung too far the other way?

Today, our city and county government is led mostly by community activists and a supermajority of Democrats.

Yes, we have a much stronger neighborhood representation, but we have far fewer elected officials with extensive private sector or legal experience to challenge multibillion-dollar budgets, understand what employers need to grow, or ask the tough financial questions before taxpayers are asked to pay the bill.

Every governing body benefits from diversity, not just diversity of race or gender, but diversity of experience and political party.

Sue Myrick helped bring a much-needed populist voice into Charlotte politics.

The challenge today is making sure the business community has a meaningful voice too, because good government doesn't happen when everyone thinks alike.

It happens when different perspectives are willing to work through difficult decisions together.

Well, that's the truth as I see it.

I'll see you on the next "Unspun."

(lively music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.