Rep. Billy Richardson, who wrote an op-ed this week saying he regrets his vote for North Carolina’s anti-LGBT bill and wants to repeal it, appeared on Meet the Press Daily with Chuck Todd to explain his position and what happened.
“The bottom line is I just looked myself in the mirror after this happened and said I made a mistake,” he told Todd. “We need to fix it.”
Richardson says lawmakers were bulldozed into the bill too quickly by its proponents to know what they were signing, saying “Have you ever tried to stop a battleship and turn it around? I believe a lot of people on both sides of the aisle felt that way.”
Richardson added:
“I think the governor needs to go farther than where he’s gone and I hope he will. I really want to be part of the solution to this. It has hurt our credibility in the nation so bad and hurt our businesses. We just can’t afford to lose these jobs. We need to take pause, strike this bill down…reinstate anti-discrimination laws and in fact expand them to the LGBT community.”
He says he’ll introduce a bill in the short upcoming session to try and repeal it:
“I have legislation drafted that I will introduce in the short session. And I open it up to Republicans and Democrats alike that want to fix this problem.”
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