The only reason I can think of for hiring someone in that situation is they are easily owned and controlled.
NC isn't Illinois, but still has a lot of political swamp to drain and reclaim, especially with all those NE yankees escaping the mess they made up north and bringing it with them to NC.
Hey! I represent that remark....
But, I've been here 20 years and I'd not change one thing about the South. 2nd smartest thing I've done was to move here. (#1 was marrying the lovely and talented Mrs. WBill, who is a native Southerner.)
And to the swamp draining...I like Roy Cooper. He's shining a lot of light into inconvenient places that everyone - Dems and Republicans - don't like. That's fine by me, Easley and his toady Bev Perdue left about 20 years worth of messes to clean up.