There’s a state song, state flower, state bird and even a state dog.
Surrounded by schoolchildren and flanked by NASCAR Hall of Famers on Tuesday, Gov. Bev Perdue made stock car racing the official state sport.
The bill signing, held at Charlotte Motor Speedway Tuesday, signaled the end of a rough budget season for the Democratic governor, who had her veto of the state budget overturned by a Republican-controlled legislature.
“In these depressing budget times, finishing the legislative session that we’ve just finished, it’s really cool to do something fun,” Perdue said. “You couldn’t have kept me from coming here today.”
The bill was the brainchild of fourth- and fifth-grade students from Lake Norman Elementary and Mount Mourne IB School in Mooresville. It’s been in the makings for two years.
“In fourth grade, we study North Carolina and the symbols of our state,” said Sara Collin, a fourth-grade teacher at Lake Norman Elementary. “The students discovered there wasn’t a state sport.”
The students considered basketball as a potential state sport, but during their studies, they researched the origins of stock car racing and NASCAR, said Dawn Creason, spokeswoman for Iredell-Statesville Schools.
For students Sierra Bice, 11, Derrick Easter, 11, Billy Witherell, 10, the process to get a state symbol made official was a learning experience.
“We learned about the economic impact of it, the tracks in North Carolina, the state symbols and a lot of very interesting stuff about our state,” Easter said.
With the help of N.C Rep. Grey Mills and others, the kids visited the General Assembly in April. Along the way, they visited many tracks across the state, including Charlotte Motor Speedway.
To either side of Perdue sat recent Hall of Fame inductees Bobby Allison and Ned Jarrett.
“Well, it’s like being in the Hall of Fame, a real honor,” Allison said. “I had a feeling it was going to be big. In fact, the plea to my mother to sign the paper to where I could race when I was 17 was that, ‘Mom, this is going to get good.’”
Motorsports in North Carolina is a big industry -- $6 billion big, according to the North Carolina Motorsports Association. More than 20,000 jobs directly and indirectly related to motorsports and most of them are centered in Cabarrus and Iredell counties. Ninety percent of the NASCAR race teams are located in North Carolina. And with the addition of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, it solidifies the state’s hold on stock car racing.
“I continue to say (stock car racing) was born and bred in this state,” Perdue said. “We believe that motorsports and NASCAR belong to the people of this great state.”
While Perdue was in Concord Tuesday, more than 200 bills are sitting on her desk in Raleigh, waiting for her review.
The Associated Press reports the governor usually has about 30 days to review bills, but with the Republican-controlled General Assembly coming back to work in mid-July, Perdue will have less time to make her decision to either sign the bills into law or veto them to send back to the legislature.
Perdue has used her veto stamp a record seven times this year, including on the two-year budget plan. But the legislature voted to override her veto and make the $19-billion budget official.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact online editor Ben McNeely: 704-789-9131
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