Tim Moore (North Carolina politician)

Early life, education, marriage and career

Tim Moore was born in 1970 near Kings Mountain, North Carolina in the western part of the state. Moore worked at the state General Assembly as a teenage page and later he interned for a state senator.

Moore first attended Campbell College, where he joined the College Republicans. After two years he transferred to University of North Carolina, where he completed a B.A. in 1992. He was active in the student government at both colleges. He took a fight to the UNC student Supreme Court in an effort to add more members to the Student Congress. Moore studied law at the Oklahoma City University School of Law, graduating in 1995.

Moore settled in Kings Mountain with his wife and two sons. Moore's father is a member of the Kings Mountain City Council, and a cousin chairs the Cleveland County commission.

For more than a decade after law school, including after his election to the state House, Moore worked in a law practice in Shelby. In 2009 he opened his own practice in general law in the city of Kings Mountain. His clients in western North Carolina have included the Catawba Indian tribe, which proposed opening a casino on their reservation. Moore is admitted to practice before all state courts of North Carolina, U.S. District Courts seated in North Carolina, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and the District of Columbia.

Political career

At the age of 26, Moore became chair of the Cleveland County Republican Party in 1997. That year he also ran for and was chosen by the Republican-dominated state house for the UNC Board of Governors; he was the youngest person to be appointed to that position.

First elected in 2002 from the 111th District, when he narrowly defeated incumbent House Majority Whip Andy Dedmon, Moore has been re-elected to seven consecutive terms. Moore has held chairmanships and vice-chairmanships during his tenure in the state legislature, including of the Rules Committee.

In 2014 Moore was one of the State House chamber’s biggest campaign fundraisers. Political action committees, many that will have business before the legislature, gave him nearly $300,000, two-thirds of all the money he raised. He gave GOP colleagues more than $250,000." His fundraising for the Republican Party is considered by some the reason he was elected as Speaker of the North Carolina House in 2015, the youngest person in that position.

Committees

In his first term, Moore served as Co-Chair of the Child Abuse and Neglect, Foster Care, and Adoption Committee, and as Vice-Chair of Judiciary II. In his second term, Moore continued as Vice-Chair of Judiciary II.

House Bill 97: Terminate Parent Rights/Murder of a Parent

During the 2005 long session of the General Assembly, Moore introduced House Bill 97, Terminate Parent Rights/Murder of a Parent, which passed into law and was signed by the Governor. This law gives the courts the ability to terminate the parental rights of parents who intentionally take the life of the other parent, to protect children from potentially dangerous guardians.

Jessica Lunsford Act

Moore worked on Jessica Lunsford Act, House Bill 933, for three years; it mandates that sentences for certain criminal offenses of rape or sexual offense, when committed against a child, to be either life imprisonment without parole or a mandatory active sentence of twenty-five years and lifetime satellite-based monitoring. The law increases the penalties for sexual exploitation of a minor and makes the registration requirements for sexual offenders more stringent.

Fiscal positions

Moore pushed for the passage of the North Carolina Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which would provide tax reductions for some residents. He has advocated for the Small Business Tax Exemption, which would allow small businesses to deduct an additional portion of their business income.

Moore was one of the top two lawmakers to gain substantial earmarked funding for his district in the 2015 NC budget. He and State Senator Harry Brown, demanded projects for their districts totaling $19 million.

This state budget was based on reduced income taxes, but made "repair, maintenance and installation work on cars and other personal property ... subject to sales taxes starting March 1."

Transportation

Moore has opposed transfers of funds away from transportation, while advocating for new infrastructure projects, such as building the Shelby Bypass and other earmark projects in his home district. "Moore issued a news release after the budget passed – sent only to news outlets in his district – touting the local funding under the headline “Budget Invests In Cleveland County.”

Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act

Moore was a sponsor in 2016 of the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, or House Bill 2. This controversial House Bill 2 restricts transgender individuals from using gender-segregated public facilities, other than those identified for use by their biological sex as defined on their birth certificates. Following the US Department of Justice's demand on May 4, 2016 that the act be repealed, Moore was quoted as saying, "The deadline will come and go. We will take no action."