AC-T: Moffitt seems unstoppable

Here’s an excerpt from a lengthy profile of Tim Moffitt in today’s Asheville Citizen-Times (Click the link at the bottom to read the whole thing):

Tim Moffitt was working in a local men’s store with the goal of climbing to the top of the corporate ladder when he met a customer who changed his life.

It was the friend of a professor who offered him work as an executive headhunter in 1986. “He asked if I would trade all this in for a pretty exciting desk job with some travel,” Moffitt recalled.

His first assignment came in the New York City construction market, where he cut his teeth recruiting managers for the Statute of Liberty renovation, dropping his voice an octave and softening his Southern accent to fit in.

He would become the firm’s top producer, eventually leave it, and then spend the next two decades building Moffitt International. The firm now has worked in nearly every state and 27 countries, forcing him to navigate politics and personalities in the corporate world.

That experience, he said, served him well in his first term in the N.C. House of Representatives, where he has gone from headhunter to headliner, wielding power unheard of for a freshman lawmaker. Some of that has come from a Republican takeover in Raleigh and some of it from Moffitt’s just-do-it style of politics his critics say casts aside compromise and consensus-building. That style — and his legislation — has put him repeatedly at odds with Asheville city officials over annexation, control of Asheville Regional Airport and the public water system. Moffitt’s success in stripping the city of control over the water system could cost Asheville millions of dollars if the city isn’t compensated.