RALEIGH, N.C. — As legislators returned to town last week, 10 months after a tumultuous 2013 session when Republicans passed one deeply conservative bill after another, one Republican seemed a bit like the odd man out.  That would be Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran for office in 2012 as a moderate bridge builder and then found himself the face of a party whose restrictions on abortion, voting access, and benefits for the poor and unemployed played out in the most polarizing legislative session in memory in what had been a relatively moderate Southern state.  The legislature has a less ambitious agenda this time. Protesters are promising another round of the Moral Monday marches that drew national attention to the Statehouse. But one of the main questions of the session is whether Mr. McCrory, a former bipartisan mayor of Charlotte, can influence the powerful Republican leadership.  “He was very ineffective,” said Sam Watson, 64, a mortgage broker in Raleigh, who voted for the governor but said the General Assembly had gone too far. “I think the majority of the legislature is further right than the majority of the people.”  On Wednesday, Mr. McCrory unveiled his budget for lawmakers. It included a 2 percent raise for teachers, a response to a sharp outcry after last year’s session, when teachers were stripped of tenure protections and denied a raise for a sixth year.  Mr. McCrory, who declined to be interviewed, defended through a spokesman his role in last year’s session, but added that he would be more of a factor this year. “I will probably be more assertive and proactive than in the first year, which I frankly thought was extremely assertive — we passed a major tax reform, transportation reform and a vocational education bill to increase opportunities for high school students that enroll in career and technical education programs,” he said.  But Chris Fitzsimon, director of the left-leaning NC Policy Watch, called Mr. McCrory the “mayor” of North Carolina, saying the governor had been relegated to a quasi-ceremonial role. “He’s out somewhere every day touring a factory, cutting a ribbon, and yet he can’t get any significant policy through the General Assembly and he can’t stop things he opposes,” Mr. Fitzsimon said.  This legislative session is likely to run two months or less and feature fewer ideological points of contention. It is unfolding in the glare of a United States Senate race. Thom Tillis, the Republican nominee, who is speaker of the House, has an interest in tamping down controversy as he prepares to run against the incumbent, Kay Hagan, in what could be a pivotal race for control of the Senate.  “My primary job is to run an efficient legislative session,” Mr. Tillis told reporters.  Just as significant as what Mr. McCrory put in his budget proposal, delivered at a news conference, was what he left out. There was scant mention of his top policy initiative of the last two years, a Medicaid overhaul, which he had to set aside after members of the Republican leadership said they would not take it up.  Nor have they seemed inclined to move ahead on a small item whose stalemate has become an embarrassment in the Executive Mansion: regulating puppy mills, which the first lady, Ann McCrory, has embraced as a personal cause.  Ms. McCrory has lobbied to end abuse by large commercial dog breeders, as has the governor. The initiative’s failure, analysts said, is symbolic of the governor’s lack of clout.  “It truly annoys him and continues to this day,” said Rick Henderson, managing editor of Carolina Journal, a publication of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank in Raleigh.  Mr. McCrory asked lawmakers again to move against puppy mills, speaking almost apologetically. “We’re not going to give up,” he said, adding that his Labrador retriever mix, Moe, would join the lobbying with his own website.  Representative Edgar V. Starnes, the House majority leader, credited the governor with leadership in brokering a compromise in 2013 with Senate leaders who wanted to eliminate state income taxes. Instead, a single rate for all taxpayers was set.  “He brought the House and Senate leadership together in his office and sat us down and said we need to get this moving,” Mr. Starnes said. “The governor was proactive before a stalemate and battle lines were drawn.”  Other supporters note the limits of Mr. McCrory’s influence because both houses of the legislature have veto-proof majorities. His two vetoes last year, of bills concerning immigration and the drug-testing of welfare recipients, were easily overridden.  More recently, Senator Phil Berger, the powerful president pro tem, scarcely mentioned the governor in an hourlong preview of his chamber’s to-do list for reporters. He referred in passing to two of Mr. McCrory’s initiatives — increasing teacher salaries and cleaning up coal ash ponds — as “starting points.”  The threat from ash left from burning coal to generate electricity became a top concern after a major spill into the Dan River in February. The governor, a former employee of Duke Energy, which was responsible for the spill, was embarrassed by the episode. He has proposed removing ash from some of Duke’s 33 sites close to drinking water, though not all, as environmentalists had demanded. Some Republican leaders in the legislature publicly scolded him for not consulting them before drafting a plan.  Last year, critics accused the governor of a sharp pivot to the right as he signed bills to end the state’s earned-income tax credit for the working poor, make deep cuts in unemployment benefits, and establish a right to carry concealed guns in bars and parks.  But close observers said the governor had little choice given the solid conservative control of both houses.  “People were expecting something different from him: He ran as a Mr. Fixit,” said Mr. Henderson, the Carolina Journal editor. “They were not anticipating that the General Assembly had a very, very clear, not secret agenda that they’d been talking about for years, and they went ahead and passed the agenda.”  Representative Nelson Dollar, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, gives Mr. McCrory some credit for what the governor calls the “Carolina Comeback,” an economic bounce that Republicans attribute to their tax cuts and other business-friendly policies.  Unemployment has fallen from 9.5 percent when Mr. McCrory took office to 6.2 percent. Critics say part of the unemployment drop was caused by a decline in the size of the work force, as discouraged workers stopped looking for jobs. Tax cuts shifted more of the burden from the rich to the middle class and working poor.  Polls show the General Assembly’s ideological tilt is out of step with North Carolina as a whole, which is a battleground in national elections. An Elon University Poll last month found only 37 percent of voters said the state was headed in the right direction, although the number was eight points higher than immediately after last year’s legislative session.  Kelly Minsley, 37, a physician in Raleigh, said she had voted for Mr. McCrory and agreed with most policies of the General Assembly, but was disappointed in his leadership. “I think he was a very good businessman, but in government it’s more about relationships,” she said.  Stopping at a paint store in the North Hills section of the capital, Charles Snyder, 72, who owns a construction company, called himself “a lifelong registered Republican” but said he was unhappy with the state’s conservative direction.  He lamented that the governor did not have more control over lawmakers. “If he agrees with them, he’s fine,” he said. “If he disagrees, he’s emasculated.”  A version of this article appears in print on May 18, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: North Carolina Governor Tested by Own G.O.P. as Legislators Return. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, a moderate who was often brushed aside in his first year by conservatives, faces limits on his ability to sway a deep-red legislature.