- [Kelly] A judge opens ballot access for presidential contenders RFK Jr. and Cornell West as Donald Trump and Vice President Harris return to North Carolina.

This is "State Lines".

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[orchestral music] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines", I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today a very smart group of folks, public relations consultant, Pat Ryan right here to my right.

Dawn Vaughan of the "News & Observer".

Former North Carolina Attorney General Rufus Edmiston.

And seat four, Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation has known to tell a report or two in the news business as well.

Hello everybody.

- Hello.

- Hello.

- Hello.

- Howdy.

- Storm is gone, we've dried out.

And with that, that means presidential campaigning has resumed in North Carolina this week.

Vice President Harris stopping in Raleigh and traveling Eastern North Carolina.

Donald Trump visited Asheville.

No matter the poll, it appears to be a close presidential race here in North Carolina.

Here's former President Trump's comments from Wednesday.

- Kamala Harris won't end the economic crisis.

She will only make it worse.

And why hasn't she done it?

She talks about it, she's doing a plan.

She's gonna announce it this week, maybe.

She's waiting for me to announce it so she can copy it.

By contrast, I'm announcing today that under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half at least, half.

[audience cheering] - All right, here we go.

Dawn, let's talk about the presidential race.

First of all, that's Trump in Asheville.

We've had a poll come out Monday before the trip.

Carolina Forward had YouGov Blue do a poll for them.

Looks like it's a very tight race, tied in North Carolina.

But Trump in Asheville, Harris in Eastern North Carolina, we're like Ohio used to be.

- Yeah, we're getting a lot more attention now.

I don't know if Biden had stayed in the race, we would've gotten quite as much attention.

Some, but we're on the list of swing states.

We're usually kind of toward the end of the list.

But I think now things have changed a lot with Harris at the top of the ticket and Trump has spent a lot of time here before.

It's no surprise that he's back.

And Harris, I feel like every other day I'm hearing she's coming.

- Rufus, what's a good stump speech worth when you can go to Asheville and go to Raleigh and Wilmington and do what they call stemwinder and just get the crowd roared up.

I mean, say what you will about Trump.

It's not a boring speech.

- No, he is a funny guy and sometimes I have a hard time understanding what he's talking about.

There's really no good stemwinder speech on these national guys anymore.

It's all so scripted.

I think Kamala Harris though, has a good cadence to her.

Iambic pentameter, we learned that in high school, didn't we, Dawn?

[Pat chuckling] She seems to, trying to find her way to be presidential candidate beside Joe Biden.

And I think it's going to be a close race here because when you look at it in every race we've had in North Carolina for the past few years, it's been very close.

Same thing in the governor's race.

It's a close race.

This is still a purple state.

- Mitch, follow up on what Rufus had to say.

We used to be so blue for 100 years in our state Senate and a Republican could not be elected governor.

And we went red, now are we purple?

Are we blue shifting red?

What's the state's trends?

I know what the media says.

They say we're going back purple, but.

- Yeah, we're definitely purple.

I think in the last couple of cycles things have looked like they have been moving a little bit more, 51-49, maybe even a little bit more than that red.

But it's certainly purple, it's certainly winnable.

I think Dawn's exactly right that if Joe Biden had stayed in the race, you might've seen less of Democrats trying to attack for the 16 electoral votes in North Carolina 'cause they would've said Donald Trump's won them twice.

He's probably gonna win it again.

But with Kamala Harris, new face, new ideas.

- Yeah.

- That we will be hearing about.

They think it's winnable and as long as they think it's winnable, we're gonna see more of her and all of her surrogates.

Probably the vice presidential nominee Walz as well.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has kind of gotta figure out what does he do now that he just can't attack Biden and talk about how old and out of touch Biden is.

He has to have an actual coherent message about Harris.

- Does North Carolina, did they ever think Joe Biden was out of touch?

Is that the play for our state's voters?

- I think the main play for the voters for the Republicans in the presidential race was Donald.

You liked Donald Trump before, you still like him, would vote for him again.

Certainly a number of Democrats would vote for Biden.

A number of Republicans would vote for Trump.

The swing voters would probably have gone for Trump.

But Harris is a new wild card in this, and that's gonna have to be factored in.

Plus another topic that we'll have coming up in a bit is there will be other names on the ballot that might draw a couple of percentage points here and there.

- Pat, I gotta bring this back to North Carolina 'cause every news channel is gonna do national politics.

I saw no tax on tips in the actual background of former President Trump.

Is that a play for our state?

That was a big Vegas play.

- I think it was originally a political play by the Trump campaign for blue-collar voters, which are an, previously had been maybe a 50/50 constituency, maybe a little bit pro-Democrat even, but are increasingly swinging pretty strikingly towards the Republican party.

And so I think the rationale behind that proposal from a political side anyway was, "Let's continue to boost our numbers as Republicans "among the blue-collar sort of working class population."

- Yeah, it's hard not to talk about Trump and Harris when they're literally in our town for four or five straight days.

I do wanna talk about Carolina Forward.

This group came out with a poll.

They'll send me the poll and they'll send me Tweets here and there say, "Hey, check us out," so I did.

802 registered voters were found online between August 5th and ninth, puts Harris and Trump tied in North Carolina at 46%.

Josh Stein in this poll, Mitch leads Mark Robinson by 10 points.

These are registered voters that gave their take, not likely voters.

For Council of State, just summarizing it.

The only Republicans apparently leading, according to Carolina Forward, Steve Troxler and Mike Causey, the ag commissioner, the insurance commissioner, but every race, but the governor's race, according to them within the margin of error.

Carolina Journal affiliated with your group had a poll that had everything just inverted, three to 4% in favor of Republicans.

How is it that the Republican leaning polls or the could perceive Republican polls do this and then the Democratic perceived leaning polls go the other way?

- Probably the main reason for the differences in these polls, which were in the field at about the same time, is what sort of prediction is the pollster making about the electoral turnout?

When you're talking about, in the case of our poll was 600 people, in the case of Caroline Forward poll, I think, maybe it was 808,- - 800. you're making guesstimates.

And part of that is who is going to turn out?

You have to make a projection about that.

My guess is Signal, the polling company that we use, it's not us calling people, it's a polling company, reputable firm said, "Okay, this is what we expect based on past experience, "is gonna be the turnout," and the pollster working for Carolina Forward made a slightly different pick.

What you'll see is in all of those races, I think, the thing that you can really take out of it is that Josh Stein is leading Mark Robinson; Whether it's four points, as our poll would say, or 10 points, which is probably a little bit optimistic for the Stein camp.

There's Stein leading.

And then in many of these other races, it's probably close, winnable by either side.

If people are ahead, they're ahead at the outer edges of the margin of error, which means it could go the other way.

And with a lot of these Council of State races, probably what you're going to see is what happens at the top of the ticket?

Who gets excited to come out to vote for or against Donald Trump, for or against Kamala Harris?

And then that governor's race could end up having a major impact on the rest of those races.

- Well, also, apparently, Agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler, just has everyone's, he wins by the highest, I think, percentage point than other statewide consistently.

So I think Troxler is, he obviously would like the progressive poll.

The Democratic poll says that he's in the lead.

I think that's probably fair to say that he's in line to win, and then Stein up a little bit.

A lot of, we're seeing all the ads between Stein and Robinson, that's probably playing into a lot of different things.

- Yeah, I mean, look, polls are gonna differ from poll to poll because of sample selection, because of all these different things, which is why there's sort of this growing industry that I think Nate Silver is probably the face of, which is taking all the polls, adjusting them for recency bias, historical bias, what have you, creating this fancy big computer model, and then spitting out what all that information tells us about the state of a race.

And I think, Nate Silver, his model shows North Carolina has a 62% chance as of right now to vote for Donald Trump in the presidential election.

That of course has down ballot impacts.

I think Republicans have won, is that every open statewide race since 2020.

If not, then certainly very close.

I think it's fairly clear at this point that North Carolina is a close state.

Polls are going to show different things on either side of the 50% mark and within the margin of error, but historically speaking, Republicans have a slight advantage, usually.

- Rufus, what do you make of voters?

They'll vote the top of the ticket.

You're not gonna dodge that presidential race, but they will go down ballot and they'll pick Steve Troxler or they'll pick Elaine Marshall if we wanna be bipartisan about people who seem to weather any political storm.

If you're running for office statewide as you've done, does it hurt you worse to having vote against you or does tell you, "You're not worth my vote at all," or consideration?

- [laughing] Well, these down ballots mean a lot to a lot of people.

Steve Troxler, Elaine Marshall, secretary of State.

When I was attorney general, there was a certain following I had that would come out and do anything for me because of consumer protection, that sort of thing.

And so these are very important offices, and they each have their little thing.

If you can get just that many more votes on the Council of state, in spite of what that national pool is, that's why these things are just, you can't predict them.

I'm not a great poll guy anyway.

When I ran for governor in '84, 2 weeks out, I was gonna be governor.

I was putting curtains up in the mansion.

Ka-wham, it went just overnight.

So, I think polls are very, very suggestive and make people feel good and make people feel bad.

That's about it.

- They're fun.

I mean, I'm glad people, your team pays for them, in Carolina Forward, we get a peek at everything.

We get it, it's philosophical or political popcorn.

- And one of the interesting things to me though is in a lot of these races that you figure that people probably don't know a whole lot about, there were differences.

So people who were responding to these polls weren't just saying, I'm gonna pick the Republican every time, or I'm gonna pick the Democrat every time.

There were two or three point differences in various races, which means that some of the people at least are paying attention.

- And that's enough to do it in those races if it holds a two or three point difference.

- All right, Rufus, what are you making about the Wake County Judge?

They have ruled that third party candidates.

There's a couple of cases, Wake County ruled that RFK Jr. can stay on North Carolina's ballot.

And then on Monday, federal judges have ruled Cornell West can appear on the state ballot as well.

Rufus, RFK was allowed on by the State Board of Elections.

The Democratic Party, your party voted to keep him off.

They lost.

Cornell West is fighting for access any way he can get it and he gets it as well.

Now there's two celeb, I don't wanna say celebrity options, but definitely high profile third party candidates to join Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris.

- Well, I was rather amused that the Democratic Party was suing the Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections.

But every year we have these, it's like perennial plants.

They come back every year and it's very dumbfounding to election board members 'cause Alan Hirsch used to work for me when I was Attorney General.

These name gathering things are so fraught with fraud, so fraught with mistakes.

You see somebody on the street saying, will you sign this thing?

Everybody's had that happen to them one time or another.

And it's no wonder the State Board of Elections are very leery of them.

I've often thought that my friend Bill Clinton became president though, because of a third party guy named Ross Perot.

Remember that?

- He was a serious third party candidate though.

- Yeah.

Now I don't think these guys are.

- [Kelly] They are, I mean, yeah.

- RFK said he dropped off a dead cub bear in Central Park.

Well, if he comes to North Carolina, please put one in Dix Park.

- It seems more like a protest vote, third party.

Because since Perot, I mean Nader impacted Gore's chances and Perot obviously impacted Bush's chances.

So I think that no one has gained enough traction, been maybe serious enough or encompassing enough with the ideas for people to rally behind them as a third party.

But it does give the, there are plenty of never Trumpers out there.

People that didn't like Biden or Trump and Harris is trying to get some of those supporters, but if she doesn't, they've got the third party option.

- Yeah, I think if they do it right, it's only fair 'cause those people deserve to have somebody for whom they can vote.

- Regardless of how this thing plays out in terms of the final election, Democrats obviously think these third parties can make a difference because it's the Democratic Party and groups associated with them, like Marc Elias and his Clear Choice Action group that had been the ones fighting to keep RFK Jr. and Cornell West off the ballot.

They're not doing this because they don't think that people should have the opportunity to vote.

They're doing this 'cause they think, we're not gonna win or it reduces the chances of us winning if they're on the ballot.

- Because the margin's so small.

- Right.

- Which is the whole point of political parties.

They should seek political advantage within the rules.

In this case, they think that by suing they may gain some sort of political advantage by getting a third party candidate off the ballot.

What gets me is juxtaposing that with the purported defense of democracy that the Democratic Party stands for.

You're suing to get somebody off the ballot because it gives your party political advantage.

And that's fine, that's great even.

That's what political parties are supposed to do.

But don't also say that this is about some larger moral question.

It's not.

- One of the best comments on this came from the mouth of the fellow who was representing We the People, RFK's party during the court hearing before Judge Gregory.

I was there, and afterward people were asking, what do you think about the Democrats trying to keep you off the ballot?

And he says, this is not a good look for a major political party, especially one with the name Democratic Party to be against Democracy.

- Rufus, in the ruling, some of this was the State Board of Elections, it might've been the federal case that said, the Board of Elections' internal analysis of the validity of these party requests, I think it was Cornell West, was flawed in the internal analysis.

Do court rulings, if you read through them, hurt the credibility of the State Board of Elections?

Or is it just, that's the judge's opinion.

You lost this case, move on.

- As I said, these things are so hard to really get to the truth on.

Just people out on the street collecting names and doing this and that.

But the truth is that what the court says goes, so it doesn't make any difference who said what unless they appeal it and get some relief.

He's on, RFK is on, Junior.

And I think it's amusing that both parties in the past.

I remember one time, Pat, when I ran, had a conservative third party and the same thing worked with your party.

They didn't want him on there.

'Cause he'll hurt that party, and so I agree with you about... Let's don't go highfaluting stuff around here about we're all in democratic mode.

- [Pat] We know what this is about.

- It's who helps who- - But Pat, is it not fair game?

Politics is a business and people are paid to help your candidate win.

Why not go after him in court and keep third parties up?

I get the moral high ground, but- - They should.

I'm saying that that's perfectly proper and what a political party should be doing, but to also claim that "we are the defenders of democracy here" while also seeking political advantage by trying to kick people off the ballot, it just doesn't... Like, you're a political party, you seek advantage, and that's what you're supposed to do, but don't also claim that there's some, you know, more significant purpose here.

- All right.

- And one other interesting thing that could come out of this is part of this debate was the different rules for being an independent candidate versus being a third party and part of the accusation was that Kennedy and West were using the third party rules to make it easier for themselves, so that might be something that gets revisited.

- Once again, why not?

- Yeah, and why not?

And that's the argument on the other side, was, this is what the law says.

The law says they can do this.

You don't like the law?

Change the law.

- That was a policy argument, not a legal argument.

- Well, I think both political parties always like to claim like that they have the high ground, right?

I mean, that's what you all do for a living.

- Yes, that's very true.

- Ms. Vaughan to cleanse the palate.

- What's this "y'all" stuff?

[pundits laughing] - UNC Chapel Hill has its new and now permanent chancellor in Lee Roberts.

Chancellor Roberts is a former state budget director in the Pat McCrory administration, among a long career.

He had been serving as interim chancellor over at Chapel Hill.

UNC System President Peter Hans says they needed some fresh eyes on Chapel Hill's campus when they hired Lee Roberts.

Well, Pat, Lee Roberts, I don't know if you know him or not.

I've never met Lee Roberts.

What do you think of going with someone with, I guess, private sector experience?

Non-academic background.

He even went to Duke.

- Ah, well, we won't talk about that.

He's rectified that.

Look, I think President Hans, he authored, I think, one of the most thoughtful op-eds I've read in a long time in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" this week defending against just that question.

Some of the usual suspects who complain a lot on campus, like the faculty council and the AAUP, they're saying, well, you know, Lee Roberts, he's not a tenured professor, he doesn't have a PhD.

You know, what have you.

And President Hans basically said, well, the role of a chancellor, and I'm gonna be paraphrasing extensively here, but the role of a chancellor is not to go teach a class or run a lab.

The role of a chancellor is to run what is in effect a very, very large business, and Lee Roberts certainly has experience on that in spades.

And by the way, trust in higher education among both parties has been going down, so perhaps it makes sense to bring in somebody who's not your traditional choice.

- Well, Dawn, Lee Roberts, a non-traditional choice in terms of not going into academia, but he ran the campus through the protests of the summer and came out the other side and pleased some people and made some others angry.

What's the take in Raleigh and around the academic world?

- Yeah, it's pretty clear he has the conservative political support.

I think that the faculty have a good point, that this is an educational institution and that you'd want someone who's actually done it.

Like any leader, you'd want the leader to also have done what the people they're leading have done.

But it's also true that UNC is this huge...

It's like its own little city, you know?

And it's not just a professor that you want to lead that.

You need somebody who would be able to handle all these different levels of things.

And don't forget the students, hopefully.

Like, they're a factor in this too, not just what it is to run a business or what the faculty want.

So it's a new...

It's a trend.

It's not the only time this has happened.

We'll see how, you know, he plays.

He's new, but he's been around, what, five months now?

So I don't know.

- Rufus, I did read in an article where someone had raised the point of, a major university like Chapel Hill is preeminent as a public university.

It's more like a corporation these days.

It's not a sleepy campus.

There's hospitals, big-time sports, big-time scholarships.

Is it time to rethink what a university chancellor needs to be?

Or is this just off the ranch a little bit and then we'll be back to a professor down the road?

- I think that's what they have done.

It is absolutely a big business, as Dawn said.

I met the chancellor.

I like him.

I think he's what we need.

I think he was a good choice.

In fact, his grandfather was Hale Boggs, a member of Congress in leadership when I was up there with Senator Ervin.

His mother was Lindy Boggs.

his mother was Cokie Roberts, a famous public television person, and I think he understands that he's gotta walk a tightrope here of paying attention to the faculty but at the same time, using some common sense.

And I think it's a great deal.

- The faculty I wouldn't think...

If you stereotype a faculty, most of them would not be in favor of a Republican or a conservative.

- You're hardly ever going to please the faculty anywhere.

[pundits laughing] - That is very true.

- And I one time taught a little bit as a visiting professor, but I didn't think I was that way.

- Mitch, I'm gonna let Rufus slide.

He said "we," "we" made a good choice.

Do you think he identifies as a Tar Heel?

- [laughs] I'm not sure if he would- - Well, I am on the board of visitors of Carolina, so I- - Yeah.

- Lee Roberts brings what, Mitch?

I mean, you folks are free marketers and you like the idea of a business efficient approach.

Has he got the chops?

- Well, sometimes a business person is not the right choice if it's the type of business person that wants to get side deals and have taxpayers help with their business.

But I think Lee Roberts will bring a good perspective.

He was a budget director under Pat McCrory, wasn't seen as being some partisan hack.

So I think that's something that's gonna be helpful for him.

Another thing being a Dukey in this role, when I was at Carolina, the chancellor was Paul Hardin, who had two degrees from Duke, and we survived, after having seven years of him as chancellor.

So I think we'll be okay with Lee.

- Maybe it's part of Duke's plan.

- Once again.

[all laughing] Once again, Pat, we, we survive.

Carolina, oh my goodness.

Oh, I'm a state guy, I went to state.

All 99 hospitals eligible to receive federal funding to wipe out medical debt are taking the deal from Governor Cooper and Cody Kinsley over DHHS.

These hospitals will split $4 billion, help two million people.

The hospitals will start offering charity care, Mitch, for people who are on public benefit programs like WIC and Snap food vouchers.

North Carolina is the first state to use some of that federal Medicaid funding to wipe out debt relief, or let's just say pay back the hospitals for giving free care.

- Yeah, I mean this is one of those deals that when you look at it on the surface, you say, this makes entirely a lot of sense.

There are so many people, there's some estimates that 40% of American households have some sort of medical debt, and 18% of them have $2,500 or more of debt.

So doing something about that makes sense, certainly on the surface.

If you look at these medical debt repayment plans, though, sometimes you have to throw in a caveat, 'cause there has been some private effort done in this regard.

There was a report that came out from Stanford in April that kind of poo pooed how useful this is, that it actually has not much of an impact on people's lives in terms of health outcomes, in terms of their ability to pay off debts, in terms of their credit scores.

So you have to watch to see what this happens.

I think everyone looking at this will say it makes sense.

- Yeah.

- But don't look at it as a panacea.

And the main thing that needs to happen is continuing to fight rising healthcare costs, 'cause this only puts a bandaid on a much larger wound.

- Yeah, I don't know if it solves the underlying problem.

Forbes ranked North Carolina the single highest cost state for healthcare in the entire country for 2024.

Like North Carolina, it's not talked about very much, but North Carolina has a severe cost problem when it comes to healthcare.

I don't know that, look, it's sympathetic, I get it.

It's nice to talk about.

But the underlying drivers of that high, high cost in North Carolina are not gonna be solved by paying off debt.

- Excellent branding, I must say, because you're paying off medical debt.

But what you're doing is helping rural hospitals.

99 different hospitals, Dawn, get federal Medicaid money and they just wipe off so people can breathe easier and the hospitals can breathe easier, it does appear.

- I feel like in the five years I've covered the legislature, rural hospitals has been integral to every healthcare discussion at all.

And what are we gonna do?

So maybe this goes toward solving some of that problem.

- Rufus.

- Well, it's awful to be sick and afflicted and have a debt over your head.

My goodness.

This is just a compassionate common sense thing to do.

I disagree with Pat that it's any kind of a handout.

Healthcare is the most jumbled up thing, in my opinion, in America.

It vastly needs to change.

- Well, this simple plan, do you think other states will follow this?

Use some medical?

- Well, I hope so, because as I said, it's awful to be sick and in debt.

- And the hospitals must acknowledge charity care.

I'm under 30 seconds, Mitch, want the last word, I'll give to you.

- Just say the researchers from Stanford who wrote that report that poo pooed how this has worked, said you need to have lower healthcare costs.

You need to have more access to insurance.

And also, if you're going to deal with the debt, do it quickly, not after it's been around for a while.

- All right, that's it.

Thank you panelists.

Thank you, more importantly, for watching us here at State Lines.

The email, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll see you next time.

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