- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row," it's a dead heat in North Carolina's Senate race, President Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act, and red states push back on woke corporations.

Next.

- [Narrator] Major funding for "Front Row" with Marc Rotterman is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the lightning round provided by Nicholas B. and Lucy Mayo Boddie Foundation, A.E.

Finley Foundation, NC Realtors, Rifenburg Construction, Stephen Gleason.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[soft dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Join in conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Morgan Jackson, chief political strategist for Governor Roy Cooper, political analyst Joe Stewart, and Donna King with Carolina's Journal.

Mitch, why don't we begin with the latest on North Carolina's Senator's race?

- Well, if you look at the latest poll it's as close as it could possibly get.

Our organization, the John Locke Foundation, put out its latest Civitas poll this week.

And if you looked at it, 42.3% of the likely general election voters support Democrat Cheri Beasley, 42.3% support Republican Ted Budd.

Can't get any closer than that.

Budd had had a lead of four or five points in the last poll, so it has tightened since then.

We also see, since our poll includes the third party candidates, the libertarian and the green party candidate, they get almost 3% among them, which is more evidence of why democratic national lawyer, Marc Elias, and some national and state democratic groups were interested in trying to keep the green party off the ballot, 'cause a lot of people think that greens would otherwise vote for Democrats, and that percentage or close to a percentage point they could get would be something that could be a margin of victory in a very close race.

This also fits in with something else that we saw on that poll, and that is a tightening generally.

If you look at the generic ballot the last time around, the Civitas poll gave double digit leads to Republicans in both the congressional and legislative ballots.

Those have now tightened.

Five point gap between Republicans and Democrats on the legislative side with Republicans in the lead, a three point gap on the congressional side.

Things are tightening up.

Other interesting things from this poll that show just how divided we are.

If you look at some classic American institutions, the Supreme Court and the FBI, depending on what party you're in, you either trust them or you don't.

It's just another sign that everything is getting divided and nowhere is this clearer than 42.3% for both major party Senate candidates.

- Morgan, you have the floor.

- Listen, the bottom line, this is an incredibly close race.

It's gonna be an expensive race.

- [Marc] Are you surprised that it's this close?

- No.

North Carolina's a 50 50 state.

I mean, if you look at the last several cycles between the president, the governor, the U.S. Senate races, we are always, regardless of which party wins, it's a point or two.

We are an incredibly tight state.

I think Beasley's campaign has done a good job, and I gotta tell ya- - [Marc] She was out early on advertising.

- She was, and voters are responding to her, excuse me, her career and her experience as a judge in a way that shows she's not- - She's likable on camera.

- She's great on camera.

Not a typical politician.

She's also been just absolutely dominating Ted Budd on fundraising, which is a big deal and allows her to get her message out now.

As one of the things we've seen, Marc, and not only we've seen some the Civitas poll, we've seen other polls that show Beasley up two or three points.

- [Marc] Correct.

- But the most interesting part is the generic ballot.

Beasley leads Democrat generic ballot by four or five points in every one of these poll, and Budd trails what a generic Republican get.

That's a big deal and a good indicator for her.

- Joe, your thoughts?

And by the way, do you think that she'll embrace Joe Biden or run her own show, Beasley?

- I think she'll definitely do one or the other.

And we'll choose to do whichever probably has the - Works for her.

- greatest possible positive benefit for her.

I feel like this race is likely to break late.

I mean, maybe the final three weeks are the most important part of it.

If you go back to 2018, Tillis versus Hagan, that race was ultimately decided only by 45,000 votes.

A very tight margin.

I think this poll is actually a more accurate reflection of where North Carolina is in the Senate race.

I think the Budd lead earlier on was probably prompted a little bit by some voter segments being very frustrated about the inflation - Okay.

- and the backlash against the president that came about as a result of this.

But I think this race goes down to the wire and probably is decided towards the very end.

- Sure.

- Donna, it is early.

- It is early.

I think we're gonna see a lot more coming out in expenditures, - After Labor Day.

- Advertisements, in public interest and after Labor Day.

One thing this poll also said is that 65% of North Carolinians think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

So when you combine that with what we're seeing in the Budd Beasley race, we're really seeing that party loyalty is starting to maybe overcome people's concerns about the direction of the country, and mistrust of Congress, and mistrust of the White House.

And then of course we were talking about mistrust of the FBI and the Supreme Court.

In general, North Carolinians are very concerned about what they're seeing happening in the country, and that doesn't generally bode well for incumbents.

- Okay, I wanna change gears, talk to Morgan about the Inflation Reduction Act.

The president had a big win this week.

- A huge win this week.

It was a bill that's been dead at least 16 times in the last five months and resuscitated.

You gotta give the president credit, he's getting- - [Marc] You're all for Joe mansion now, aren't ya?

- We like him this week, so let's see what next week brings.

But the important thing is this act does sort of five key things that it is focused on.

Two of those are healthcare based.

It is a big, big deal.

Capping out of pocket expenditures for seniors for prescription drugs, and giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices.

That'll have a huge bottom line for families and for seniors that are struggling with the number of medications they have to deal with every day.

It also, on the healthcare front, goes in and reduces premiums for those on the Affordable Care Act.

You're talking about several, 13 million people whose healthcare premiums will go down.

That's a good thing for working families.

On the energy front, two really big deal items on the energy- - Do I hear some add themes?

- You might.

You very well might.

More to come.

But on the energy front, quickly, there are two big deals.

First thing is that it provides working families the ability to create their homes energy and efficiently, give them money, give tax breaks to do that, helps lower their energy costs.

It really incentivizes electric vehicles, with folks getting up to $7,500 for a tax credit if you buy an electric vehicle that's produced in America.

That is a huge deal and does a lot for the, it creates these clean energy paying jobs.

You see it in North Carolina with places like VinFast and other things, thousands of jobs.

- Mitch, critics say this is deceptive advertising.

It's mislabeled the whole bill.

- Well, there are a lot of people who say it's completely mislabeled.

That this will have no impact positively on inflation.

It could even make things worse.

It's about a 750- - What does the CBO say?

- The CBO has said that it's not like- - Congressional Budget Office.

- Yeah, Congressional Budget Office.

It's not likely to have any noticeable impact on inflation.

The Wharton School said it's actually not gonna have any positive impact.

And that of course is not a right wing, rabid Republican group.

It's a 750 billion dollar spending bill.

And as Morgan alluded to, this is basically the bill that Democrats have been trying to pass over and over again.

Now they just said, "Oh, let's call it inflation reduction, 'cause people care about inflation reduction, and we'll pass it."

I noticed that he picked out some of the things that people will really like, and left aside some of the things they won't like, like 80 billion dollars for the IRS to more the double its staff, and add 87,000 more staffers, which will lead to more audits.

And as reports have shown, the audits are likely to hit people who are not the richest people, but people who are the easiest ones to target.

- Joe, this tax is oil and gas incentives are to to go into a field investment.

- Yeah, no, there are, as Mitch alluded to, there are variety of tax implications from this legislation, corporate taxes, other things that might actually prompt some inflation as businesses have a higher cost basis for doing their business.

But I think it is, as Morgan pointed out, this is a win for the president, and it does provide- - Does it move the needle on the midterms, you think?

- Well, I think it provides some red meat issues that Democrats can go back into their districts and campaign on.

Things that their constituents want as deliverables.

And I think for Democrats in an election cycle, where historically we know, a midterm election, the first term of a president typically goes against that president's party.

If Democrats can use these items to help mitigate a little bit of the red wave to enthuse base democratic voters to actually remain committed and engaged in the election and turn out and vote, then it is a win for the Democrats.

- Donna, your thoughts on this bill.

- You know there's a lot of fine print that has escaped the notice and the messaging, but among them, one is the CBO also says, that this is going to raise taxes on people who make under $400,000 a year, by about 20 billion dollars over the next decade.

Also, the negotiating Medicaid medication prices only applies to about 10 medications.

It doesn't take effect until 2026.

And really when you look at it, it means that if the drug manufacturer for example, doesn't like the price setting that the bureaucrats have set, they get taxed on their profit on that drug by 95% tax.

So it really is allowing bureaucrats to determine the prices of only 10 medications.

And it doesn't even take effect until 2026.

- Okay, I wanna change gears.

That was great conversation.

Red states are really pushing back on corporations, aren't they?

- Yeah, this is- - And their agendas.

- Yeah, this came about, West Virginia is fighting against what some banks have adopted.

What's called the ESG Investment Principles, Environmental, Social and Governance policies that are considered to be very progressive, where corporations are adopting policies as businesses to try to do things like lower their carbon footprint, or to make sure that there's diversity among the senior leadership of their company.

The challenge is, in the instance of West Virginia, that these banks that the West Virginians don't wanna do business with, are talking about reducing their fossil fuel consumption which is a big issue in West Virginia because of the coal industry.

When I was in the State Treasure's Office, we saw some of this come about where there was a push for investments that avoided companies that were engaged in what were considered sinful things, guns, tobacco, liquor, or gambling, because you wanted your investment portfolio to be pure.

I think with ESG Investment Principles, which is over 2.77 trillion dollars of total investments globally now with these types of firms, the problem is when you're investing money for the public you gotta focus on what's- - [Marc] The pensions.

- You gotta focus on returns.

- State pensions, right.

- Yes, it's an appropriate balance that you wanna strike.

Is the company doing what it needs to do to maximize the profitability?

The sensitivity around how they're doing that is legitimately a concern, but you wanna make sure you're not sacrificing the profitability of a company exclusively for a political reason.

- Donna, 19 AGs have sued BlackRock, because of these policies.

- Yes, yes and I think we're seeing that Dale Folwell here in North Carolina, he said, he's been in a lot of contact with the West Virginia treasurer.

And they're very conscious of it too.

You know, this was extremely costly for West Virginia.

Here in North Carolina, we spent about 13 billion dollars.

And while we're not a coal producing state, coal's a big part of that.

So, you know, Folwell said, we really need to be paying attention to how this turns out for states like West Virginia.

- Mitch.

- One of the interesting things is that this really goes back to sort of a basic idea of what is a corporation supposed to do?

For years and years the idea was, the corporation maximizes profits.

There are a lot of people who are in charge of these banking outfits, and these corporations now who have decided that it's more important to pursue a political goal than it is to maximize profits for the shareholders.

That might be okay if the shareholders are all rich folks who can take 1% instead of 3%.

But if you're talking about these pensions, they're talking about retirements that people are relying on, you need the profits to be maximized.

You don't need to have political goals playing a role with people's pensions.

- Well, you know, that's a great point.

Are they being good stewards of their investor's money?

- I think so.

I think listen, you gotta remember these corporations were responding to their employees.

We are in a race for talent right now, especially in a tight labor market.

And so I gotta tell you, I love it when these red states say, don't bring your jobs here.

Don't send your money here.

Because there's one guy who says bring 'em, and that's Governor Roy Cooper.

Bring 'em to North Carolina.

We'll take Disney.

We'll take Eli Lilly.

We'll take BlackRock.

We'll take everybody who wants to come here.

At the end of the day, you're seeing this as red states go.

- [Marc] Is that part of your outreach program?

- Believe me, it is, absolutely.

We'll take all the jobs from these places because when you when you see people, not only take these kind of statements, but they pass laws where their employees feel discriminated against, or their rights are taken away, they don't wanna live there and they don't wanna work there.

And so that's why you see so many of these companies are saying, "Hey, we can't be in Texas anymore.

We can't be in these places anymore.

Let's look for places our employees feel valued."

That's a big deal, and you're gonna see more of that.

And we say, bring 'em to North Carolina.

We'll have 'em, we'd love to have 'em.

- Joe, wrap this up in about 30 seconds, my friend.

- Yeah, Morgan's exactly right.

A younger generation of American workers are far more focused on what they consider to be the social conscience of their employer.

Making sure as employees, are their voices heard on issues that matter to them, social justice issues, environmental issues.

It creates a kind of complexity.

Plus the other thing to remember, Disney's a good case in point.

Disney wants you to come to the Disney park.

And so if they need to do something that they feel best advertised as a sense of inclusiveness for people to come ride the rides, and get their picture taken with Mickey and Minnie, that's what they're gonna do.

If it causes some friction with people that take exception to that politics - Disney says, "Hey, we're trying to get customers in the door, we've gotta promote ourselves as a company in a certain way to do that."

- Well, the market will play that out.

I want to go to Donna and talk to you about a message that was sent to the GOP establishment this week.

And that's really the big defeat of Liz Cheney.

- Oh, for sure, huge.

I mean, absolute rejection of Liz Chaney in Wyoming.

Of course, Republican, Liz Cheney in Wyoming lost, I think it was 66 to 29%.

It really is a trend, actually, if you look at the 10 Republicans who voted for, for example, impeachment of President Trump, of those four did not seek reelection.

Of the six who ran, two of them have now made it to the general.

So we're really seeing a trend that is some of these pro-Trump candidates or candidates who have kind of stayed out of the fray of the Trump thing, if they were vocally against Trump - She lost by 40 points?

- Huge, huge.

- 36.

- Yeah, yeah, it was a big loss.

But we're also seeing Lisa Murkowski.

She was one of the ones that decided to stick with it.

It looks like she's made it through the primary and she will be there in November.

- That's a jungle primary.

- That is a jungle primary.

- How does that work?

- So the way Alaska's jungle primary works is they stack them all, voters regardless of party, and they rank the ones that they want by most favorable to least favorable, and then the top four, I believe, go through to the general, regardless of party.

They don't have the individual party primaries.

Now that brings us though to Sarah Palin, the votes are still being counted in Alaska.

We're watching it pretty closely to see if she's gonna make the cut in that jungle primary to be one of those top four candidates to go into the general.

And, of course she has worn her Trump endorsement proudly and has invited him to campaign.

She's been a vocal supporter of Trump for many years, even before this.

But she's on the edge, she may not make it into those top candidates, so we're watching that pretty closely moving forward.

But we are seeing a lot of Trump-endorsed candidates making through to the general.

- I think he's got a 92% winning.

- It is, so that really means -- - [Marc] Ratio.

- Well, there there's a combination of factors, including the Democratic Governor's Association helping to fund some candidates that were very, very pro Trump.

So that tells you that we're really gonna be watching what happens in November to see if he really has the coattails.

- Do you think Liz Cheney is a viable presidential candidate, Joe?

- Well, I think it certainly helps her to have gotten this notoriety, building name recognition is always important to anybody seeking higher office.

But at this point, I think she's such, I don't know, a lightning rod within the context of Donald Trump and the sphere of influence he has over the Republican party.

It seems improbable that a presidential campaign by Liz Chaney would succeed.

I think to some part, it's the fact that she's also part of what many people consider to be a political dynasty.

Her father, former Vice President -- - I think it's a [indistinct], don't you?

- Well, if you look back at the Trump phenomena from the very start, it was people that were interested in someone other than politics as usual and Liz Cheney is everything about politics as usual to some base Republican voters.

- She can be very mischievous though, I think, because she's gonna have about a hundred million dollar pack, my friend.

- Listen, with Liz Cheney, it ain't about winning, it's about making sure Donald Trump's not president again.

And no, she's not gonna be president but she can absolutely be a spoiler.

You know, listen, I'll say this about Trump.

Trump absolutely has a tremendous record winning these Republican primaries and that is great for him.

It is also great for Democrats in November.

We are seeing time and time again, Donna talked about the governor's races, the Trump-back candidate in these governors races when they win the primary, because they embrace the big lie in every Trump craziness in the world, what happens is they move further and further and further away from what swing voters want.

And so they are often the strongest candidate primary and the weakest in the general.

So it's a boon for Democrats and a boon for Trump.

- Mitch, your thoughts quickly.

- I was gonna say, it's a tight rope for Republican candidates because you can't afford in most places to be completely against Donald Trump, be a never Trumper and to be able to win a primary but you also have to be able to win a general election.

So you can't be one of these candidates who is only a Trump candidate and only appealing to a particular part of the electorate.

You have to be able to appeal to the conservatives and the people in the middle of the road who could be convinced.

- Okay, coming right back to you.

What's the most under-reported story of the week, my friend?

- An interesting story out of the Queen City, Charlotte FC, that is the expansion major league soccer team, they have agreed that their permanent training facility at Business Operation Center is going to stay in Charlotte.

They're going to have private financing, which to me was the best part about this.

'Cause a lot of these sports teams try to prey on the taxpayers to fund their operations or their facilities.

This is gonna be privately financed, 52,000 square foot facility.

They have two fields where they are now, they're gonna get four fields.

This is a stark contrast to the other professional team in Charlotte owned by the same person, David Tepper.

He owns the Panthers football team and they're involved in a big fight with York County, South Carolina, over plans they had had to move the training facilities and everything down to Rock Hill.

21 million lawsuit.

I think the lesson is if you're in North Carolina, don't move to Rock Hill.

[group chuckling] - Morgan.

- I agree.

[group laughing] - [Marc] North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

- That's right, under-reported story this week is a story broke this week about Medicaid expansion and sort of the discussions that took place.

- Axios?

- Axios did the reporting where Lucille Sherman, it broke this week that showed that what was the behind the scenes happened and why Medicaid expansion did not pass before the deadline, before they adjourned in on June 30th.

And ultimately, you had a place to reset for viewers.

The governor was for Medicaid expansion, Phil Berger and the Senate was for Medicaid expansion, and the House was ultimately for Medicaid expansion but they couldn't agree on a deal.

And the large reason they couldn't agree on a deal, and this article talked about the influence of the big sort of private hospital lobby and how they blocked Medicaid expansion from moving forward.

A few private hospitals did this, not the entire hospital association.

But at the end of the day, they did this because Phil Berger and the Senator focused on Certificate of Need reform.

We've talked about this on the show before but to remind folks that's really about and Berger's point is we need more competition for consumers.

And in the way the Certificate of Need laws are written right now you don't have competition.

But ultimately because they couldn't back that, they blocked Medicaid expansion.

- Joe.

- Another instance of the way that the workplace is changing in America, a phenomenal report of the Wall Street Journal.

Younger workers, "Quiet Quitting," meaning they only do the minimum that's necessary at their job and know more.

They have of course, gone to TikTok to publicize this.

- Well, they're very sensitive.

[group laughing] - Joe's been quiet quitting for 30 years, I don't know what he's talking about.

- I'll have you know, I did it very loudly.

But this is a phenomena, I think at least in part prompted by COVID and people's reaction to the way the workplace has changed.

Younger people wanting to spend more time on the things that they enjoy, that they want to do.

- Like TikTok.

- Like TikTok.

So saying to their employers I'm only gonna do the minimum, and that's all you should expect from me.

- Donna.

- Very interesting.

So this week the state board of elections voted and passed some refinement, some changes, some clarifications to poll watcher election observer rules.

Primarily these rules clarify, gave a little more teeth, a little more authority for precinct chairs to kick em out.

So a couple of things, this was all based on some complaints they got from counties that said that some of these poll watchers were standing too close to ballots, that they were talking to voters when they came in and out, they were coming and going out of the wrong doors, that kind of thing.

So the state board of elections says that you know November is going to be intense, they need to make sure that they have a good staff of volunteers to watch these.

But now the precinct chair is more clearly able to throw out volunteers if they think they're violating the rules.

- Okay, let's go to the lightning round Mitch.

Who's up and who's down this week?

- My who's up is US district judge Catherine Eagles, and I say that because she was not afraid to change her mind on this issue of Josh Stein and the disputed campaign law that's in North Carolina.

First she gave him a temporary restraining order, then she said after some further consideration she doesn't think he'll win the case and didn't give him a preliminary injunction.

It's a rare case of someone who takes new information and changes their mind.

My down, hyperbole about teacher shortages.

On August 12th, Wake County had 400 teacher openings, about 950 staff openings, and some people said oh this is signs that it's hard to work at schools and the teachers aren't getting paid enough.

Wake County schools actually came out and said hey this is about the same thing we had last year.

This is typical when it gets close to the school year there are always jobs to fill.

- Morgan, who's up and who's down this week?

- So who's up, we talked about President Joe Biden, I gotta tell you, you think you're having a good summer?

He's having a great summer.

This guy has passed the chips act.

Listen, for a guy who was presumed dead three months ago he's passed the chip act, he's passed healthcare for veteran, the burn pits legislation, he's passed the IRA this week, he's also killed the Al Qaeda leader.

Like this guy's having a great summer.

Who's down, I'll tell you in reverse, national senate republicans took 10, 12 million dollars off of television for their republican candidates in Wisconsin, Arizona, and.

- One other place - Where was the other place?

Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania showing that democrats are more likely to win those seats with republicans running.

- And they're concentrating on places like North Carolina with their money, correct?

- That's right, but two of those seats are held by republicans now, so their chances of taking back the majority is looking bad.

- Joe, I agree with that.

- Up, the country of India celebrating its 75th anniversary of independence from British Colonial rule.

India on the rise, and is now slated to surpass China as the world's most populous nation and some of the wealthiest people in the world now live in India.

Who's down, maybe the squad, Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar barely winning her primary, so maybe there's a little change taking place in the democratic party as well.

- Donna quickly, who's up and who's down?

- Up, taking a little bit of the wind out of Morgan's audition tape.

Spending in the Biden administration.

Spending to date in the Biden administration, 3.8 trillion dollars so far.

My down, congress, 71% of North Carolinians say they do not have trust or faith in congress.

- Mitch, headline next week.

- Legislative halls nearly empty for latest session.

- Headline next week.

- I'll go out of politics, the schools are getting back in session, and for parents, that means the tyranny of packing lunches every day begins.

- Headline next week.

- Projection of gas prices dropping below three dollars a gallon by the end of the year perhaps does help democrats in the election cycle.

- Is the red wave shrinking do you think?

Too early to say?

- I think it's probably still gonna be a red wave, but the size of it may not be as great as we thought earlier in the year.

- Donna headline next week.

- I'm gonna be watching oral arguments are starting on the Leandro case, we've talked a lot about it here, but that's coming on August 31st.

- Okay, that's it for us.

Be sure to tune in next week for my exclusive conversation with former speak Newt Gingrich.

See you then.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row with Marc Rotterman is provided by Robert L Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the lighting round provided by Nicholas B and Lucy Mayo Boddie Foundation.

A.E.

Finley Foundation.

NC Realtors, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason.

A complete list of funders can be found at PBSNC.org/FrontRow.

[dramatic music] ♪