- Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards ends his re-election bid.

The state house passes election reform legislation.

And the vote is canceled that would tighten hemp industry regulations.

This is State Lines.

- Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

♪ - Hello again, I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for joining us today because we have Maggie Barlow of Maven Strategies to my right.

Senator Paul Lowe of Forsyth County is in seat two.

The debuting Senator Michael Lee of New Hanover County.

Hello, Senator.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you very much for having me.

- And you've been here a time or two.

Paul Shumaker of Capital Communications.

He does lots of things.

Great to have you here.

Thank you for coming on this hot summer weekend.

And still a lot of action in our state.

North Carolina's 11th U.S.

Congressional District will be electing a new congressman.

This month the campaign starts over after incumbent Chuck Edwards ended his re-election campaign this week.

The U.S.

House Ethics Committee released a 20-page report.

Its members said reflect persistent, unprofessional, and inappropriate conduct towards two female staffers.

The committee found no evidence the staffers were ever propositioned.

The Republican Executive Committee of the 11th Congressional District will select a new Republican candidate next week.

According to the NCGOP, the Democrat in this race remains Jamie Ager.

Paul, you were the public spokesperson I saw in some articles for the Edwards campaign.

He decides to leave with a 3:30 a.m.

tweet.

What happened between "I'm going to fight for my seat" versus "it's time after reflection to step aside?"

- Well, a couple things.

First of all, as I always say, the D.C.

establishment is a meat grinder of American politics.

And we got to see that meat grinder play out today.

First of all, there was never a formal complaint lodged against Congressman Edwards.

It was taken off.

The committee chose to do the work based upon anonymous news sources and news stories that had been generated.

He was told that he'd be wrapping up the investigation by late August, hopefully before September the 7th, when there was a blackout period.

He was asked to sign an NDA so that he would be able to see a preliminary report, which he was not allowed to disclose or share with me or anyone else.

We were told we'd be given a 48-hour notice before something was initiated.

Late Friday, early Saturday, his attorney team got a preliminary report.

He was given until midnight Sunday night to respond, less than an adequate amount of time and over the weekend.

They did respond.

And then 9 a.m.

that morning, they were informed that a report would be released.

He found out later in the process by on Tuesday when Speaker of the House and other members were calling him, asking him to step aside.

That Wednesday was the last name because his name could be on the ballot.

The committees had already been in the field polling on this issue and looking for other alternatives.

And so you have a process that was driven totally by politics.

It was not driven by due process.

It was not driven by anything that allowed the congressman to have his rights heard and his side of the story told.

So it's the meat grinder of American politics.

We saw it play out.

But there's a lot of good that comes out of this for Chuck Edwards.

First of all, Chuck Edwards gets to go home.

He gets to play golf when he wants to.

He gets control of his life.

He gets to determine his own schedule.

And more importantly, as he now, as I always tell everybody in politics, you find out who your true friends are and who your fair-weather friends are.

He now has that list.

And there's value in that in moving forward.

- You're a polling guy, though.

Say he fights this and it goes away, as they say, but it's in the middle of a campaign.

Would it have hurt him with Republican voters, regardless of the facts as you believe them?

- Well, quite frankly, the point is the fight would not have been about you.

And this comes to the rub of the political process in that you have leadership willing to keep a majority, willing to win seats.

I would have made the argument -- I actually made the argument to him, use the campaign as the opportunity to exonerate you and put the facts out here and do what the committee did not give you the opportunity to do.

He had the resources to do that.

He could have done that.

Would that have been a process for a winning campaign?

No.

What's important as it relates to me with my clients is that taking care of the client first is always the top priority.

And what's in the best interest of Chuck Edwards is what was guiding us.

At the end of the day, I had a very personal conversation with him.

I said, Congressman, you need to go home.

You need to talk to your wife.

You need to find out what makes you sleep at night and what brings you peace in your life.

That's more important than anything else.

And then, therefore, then once you decide that, we'll work to move forward.

- Maggie, this race changes.

Chuck Edwards is out.

He laid that out and given the campaign or representative their say.

Jamie Ager is out there now in a red district with a weakened GOP field as we perceive it to be today.

As a Democratic consultant for races, what position does that put Mr.

Ager in with a new candidate coming on board and literally a horse race sprint to Election Day?

- Sure.

Well, first of all, Jamie Ager was one of Democrats' top recruits.

I mean he's a fifth generation family farmer.

He is, you know, regardless of who the Republican opponent was going to be, I think he would have been a very strong contender and he will continue to be.

You know, he's raised over $3 million, has $2 million on hand.

And Western North Carolina is starting to trend more Democratic, and there has to be some Republicans out there asking themselves.

I mean the last three congressmen, Republican congressmen, have been under ethics investigations and have had to leave in disgrace.

So I think he's in a great position.

He's a great candidate, and I still feel really good about our chances.

- Maggie, does the ethics complaint against Edwards with him dropping out, are consultants able to pin that on any future Republican, the next nominee that comes forward?

They say Monday night we'll know?

- I don't think they need to.

I mean Jamie Ager has been out there, you know, with the Helene relief, you know, complaining about that.

And he's just someone who's been in the district.

He's a small business person.

He's lived all those experiences that people are really concerned about, the cost of living, especially out in Western North Carolina where that Helene recovery just has not happened.

- Paul.

- I think he will be fine.

- I'll pick up on what Maggie's saying because I agree with her on her point.

But here's the real -- you've got to look at this from a national perspective.

We're sitting here having a conversation about North Carolina 11th Congressional District, which we refer to as a Republican district.

- Is it not a Republican?

- Well, the fact is it is a R plus 5 Republican district.

But the fact is DCCC targeted this district early on because they're looking at midterm political environment.

They saw this as an opportunity.

They had a top recruit just like in the U.S.

Senate race.

You look at what's happened with the Democrats with Roy Cooper, top recruit.

Democrats are playing ball to go and make inroads in traditional Republican areas.

They see that map, which underscores my point with Chuck Edwards.

He was the meat grinder of American politics.

It wasn't about an ethics investigation.

It's about Republicans trying to save faith and trying to help in battleground areas.

They would not normally expect to have to do political fights.

- Are you getting back involved with any future candidate or are you with Chuck Edwards?

And since he's out of the race, it will be another consultant working in that field.

- Right now I can tell you of the candidates being -- I don't know if there's anyone there who I would want to take the headache on to have to deal with it.

We're less than 100 days from the election cycle.

Got a full plate all ready to go with.

You know, quite frankly, is that -- I mean, I'm already focused on the 2028 cycle in a lot of races already.

So, I mean, it's just -- I don't have an interest unless there's great value for me to have that interest.

- Understood.

Senator Lee, you served with state Senator Chuck Edwards at one time.

Tell me about -- set aside, we know people learned about him this week, but what kind of leader was he in Raleigh?

- Yeah, I mean, he promoted different types of legislation, really kind of worked toward western North Carolina.

I think he made the right decision.

And now, you know, the name that I'm hearing the most is Senator Tim Moffitt.

And I currently serve with Senator Tim Moffitt.

And, you know, for me personally, it's kind of a double-edged sword.

Senator Moffitt is someone who's great to work with in the North Carolina Senate.

He's kind of known as an incredibly hard worker, smart guy, really focused on policy, and has really kind of been out there for western North Carolina during Helene, not just from a policy perspective and an advocacy perspective, but because we get a lot of hurricanes in my area, I called him when that occurred.

And he was literally out there on the ground.

He couldn't even get his car in and out of his house, but was still out there working for constituents.

- Senator Lowe, it could be a Senator -- somebody could replace.

Who should be coming?

If you're picking a Republican candidate, would you pick a Senator Tim Moffitt?

There could be some interest from Senator Ralph Heiss, who might also be interested in being Senate president.

Let's stir the pot just a bit.

- Well, I enjoyed working with both of the names of the individuals that you called.

- Senator Moffitt or Senator Heiss?

- Senator Moffitt and Senator Heiss.

I enjoyed working with both of them.

So, you know, I don't know enough about what is happening in western North Carolina to really say who would be good.

When I look at it, it's 100 days away.

And when I hear a consultant say he wouldn't bother with it, then I probably would say to one of my colleagues, is it worth it for you to bother with since you only have 100 days and you don't have enough time to really work a campaign?

- This will be selected by party leaders.

There's no other primary.

What's the point in saying I want to run for a seat when it's an appointment?

Who are you trying to influence if you're Tim Moffitt going I want this seat?

- It's got to be a pretty quick process.

- The party makes the decision.

- I think they're actually meeting on Monday.

They've already selected the folks who are going to make that decision within that congressional district.

I mentioned Senator Moffitt because he's the only one that I know that has expressed interest at this time.

And so that has to happen pretty quickly because if Senator Moffitt or Senator Heiss or someone who's elected currently in the General Assembly, once that happens, then that particular member has to be replaced on the ballot.

And so there's another process for that that goes beyond that.

If it's a Senator Moffitt, if it's a Senator Heiss, they have multi-county districts, and so that's a little bit different of a process.

- Why go public?

Surely these senators know who's on the executive committee of the Republican Party without saying a word.

- Well, first of all, executive committees, if you look at Republican executive committees, are more driven by ideology and principle than are going to be driven by the pragmatics of politics.

Secondly, is what would be an interesting point, you've been raised in Chuck Edwards' case, he had pressure put on him because Wednesday was the deadline when you could take your name off the ballot.

And we learned that from Speaker Johnson.

I mean, that was news to us.

So if Tim Moffitt is the nominee, his name will be on, I guess by law, his name will still be on the state ballot.

- All right.

Next topic comes with the state House.

They convened this week and approved that elections reform bill that recently passed the state Senate.

So a few of the provisions, one of which cuts the early voting period from 17 days down to 10 days for primaries and special elections.

The general election early voting period will not change in this bill.

The state auditor is given more power to launch post-election audits for election integrity, and voters, you'd have more time to challenge ballots up to three business days following an election.

And North Carolina's Division of Motor Vehicles would give the state board of elections the social security numbers of voters.

This is a bill that sits on Governor Stein's desk.

Well, you can shake your head, Senator Lowe, or you can tell us your opinion of it.

Go.

- I don't, and I'm really just going to focus on one part of this.

I know a lot of people are focusing on the days, and I think that's important.

But, and I don't like the idea that somebody can show up three days later and challenge something.

You know, I don't like that at all.

But social security numbers, that is one of the more sacred things that all of us have.

So the fewer hands it can be in, the better to me.

I don't like that at all.

I just, you know, I have real heartburn when I find out that social security numbers are being involved in this process.

So, for me, it's a bad thing.

It's a bad go.

Some of my other colleagues, I'm sure, will have something very different to say.

- Well, how about the one to your right, Senator Mike Lee.

What do you think of this bill?

There are a lot of pieces there, and I'm sure there are differing opinions on different provisions.

- I think a lot of people are confused on the primary versus general election, on the 17 versus 10, and that has kind of raised some consternation.

I think that kind of looks at old trends where Democrats used to do better in early voting.

I think that is a little different than it is today.

And what folks need to know is that just nothing, as you mentioned earlier, nothing changes in the general election.

If you start to look at the kind of the running theme of the bill as you go through, data from DMV, data from federal agencies to the extent that they can get that, the post-election audit, so it doesn't change the result.

It can only happen after certification, looking at process.

All this is really to bolster and beef up essentially having a clean voter roll and a clean process so that we can have confidence in moving forward.

So none of this is intended to do anything other than that.

- Maggie, these election bills in North Carolina, they're adjusted just a little bit here and there almost every legislative session.

Where is the bullseye where it becomes the perfect law?

- Well, I think this legislation is one of these things that voters get suspicious when all this stuff is done just weeks out from when ballots are going to be mailed.

And I certainly understand, Senator Lee, how it's not changing the primary, I mean, excuse me, the general election early voting, but it is changing the primary.

And with the way that our districts are gerrymandered, I mean, like 80 to 85 percent of our races actually take place in the primary.

So I think that is a big deal.

I also, you know, Kelly, you mentioned about the three days to challenge an election, to challenge a voter.

That is just for early voters.

It's not for Election Day voters.

I think that creates some equal protection issues.

And you are allowing people to go in after they know what the preliminary election results are and to go in and challenge a specific voter, not a protest, a specific challenge to a voter.

- And so here's the thing on the 17 versus 10 days.

I mean, we're talking about primaries.

I know you've worked in primaries.

You've worked the polls.

Even in my area, you know, there are so many days where just no one is showing up.

And the local boards have the authority to go ahead and expand the number of sites that they have.

In my area, if they decide they want to have more sites than four, they want to have five or six, they can do that.

But it's more of the cost and administration of a 17-day time period plus Election Day and really trying to alleviate some of that burden while still making sure that people have the time and safeguard their ability to vote.

- I'll make the argument, and look, Maggie, it's not the early voting during the primaries that is important.

In the March 2026 primaries, we had 6.1 million people who chose not to vote.

We had 1.6 million people voted.

We had the same period of time.

This is a practical solution because it condenses -- and Senator Lee is absolutely right.

During a general election, you get an early voting site here in Wake County, you wait in line.

During a primary cycle, you get an early voting count, they roll the red carpet out because somebody finally showed up.

And everybody's putting their phones down, and they treat you like royalty because somebody showed up.

So condensing that day down, not going to impact both primary turnout.

That's a whole different symptom there.

And so it's practical.

It helps save money.

It actually helps free up resources to apply to a general election when you've got more people participating.

- Well, I think the challenge to the election early votes is a real issue.

- I think it's a real issue.

- Well, and I just want to address kind of a lot of folks talk about the post-election audit, and I just want to make clear, that's after the election has been certified.

It doesn't have to do with anything as to the result.

It really is just looking at the process and procedures that were implemented.

- I think it's a tool in the toolbox to do a lot of things depending on what happens.

And that's the way I see it.

You know, it is a tool.

And that tool can be used all kind of ways.

And it probably will be.

That's where I am on that issue.

- Look, if it's better turnout is the issue in the primary, if we're worried about better turnout in the primary, then what we need to be doing is addressing a much bigger problem here.

Keep in mind, I come from the industry that benefits from all of this.

Let's eliminate our contribution limits.

Let's expand spending for candidates in primaries.

More money spent in the general election.

More people participate.

We're just not spending enough money in the primary process to drive better turnout.

That's the solution right there.

- You know, this is not the most -- this is not the most -- this isn't the most fun topic to discuss.

But I can say, this is one of the few issues I can see the table is split.

And it feels uneasy over here and it feels confident on the Republican side.

Usually it's not like that.

- I'll give you the last word, Maggie.

These two gentlemen, can you not get around any part of this bill?

- Well, again, this legislation was just passed.

They've been in session since January of 2025.

Why wasn't the bill more thought put into it?

I mean, that specific issue, the house had amended it to having all vote challenges done by election day, which they should be.

There is a process for protest.

So I think voters are going to be suspicious when you make these changes this late in the game as soon as ballots are going to be mailed out.

- Can't the governor do something with this bill to push this past the election?

- He will veto it.

- Talk to them, not me.

House leaders canceled an expected vote on legislation that would redefine state hemp regulations.

Law enforcement groups and conservative lawmakers want THC levels lowered across a variety of hemp products.

The industry says those lower limits would effectively criminalize popular and currently legal hemp.

Industry advocates, small business owners visited the general assembly in large numbers on Tuesday, just as law enforcement officers did, to make their differing arguments.

There are policy differences on this issue, for sure.

But setting that age limit, Maggie, at 21 years old and older for sale seems to have broad consensus.

So people want some hemp regulations from everything I'm hearing, but maybe not a ban, or is this not a ban?

- Well, this was a great piece of legislation that passed early last spring, unanimously in the statehouse.

Then the Senate passed their own version.

And then nothing happened to it until August.

And it went in a conference report where there were no, you know, committee hearings or anything where people were able to come in, talk to the industry.

I mean, you can't go to a restaurant right now and not see a THC beverage on the menu, right?

It's something that people have gotten used to.

And this was a good idea to try to help make sure that people under 21 didn't have access to these products, that there were more safeguards in place.

And it's a piece of legislation that I want to see passed.

I mean, I'm a mother of three teenage early 20 sons.

Like, this is something that really concerns me.

But I just think it was a failure to not get something done earlier, and it's just a bill that's rushed through in a conference report, and then it takes in, it starts doing all these other things.

You know, Governor Stein brought up about the Kratom, how it was going to make that a controlled substance, and you wouldn't have the age requirements and things like that.

So I think this piece of legislation has a lot of issues.

I would have liked to have seen it pass how it was, you know, at least two years ago when it first came out, just so that we have some safeguards in place.

And now, unfortunately, we don't have anything.

- Senator Lowe?

- When it comes to -- anytime you have a product that people want and you have lots of money involved and lots of money to be made involved, it gets extremely complicated.

I would have loved for there to have been a lot more conversation with the industry, because I think that to a certain degree, the industry needs to be able to kind of police themselves in terms of what is sold and what is not sold.

Because there are things being sold that are dangerous to children, without that.

And that's just a fact.

So we've got to figure out how we can deal with that and let business prosper.

And I don't know all of the ins and outs of that, but we have to figure that out.

- Senator Lee, did this bill figure it out when it came out of the Senate?

Had it figured out all the problems with hemp?

If there was any problems to be had, I think it was the subjective opinion and policy debate.

- Yeah, a lot of folks say this just kind of popped out, but we've been talking about this for years.

I mean, I was a co-sponsor of the Compassionate Care Act, which was medical cannabis.

Senator Lowe and I worked with Senator Raven on that.

The regulation or statutes on hemp have also been circulating.

We sent one over to the House in response to the bill I think that you're speaking of.

We sent one with a pretty comprehensive regulatory environment that talked about testing, where it could be sold, and age limits, and really kind of a regulatory bill on hemp.

They didn't want to take that up, and so that's why we went into this conference process.

I mean, and the conference report was something -- we've been kind of going back and forth with the House on this.

We have not been able to find agreement.

So the conference process really was to do that, and the conferees on the House and the Senate side both agreed to it.

And what this bill provides really, a lot of folks says it kind of wipes out an industry.

It aligns to the federal standard on the federal timeline, which is in November.

So whatever was already happening with the feds, we aligned on the state level.

It gives us the ability to enforce that as well.

It sets age limits.

On kratom, synthetic kratom that you can buy in a gas station, they call it gas station heroin, is being sold right now.

This bill would eliminate all synthetic kratom.

It would establish a -- or the conference report, it would establish an age limit on natural kratom, the leaf, and put it behind the counter.

I mean, this is something that allows us to align with the federal standard, something that was happening anyway, and all these businesses had to prepare for in providing for a reset.

And then when we come back in December, there's the council or commission on cannabis regulation or on cannabis that we can look at.

- Paul, you represent members of the hemp industry or consult with them, want to be transparent about that.

This industry is allowed to grow in North Carolina.

Would it wipe out this industry?

Would it wipe out -- I don't know.

You hear them preaching doom and gloom.

- Absolutely.

In fact, if you look at this, and I look at the Senate attempt, I call it the noble experiment part two.

Keep in mind the first noble experiment was called prohibition.

And this was clearly a prohibition on a product.

Yes, you do have federal law, you do have that standard, but President Trump has come out and said we need to dial that federal law back, and there are efforts on that point right now that are being debated in Congress.

It may be addressed well before we get to the November deadline.

So what you have is you had a standard that was set so low that no one in the industry would be able to meet that standard, and you used that under the disguise of law enforcement, public good.

Everybody was for age restriction.

Maggie, you're absolutely right.

Age restriction bill, state house passed unanimously.

The Senate failed to take that out.

Also, there's other good pieces of legislation in there that the industry had already put forth that the industry could very much live with that the Senate did not want to consider from that process.

And so that's sort of the diciness of this.

So as we move forth, I mean, here's the thing.

You have an industry that is growing, thriving.

You've got 16,000 jobs.

You saw law enforcement.

There are other competing special interests on the other side.

You saw the law enforcement card being played.

And so the way I look at this, if you're going to treat the hemp industry, if you're going to talk about public safety, if you're going to talk about the good of the public welfare at all, now you need to start to roll alcohol into this.

How would everybody feel in America if you took the alcohol limit on hard spirits and said you have to reduce all alcohol limits down to beer?

You would wipe out the whole institutional side of that.

The fact of the matter is prohibition has been proven that does not work, and prohibition on this industry is not going to work.

- Senator Lee?

- Well, the Senate did have a comprehensive regulatory bill that we sent over to the House, and we couldn't get agreement on it.

And it provided a lot of things that you're actually talking about.

So the Senate was thoughtful and considered it and provided, as I said earlier, everything from testing to where you could have the stores, age limits and restrictions on container limits or serving limits.

And so we tried to do that in the Senate.

We sent it over to the House.

We couldn't get agreement.

We have to get these products out of the hands of kids.

We have to be able to do that.

And the only thing that we could do with the House conferees is to get the agreement on this conference report.

We tried to do it previously.

It didn't work because we couldn't get the House on board.

We finally got the House on board to get us to November.

And, again, I know you say that the federal limit might change.

Currently, the law is what we have put in ours to match the federal standard.

And when we come back in November, we can take a look at this again if it does change.

- Absolutely.

And expand this.

You talk about medical marijuana, you talk about marijuana in other states, everything else.

There's a thing called the COLEL letter at the federal level.

I mean, basically you've got a federal administration deciding whether they want to enforce federal law or not from that standpoint.

So this is going to be a debate.

The fact is that it's something we're going to hear about.

It's going to come back up in November.

And it's something that's going to continue on.

- Last word, Maggie.

- I think the -- we've got 20 seconds.

The industry won this round of public discourse.

But law enforcement is out there publicly.

They want a ban.

- I just want to see this issue taken in regular committee instead of throwing everything into a conference report.

You should have industry members in there.

You should have doctors and physicians.

You should have people part of the legislative process, not just in a big old conference report.

- And that's the show, folks.

Thanks for joining us.

Email your thoughts at statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll read it.

See you later.

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