- [Kelly] North Carolina candidates enter the home stretch before the March primary, and the Parents' Bill of Rights faces a fresh round of federal complaints.

This is, "State Lines."

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

[riveting staccato music continues] ♪ [riveting staccato music continues] - Hi there, good to see you again.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me on this week's, "State Lines," is Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation, WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell comes over from the radio studio, and Matt Mercer, a man of print and digital, "North State Journal," editor and chief.

Gentlemen, good to see you.

Happy New Year, I haven't seen you since before the New year and the holidays.

- Yeah, happy New Year.

- It's good to be.

- Happy New Year to you.

- And you guys are a master at your side of the media world, and I appreciate you being on the show, and let's get rolling towards the primaries.

I've been watching the gubernatorial numbers that came in this week.

Campaigns are releasing, I guess, their war chests, or at least how large they are.

The finance numbers are being reported for the last half of 2023.

Democratic candidate Josh Stein reports raising $5.7 million, Colin, during the last half of the year.

Republican Mark Robinson, $3.4 million to close the year.

Bill Graham, who's challenging Mark Robinson, loaned his campaign 2.8 of the $2.9 million.

Republican Dale Folwell's in the fight in the GOP primary, reporting $1.27 million, $1 million bucks as a personal loan, and Mike Morgan, the Democrat, raised just over $119,000, Colin, but the former Supreme Court Justice Morgan got in what, September or so?

- Yeah, he was a late entry to that, but still a really low number compared to Stein, who has, I think, in addition to what he raised in that report, is up and starting the year with $11 million in the bank.

I mean, this is gonna be one expensive governor's race.

- Do you think the primaries are going to see an influx of millions and millions of dollars in cash, like we expect in the general election, or do you see some of the leading candidates pulling back, seeing how polling goes?

I'm assuming polling hasn't changed that much in February.

I did not look, heading into the weekend, where everyone stands.

- Yeah, I would be surprised if you saw a big advertising push, particularly from the front runners, Mark Robinson and Josh Stein, just because they're so far ahead in the polls.

They've got so many resources, and their opponents are just so underfunded, with the exception of Bill Graham, who's, as you mentioned, loaned himself a lot of money, but has already spent most of that on ads, and so far, it doesn't seem to have given his campaign a ton of traction, so I think a lot of them are looking towards the general, and then the second-tier candidates in the primary, I mean, you can't buy a whole lot with $100,000 in this, you know, media landscape.

- Matt, how do we make this primary interesting?

A lot of good candidates out there, there are very experienced candidates in both parties, running across up and down the ballot, so we don't hear too much, we're seeing a few ads, that's about it for the gubernatorial race, at least.

- Yeah, I think, given the time period, from filing to the primary being in a month, it's gone really fast, and I think that turnout is not going to be on that upper level of where we've seen it in the past.

One thing that Mark Robinson is doing, he's not running a lot of ads, but he's holding a series of rallies all over the state, I think he's got two coming up this weekend.

He's done, usually, two on a Saturday, some during the week, so he's out there, and just to show his star power within the Republican primary.

Every down-ballot candidate is trying to go to those rallies to get in front of the voters that are showing up, because it's, by large, you know, everyone considers him to be the nominee-in-waiting.

- Does that reflect that the candidates down ballot are supporting Mark Robinson, or they just wanna be in on the action, because that's where the Republican votes are, at least for the primary?

- Yeah, I think you hit it.

It's that they want to be where the most voters are.

You know, I don't think the crowds that Mark Robinson draws versus what someone else would draw, I mean, there's really no comparison.

It's kind of like Donald Trump in that way, so I think that's where those candidates are going to be, just to look for any advantage that they can get, and, both primaries, you know, they're gonna be over in March, and we're going to have, you know, Josh Stein versus Mark Robinson coming up, after March 5th.

- Well, I'm not gonna say that there couldn't be an upset, Mitch.

If you're in the fight and you can score a knockout.

I know at least one of the Republican candidates says, "I believe I can win no matter what the polls say."

What you say, a man of great experience?

- Well, the voters have the say, so we can talk all we want about the polls, but the voters will end up having the say, but I think Matt's right, that the most likely scenario is Josh Stein, Mark Robinson.

They have been far and away leading.

It's not as if it's five or 10 points, with the chance that some major change in the news will shift things.

They've been up by 20, 30 points, and former Justice Morgan hasn't seemed to do a whole lot in his campaign.

I see occasional press releases from him, but otherwise, not much happening.

I think that pretty much everyone is expecting it's going to be Stein and Robinson.

To me, the most interesting thing about the primaries is the races where you have multiple candidates, especially on the Republican side, running for some of these congressional seats, and when you have 14 people running for a seat, how does anyone get any traction in there?

It's probably going to come down to who can round up enough of their friends to get out there to try to get to 30% plus one, which is how you'd win a primary.

- How important are those in-person rallies?

Mark Robinson draws an enthusiastic crowd, others can tour, Josh Stein's been in barbecue restaurants.

You're meeting and greeting, there's also the mass media, where millions of dollars reaches millions of potential voters.

How do you balance those out to say, "I have a strong campaign"?

- I mean, that's the challenge.

I mean, you see Robinson going to a lot of the rural counties, like, he was in Perquimans County, up in the Northeast.

There's not a lot of voters up there, that's a fairly sparsely populated area of the state, so even if you get people to come out to a rally, it's not that many votes comparatively, but it is a sign of, you know, your campaign's out there, and hopefully you get some media coverage in, like, the local paper and things like that, that maybe give you a little bit of a boost.

- Right.

- And one other thing that's interesting is that we have seen, once again, the decline of the debate.

There aren't any debates.

- [Kelly] You're tellin' me.

- Yeah, and this is something that used to be a standard piece of the election puzzle, was there would be a candidate filing, and then all of the candidates who seem to have a shot at winning would agree on having a series of debates or at least one debate.

None of these races are having debates.

- And some of 'em aren't even given media interviews, they're just sort of relying on the campaign apparatus to get their message out.

- There have been some debates in candidate forums, just not with everyone involved, and I'm fascinated to see what happens in the general, because I don't know there's a guarantee there's gonna be election, or, not elections, but debates at all, without some really good work, on behalf of media outlets to try to convince these candidates.

I mean, social media, you can just buy your access into people's homes.

- Yeah, I don't see Robinson agree to a debate at any point.

- At any point.

- And part of it is, the candidates have been successful not doing debates.

If you're not gonna be penalized, if you're gonna be like Ted Budd, and you basically just win without ever having a debate.

- Why not?

- Why take the risk?

- Yeah, there you go.

Well, State Board of Elections have tweaked same-day voter registration rules to ensure that a voter's ballot is not disqualified because a single mailed notice is deemed undeliverable by the U.S. Post Office.

That single mailed notice is part of the recent 2023 election law reform changes.

It was a Bush-appointed federal judge who ruled that voters really need more than one chance to prove their residency and absolutely deserve an appeals process before losing their vote due to lost mail.

Judge Thomas Schroeder rules it's likely unconstitutional to disqualify a ballot and never alert the voter.

Matt, seems to make sense.

I don't weigh in on court cases.

What was this about?

- Yeah, so there were a series of packed reforms that were made in this bill, and I think even Speaker Moore came out and said, "This is a relatively minor fix for everything that was in the bill."

So I think they're gonna work and get that through.

But I think overall, the changes that were made, or something that Republicans have certainly long sought, and now they've been able to finally enact those changes where you're gonna tighten up some of those deadlines.

I go back to what happened in 2020, where you had these collusive settlements where the deadlines for these, it went from 3 days to 9 to 12 days at a certain point.

And so Republicans thought, "Well, we're gonna make this sort of change.

It needs to come from the legislature."

And I think they finally now have secured that victory in terms of how those deadlines coming through for election.

- Mitch, in the practical sense, a law like this that passes as comprehensive gets a lot of attention.

With this, a provision that gets thrown out but quickly changed within a days or hours of hearing a ruling, was it lawmakers trying to pass a bill to see what they could get away with?

Or was it, buried in this, we just didn't think through that provision?

And okay, we'll fix that.

No problem.

- I wouldn't say see what they can get away with it.

It was reforms that they wanted to make, especially another piece of this law that has been challenged was ending the three-day grace period for the absentee ballots.

And that there's an interesting development on that within the past week as well.

But that provision, the one that was challenged and the one in which the judge said, "Yes, this is probably going to be problematic," the only change in the law was that they went from two pieces of undeliverable mail to one, but the piece about not having any recourse was already in the law.

That was something that's been in the law for a while.

So basically, they finally caught up to the fact that, oh, yes, if we're taking these ballots out here and not giving people any recourse, that's probably gonna be a problem.

But the most interesting development to me on that front recently was there are three different lawsuits that are challenging this law in federal court.

All three of them challenged that same-day registration change we've been talking about.

Another one that was filed by the Democratic National Committee and the State Democratic Party also challenged ending the three-day grace period and loosening up the rules for the partisan poll observers, the ones that the parties have watching to see what's going on.

Well, the State Elections Board, which is 3-2 Democratic Majority, just came out with a motion to dismiss all of the rest of that.

They say, "Look, we get what you're saying, Judge Schroeder, about the same-day registration piece, but you should dismiss these other two pieces because," and they cite the same language Republicans did that most states have election day as the deadline.

And they also said, "We can loosen up the rules on poll observers, but there are still state laws stopping people from harassing people at the polls."

So this is not going to make it easier for these poll observers to do something that would be problematic.

They still face restrictions.

- Change the absentee ballot outlet deadline seems like the really meat of this bill, where this is sort of minor, and honestly, the fix that the State Board of Elections came up with in the past week makes sense to say that rather than send you a second letter that may also bounce, that the postal service fails you, to call you up, send you an email, have some extra checks, 'cause it's 2024.

Like we can reach people without snail mail.

We have that information out there.

- Yeah, and then let's pivot just slightly, 'cause there's a federal lawsuit aimed at the state senate maps that the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit say is gerrymandering.

The plaintiffs want a quick ruling, like by February 15th.

Right now, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has it.

They have agreed, Matt, to at least take the briefs and the responses.

They have not agreed to do a ruling by February 15th, but if they were to stop those maps, that could throw the Senate primary off by what, two, three months.

Well, someone figured this stuff out.

- Yeah, I have a hard time seeing that actually happening.

I think the way that they were summarily rejected when they attempted this during the filing period, right before that point.

I don't see that happening.

I think their arguments have been taken, but at the end of the day, I think the only way you're really gonna see those changes is if Democrats win a majority in the General Assembly and make the changes that they want.

I don't think they're going to get it at this point through the court system.

- I think if they do, it's gonna be 2026.

Like it's a little late in the game for this year.

- Yeah, and remember, the Fourth Circuit has already looked at this exact same case and decided earlier on that they weren't gonna give the plaintiffs a quick injunction.

So I think they're doing their due diligence.

They know that the plaintiffs wanna get some sort of quick ruling.

So they say, "Okay, everyone knows where you stand on this.

Let's get the briefs quickly."

And then they'll have a ruling.

So it's decided before people are actually heading to the polls.

- And in fairness to the two voters who are suing with all the help they have to stop the senate maps, that's their right and privilege as a citizen to fight something they deem as unfair.

It's not they're trying to disrupt the election as much as they want to affect possible change before voters vote.

Is that the way to see that?

Or should people be upset if you're in a partisan position that A, you're either not getting a ruling, or B, someone's trying to disrupt the primary?

- Well, I think people can be upset, but it is their right to sue.

Interestingly enough, of the various lawsuits that have been filed about election maps in North Carolina, this is the only one where the plaintiffs were looking for an injunction to block maps.

There's another suit that challenges the congressional map and another suit that challenges all three statewide maps.

But in neither of those cases did the plaintiffs say, "We want an injunction."

They basically just say, "Throw out the maps, but we understand it's probably not gonna happen for this year."

- And I think one thing to add too is, yes, it's absolutely their right to sue, but if you follow the money, who's actually funding these lawsuits?

They're coming from groups who wanna see this done, and they're using the court system to try to get what they can't get at the ballot box.

- Colin, we've talked about a lot of issues, and we talk into elections law, especially on a TV show that's 30 minutes long.

It's not enough time to talk about a very complex topic.

At what point do voters just get confused, even engaged voters get confused by all these changes, all these last minute attempts to change, to stall, to stop?

Do you see it affecting turnout?

Do you see it infecting - infecting, affecting enthusiasm?

- Maybe infecting.

- Yeah.

I mean, the interesting part, I think, the people that turn out for this primary, because it's so dull at the presidential level, I mean.

Biden's the only one on the ballot on the Democratic side.

The contest between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley might be all but over, if not completely over by the time March rolls around in North Carolina.

So you're gonna see the most dedicated voters coming out.

And I think a lot of them probably have followed some of these changes.

There will be some people who get tripped up and didn't realize the absentee about ballot deadline had changed.

And those might be resulting in lawsuits.

Whereas, you know, these groups that are funding these lawsuits look for somebody who got tripped up by the changes, their vote didn't count, and then that becomes the fodder for whatever legal challenge is gonna work its way through the quarter of the coming months.

- But people who are new to North Carolina should know that this is not something that's new to our state in terms of lawsuits and challenges.

It was not too long ago where we had a ballot one year where you voted and there was a congressional race on the ballot, but the election officials said, "Well, don't worry about that 'cause that's not your real," - Like three months later.

- That's right.

This is not your real vote, you're gonna have another vote on this.

So people looked at it and said, "Wait a minute, I don't think I'm voting on Congress.

Why is it on the ballot?"

We've had a lot of changes over the years because of redistricting fights.

- If this primary in general only bring out the diehards for their particular party, they're a growing, if not majority of, or plurality, of independent unaffiliated voters.

Where do they sit in all this?

Mark Robinson has his fans.

Josh Stein's gonna have his not to mention Biden and Trump and there's a lot of folks in there that may not.

- Yeah, I think one thing to stress to people who may be new to the state is if you register as an affiliate, you can pick whichever ballot you want when you go into the primary.

So even if you might typically be a Democratic voter and you decide this year you'd like to pull a Republican ballot and weigh in on that Trump-Haley race, you have that option.

And I'll be interested to see how many voters perhaps jump into a primary that might not normally pick just because they have interest in one particular race there.

I mean also there's these congressional races where it's gonna get decided in the Republican primary.

So if you live in one of those places and you wanna decide who your next congressman's likely to be, you probably wanna vote the Republican ballot.

- And with all due respect to the people who have registered in the No Labels party, they basically, in some respects, shot themselves in the foot.

'Cause they can't vote in any primary.

- Yeah, they won't get a ballot at all because they don't have a primary, but they're not unaffiliated.

And some of those folks may have been confused thinking, "Hey, I don't wanna be labeled, let me check the box for no labels as opposed to I'm affiliated."

- Hadn't thought about that one.

- Don't do that if you're a new voter.

- If you wanna vote in a primary, don't register no labels.

But hey, you know, if you support that party and only wanna vote for their presidential candidate at the end, okay.

- And that's where I would add too, that because someone is registered unaffiliated, a lot of them still have partisan beliefs.

And they tend to go to that certain side and there's a smaller sliver of that they're a truly independent and middle of the road.

- Well and no labels.

They have an active group.

They've sent me emails and it's just, they're part of the dialogue going on right now.

So thanks to you guys.

I'll probably hear from one of 'em 'cause of that rhetoric there.

Tell me, Hey, car insurance legislators are examining North Carolina's insurance structure policies and practices.

Some of them have an eye towards reforming our insurance system.

And car insurance is right there in the bullseye being reviewed because North Carolina maintains a high risk pool.

One of two states, I think, New Hampshire might be the other state where private insurance companies can place bad or high risk drivers policies into that pool.

One size says putting those drivers in a high risk pool, creates an ecosystem that rewards good drivers.

The other side, Mitch, it seems to say, hey, prove that by the way 'cause we don't believe that.

All insured state drivers pay a surcharge on their policies to fund the high risk pool.

That's the civics lesson.

Car insurance is going up whether you're a great driver and it's going to go up if you're a bad one.

- Yeah.

When the general assembly took this up, I had a sense of deja vu because this was something that our organization, the John Locke Foundation was talking about more than a decade ago.

We put out a couple of white papers saying that this reinsurance facility that we have is a penalty for the best drivers.

And I think that's something that the General assembly is looking into.

Because what happens is, North Carolina has this reinsurance facility, it's not part of any government agency, but it's sort of run by the insurance companies.

And the insurance companies can take any policy in the state and put it into this reinsurance facility.

And in North Carolina it's much larger than it is in any other state.

The downside among folks who've looked at this, who and have looked at the situation in other states is that the best drivers, the ones with the least risk end up paying more to subsidize the teenagers and the folks who have a record that would not look as great.

Now, one reason why this hasn't attracted a ton of attention over the years is that our insurance rates relatively are in pretty good shape.

So a lot of people say, "Well if our insurance rates are good, comparable to other states, why should we care?"

And that's been the hard sell for the people who want reform is they're saying, "Okay, better drivers are gonna turn out with better rates."

And people are saying, "Well, better than we have now, probably not."

- Colin political philosophy in coffee shop talk and white paper if that goes out the window when I have great car insurance at home insurance rates and even he says, it's hard to be philosophical when the wallet's a lot heavier because we have this system in place.

Or does it?

- I mean that's the challenge that legislators are trying to figure out and they're having a hard time getting answers.

They initially held a hearing with the commissioner of insurance, he didn't really know the answer.

So then they had a second hearing this past week with the reinsurance facility person and got a little bit more of it.

But they're really trying to get the heart of, are we gonna get lower rates if we throw the system out the window and go with what other states are doing?

Or are we better off just keeping it like it is and knowing it could be worse.

- Alright.

Matt, do we care politically, if we have great insurance policies and have a solid structure that seems to work according to those who support it?

- Yeah, I think you only care if your insurance is about to get hiked, in whether that's whether your fault or someone else's.

I think it's one of those issues that, yeah, it's important, but I think people would rather handle it.

You, you know, over the course of a long session where you're taking up umpteen number of bills versus where trying to make it a higher profile issue.

And I just don't think it's there for most of the citizenry right now.

- Let just watch this.

It's all a kitchen table issue.

I wanna move quickly to where state education officials say there was an 18% increase in crime occurring in our public schools during the 2022-23 school year.

Statistically 18% is about one more crime in school per 1000 students.

If you compare it to the 2021-22 school year.

Number one offense, Colin, was they were catching students with controlled substances.

I think it's probably drugs.

Second offense, possession of a non-firearm weapon was number two.

Number three, kids are beating up school employees and that's assault is the number three thing.

Good news is though, literacy rates seem to be going up with this new training for teachers.

Dropout rates the lowest in 10 years.

So the newspaper guys and journalists can write whichever headline they want.

There's a lot of good in the public schools, but, post pandemic, what's going on with the behavior on campus?

- I mean, you have to assume it's mental health issues.

These are still the kids who went through the years of virtual education.

And so some of their social skills just maybe are not as developed as they should be.

I've also seen some analysis of this saying that because schools have much more security cameras, metal detectors, that a lot of this is getting caught in ways that it might not have five or six years ago, and that could be part of what's driving the increase.

But certainly, a lot of cause for concern in these numbers that just came out.

- Mitch, how do we interpret numbers for public schools?

Those that love public schools see that glass-half-full, good news.

The other side says, "Hey, misbehavior on campus, crimes, drugs."

- Yeah, I think with those crime stats, it's interesting that this information comes out around the same time as National School Choice Week, because we have seen that there is substantial support for choice among parents and among non-parents looking at the schools.

And it's interesting to see that that is showing up at the same time as we're learning about what's happening in the schools.

That's one reason why a lot of parents think about alternatives to the traditional public school to which they're assigned.

Sometimes it's academics.

Sometimes they just don't feel that their kids are safe.

- What do you make of the play about that, you know, they are more secure?

Schools have more security, more cameras, more metal detectors.

You're gonna find more things wrong.

'Cause kids do sneak things into campus, and they've been doing it for a long time.

- Yeah, it's certainly not breaking news that kids sometimes make bad decisions.

But I think that you can trace this back to there's been no true accountability for COVID when schools were closed, when there was, you know, virtual learning that, by and large, I think most kids didn't do well with.

And they didn't learn those social skills, as Colin mentioned.

But also, I think there's been this push, it's really been a failure in most respects, called restorative justice, where you're taking kids and you're not punishing them.

You're saying, "Well, it's not your fault, it's something else that's fault."

And so I think that's one item that really needs to be looked at and say that it's truly been a failure.

- All right, a federal complaint is now challenging the state education law that is banning sex education studies in some early grades and placing limits on transgender student participation in sports.

The US Departments of Education and the US Justice Department are being asked to review the state's rules.

The plaintiffs say local school officials in North Carolina have not been trained to enforce the state law, while also not violating federal Title IX protections that forbid sex discrimination in education.

State Superintendent Truitt says the Parents' Bill of Rights provides transparency for parents, plain and simple.

Her soundbite, of course, her quote, was much longer than that.

I'm truncating it here.

So now it's not so much court.

Now we're looking at the Biden administration to review North Carolina regulations.

How does that play out?

- Well, I think that the folks who are filing this see that they are having a sympathetic ear in the Biden administration, 'cause the Biden administration would not have passed any of these things that the Republican-led General Assembly did.

And so it'll be interesting to see how far the Biden administration wants to wade into North Carolina policy.

There are a number of pieces of the Parents' Bill of Rights that have generated controversy, but generally, the bottom line and the reason why it was passed was that parents need to know what's happening with their kids in school.

That's the default setting that should be in place.

That parents need to know what's being taught, whether their kids have decided that they're gonna change their name or change their pronouns, or, you know, anything else.

Whether they're gonna be subjected to some sort of health screenings or particular tests that might not be the academic tests they get in the classroom.

All of that needs to be in parents' hands.

That was the reason for the bill.

- I hear from, we see politicians.

You deal with advocates and politicians.

So we're seeing the edges of this debate in the sharpest corners.

Out in the real world, where are the Parents' Bill of Rights?

Is it a popular law, by and large?

Is it an unpopular law, by and large?

- I suspect the vast majority of parents haven't necessarily encountered it yet.

A lot of the school districts are trying to figure out how they implement them.

In the case of some school districts like Chapel Hill, refuse to implement some of these provisions, and that could end up being a fight.

But a lot of these, unless you're dealing with a specific case dealing with your child, you may not even know that this is going.

But I think a lot of it really depends on the party label of who you're talking to.

Folks on the left feel like it's a bad move.

Folks on the right are happy to see it happen.

- You know, Matt, on this particular issue, the debate's inverted.

You want all power at the local level.

Why not let individual county school boards set whatever they wanna do with their academic calendars, and let whomever play sports no matter what they identify or how they identify?

Is this an issue that needs a big statewide regulation, or can we find a solution by allowing local boards to speak for their communities?

- Yeah, I think they can operate within a certain amount, but things like the calendar are, that was debated for a long time, and now schools are starting to challenge that simply for that reason.

But if you're talking about boys playing girls sports, I think a very large majority say, "No, that's not right.

That's why you have boys and girls sports."

That's why you have those.

I think, you know, a lot of people wanna default to that, you know, position of the local group having it, and necessarily don't feel like the federal side needs to come in as much.

- All right, we're gonna wrap it up with that.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for, I'm back on the bicycle field, like a good show.

A lot of topics.

We'll have you on the weeks ahead.

Thank you for watching.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

We'll read every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for having us in your home.

Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you.

We invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.