- [Announcer] This week on "State Lines," a glimpse into the primary elections and what recent polls show for the governor's race.

Plus, an insurance rate increase is denied.

This is "State Lines."

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[bright stirring music] ♪ - Welcome to "State Lines."

I'm Melody Hunter-Pillion, filling in for Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today is political analyst Joe Stewart, public relations consultant Pat Ryan, WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell, and Steve Rao, host of WPTF's "Wake County Round Up."

Guys, thanks for being here.

We have a lot to talk about today.

We're gonna get started.

North Carolina is about three and a half weeks away from primary election day.

Can't believe that time is already upon us.

Meredith College released a recent survey for the gubernatorial primary race.

Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson was in the lead for the GOP ticket, Attorney General Josh Stein the lead for the Democratic ticket.

When comparing both candidates in a potential election, Josh Stein had a slight lead over Mark Robinson.

Colin, where are we on this?

- So this is really interesting.

What I was following with this poll was the undecided level.

People have really made up their minds on the presidential level, particularly on the Republican side.

I think it was over 70% of voters surveyed this poll prefer Donald Trump.

Only 20% said they were gonna vote for Nikki Haley, and only like 3 or 4% in that poll said they were undecided for president.

But you get down the ballot, people are still a little bit undecided.

You know, Josh Stein and Mark Robinson, far and away the front runners on this, of course.

Their opponents are only polling, you know, 5 or 6% at most.

It looks like it's less than that for most of them.

But there's still, I think, 30 or 40% in both the Democratic and Republican primaries who are undecided.

So things could change at the last minute if there's some, you know, big action in those races.

But as it stands, really only the front runners have enough money to get their message out at this point so it's unlikely that you'll see a huge shift.

I think the Republican primary is one to watch in that Salisbury attorney Bill Graham does have several million dollars of his own money he's putting behind ads attacking Robinson, so that could have a little bit of an impact, but for the most part it's kind of feeling like a quiet primary season.

It's not nearly as heated at it's, you know, surprise potential as we've seen in the past.

- I don't know, at home I'm looking at those ads and they seem really provocative, Graham's ads attacking Mark Robinson.

So I don't know how much it moves the needle for Graham, but what does it do when we look at the general election, the bigger election?

- I think that could be, you know, Graham is sort of inadvertently helping the Josh Stein for Governor campaign out should he not be successful in March because you've got ads on issues highlighting Robinson's comments questioning the existence of the Holocaust, making comments about whether women make good leaders.

And those remarks are being blasted out in a multimillion dollar ad campaign now.

So voters, particularly moderate voters, independents are more likely to see those earlier in the process whereas the Stein campaign may be holding its fire till closer to November with the attack ads that they're inevitably gonna run.

- Yeah, I mean, this is gonna be just the beginning.

So on Graham's front, yeah, he's spent a lot of money on ads.

He's been up on the air for weeks now, and he still hasn't broken double digits.

I think he had nine points in that poll.

The question for me, I think, is unlike some previous polls, this poll had Josh Stein beating Mark Robinson by, I think, four or five points.

Other previous polls have shown them even, or even Robinson with a slight lead.

So the question is, and I don't think anybody has an answer yet, but the question is, is that a result of some of Graham's advertising that's been pointed in targeting Robinson, which is going to continue and get even worse when we get closer to the general election and Stein starts launching tens of millions of dollars worth of ads on the same content?

- Yeah, but he's already got 11 million in the bank for Stein's campaign.

Graham has spent maybe 2 million, so that gives you a sense of if that's a successful ad strategy.

- Yeah, and so the question is, is this result something of an outlier?

It's still only a couple points different from what other polls have been.

Or is this indicative of some of that messaging, perhaps taking hold early, which would be a problem?

There's no way to answer the question right now.

- What I predict, this is gonna be very similar to the 2020 election.

I think assuming Trump and Biden in the presidential, I think you're gonna see split ticket voting, right?

And so you could have a situation with a Republican winning the state, Donald Trump, and then Josh Stein, just like Roy Cooper, winning.

I think a couple reasons for that.

The $17 million war chest.

Things have been going well under Governor Cooper.

He's at, you know, at 87% approval rating, led us through the pandemic.

$31 billion of jobs coming in, broadband investments, about 880,000, you know, people paying $30 less on their internet bills, and Medicaid expansion, right?

So it's almost this mentality of, well, it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I think Stein, you know, has the experience as the AG to lead the state from day one.

And as you hone in the general election, this is a very big job.

You're the chief executive of the eighth largest state in the country.

So I think people are gonna be honing in to say, you know, "Do we want a governor that understands that, that knows how to do it, put together an agency and lead?"

And so I predict that he will win.

It could be a close election, but I do think that... And that might be a factor that, you know, the polling's come out, so Republicans might be saying, "Is Robinson the right guy to run?

Would it be better to run a Graham?"

And Folwell's working hard, too.

- Yeah, both Folwell and Graham are making the case that if Robinson's the nominee, then Republicans lose in November.

- One of the interesting dynamics in this particular primary, too, is the fact that there's not really a Democratic primary for president.

So Democratic registered voters will not be as likely to want to turn out because the presidential race is not really relevant.

The significant races where there are lots of Republican candidates are in the 8th Congressional District, the 13th Congressional District, 6th Congressional District.

Will unaffiliated voters more consistently choose to vote in the Republican primary 'cause that's where the action is, and then, that skew the results?

- You're choosing your next congressman in some of those places because those districts are so competitive in the general.

- Exactly right.

Yep.

- That's right.

- Gentlemen, can we all agree that Steve appropriately has on purple, since you brought into this North Carolina's purple dynamics when it comes to politics.

- That's why I wore my purple today.

- Yeah, purple state.

- I figured that'd be appropriate.

It's a purple state.

- What are we looking at as we get closer?

Beyond the primaries, what are we looking at as we get closer to this general election?

- I think the story for this election is how much money comes from out-of-state sources in support of both the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor.

But the attorney general's race is also likely to bring in a lot of outside support.

Dan Bishop, the Republican nominee in all likelihood, and Jeff Jackson, Democratic nominee.

I think, you know, the joke often is that AG stands for aspiring governor.

And I think for both of those guys, they probably are on track at some point to be a gubernatorial candidate here in North Carolina, so I think a lot of attention will be focused on the AG's race.

- Yeah, I don't think, back to the governor's race, I don't think you could have two different likely opponents than Josh Stein and Mark Robinson.

I mean, and I think the contrast favors Robinson.

You have a blue collar, comes from poverty-stricken background, former factory worker, loud, boisterous, speaks his mind, right?

African-American compared to Josh Stein, who's an Ivy League educated lawyer, buttoned up inside the belt.

Like, you could not have two different candidates.

And I think that, especially North Carolina, the contrast in that sense favors Robinson.

- I think in this election, which you're gonna see, you know, from the national perspective, it's really gonna come down.

You know, president Trump is gonna say, look, the border's a mess.

You know, we're not in a safe place in the world with wars in Israel and Ukraine and everything going on.

I think President Biden will make a case that, you know, the economy's doing better.

We avoided a recession because of the trillions of dollars invested.

Look at North Carolina, all the, you know, jobs coming back.

The CHIPS Act, right?

Vin Fast will speed all these jobs coming back on Governor Cooper's watch.

I think the question becomes, you know, whoever can get that message, you know, eight months out, how will that trickle down into the ballot?

You know, I think it's gonna be very interesting to see there's always a drop off.

You know, how could you have a Democratic Governor, Republican Lieutenant Governor.

We've got Rachel Hunt, you know, Jeff Jackson, others running for treasurer, auditor.

Jessica Holmes running now as the new auditor.

Will there be a drop off of those voters as you go down the ballot, right?

Will blacks under perform in these elections?

Now they're saying the Black Americans may not turn out for Joe Biden, right?

Hispanics seem to be trending more Republican, at least what I'm observing out there.

So these are all factors to consider.

- And we don't know where African-Americans will necessarily fall with Mark Robinson either in some of the comments that he's made.

And we'll move on to the next topic.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey denied a request to increase insurance rates for homeowners.

Insurance companies asked for a 42% increase across the state.

They also asked for a 99% increase in some areas along the coast of North Carolina.

A court date has been set for October, but that could be resolved if the insurance industry and insurance commissioner agree on a rate.

Joe, you work for the independent insurance agents of North Carolina.

- Yeah, the rate making process in North Carolina hearkens back to a bygone era.

Many states had this phenomenon, what is called a Rate Bureau, and in effect that simply is all of the insurance companies working together to share their loss experiences and promulgate what they consider to be the necessary average rate.

So 42% is that average rate.

That rate is filed with the commissioner of insurance who's an elected official.

And by the way, it was the independent insurance agents in 1898 when the organization was first formed, that recommended the state create a Department of Insurance and elected insurance commissioners.

So only 11 states have elected commissioners.

So it's a relatively unique phenomena.

But this rate filing has historically been the industry files what they think.

And again, remember that insurance rates are presumptive.

It's what the industry thinks is necessary to collect, to pay all the claims that are likely to come in as a result of all types of damage or property being lost of that's insured.

And to run their companies to have enough money to pay all the employees and operate and to make a profit as any business would need to.

Insurance is an essential financial service product.

It makes the free market economy possible that people can buy insurance and indemnify themselves from loss.

And so the rate under the statute has to be neither excessive nor inadequate.

So the commissioner's job really is to find that balance.

And so the Rate Bureau files a rate, the commissioner either approves it or rejects it.

They can negotiate a settlement at any time.

The hearing date has been set.

And that's ultimately an opportunity for the Rate Bureau and their actuaries to make the case for why they think the filing that they've made is appropriate.

And for the Department of Insurance and their actuaries to say why they think some other rate is necessary.

It does play out in an odd way in an election year because it is a very poignant thing to anybody that has to purchase property insurance to imagine that the rate might need to go up.

We are seeing dramatic increases in property insurance across the state, most notably on the coast in large part.

It's an incredibly inflationary period of time.

The goods and services that have to be purchased by insurance companies in a claim, if something's damaged in a home and whatever has to be repaired or replaced is more expensive as a result of insurance of inflation, then the insurance has to reflect that additional cost.

We've seen a number of natural disasters over the last few years, not just in North Carolina, but across the country and across the globe.

It is a period where there is a greater frequency in severity of natural disaster.

And there's a lot of pressure in the international capital markets.

Insurance companies purchase what's called reinsurance, which is insurance for claims in excess of what they might have collected for premium.

And the cost of obtaining that insurance by insurance companies has gone up as a result of global economic phenomena.

And that cost has to be passed along.

So ultimately it plays out in generally in the last few years.

There's been an agreement between the commissioner and the Rate Bureau for a settled rate that's less than the rate that was filed.

And I have every reason to believe that's what will happen this time.

- Politically it's interesting 'cause it is an election year.

Mike Causey has both competitors in the Republican primary and then there's two Democrats running in the Democratic primary to try to unseat him.

And he's been attacked a lot for how he's handled this so far.

I think it was sort of a no brainer for him this week to come out and say, look, this is way too high.

I'm rejecting this.

And it sort of kicks the can down the road.

There's now a hearing set for October, which is right before the election.

So as far as where we end up on this, unless the insurance companies come back with a much smaller increase that he feels like he can support as a compromise, this process is gonna drag on long past the election.

It's gonna be a while before we know what the increase actually ends up being.

- And I think, you know, I think he wins political points, Commissioner Causey for, you know, taking this on and saying, I'm gonna stand by the people in North Carolina.

But the concern I have looking forward is that it, you know, the elephant in the room is climate change, right?

I mean, all across the country and world we're seeing in the United States more floods, more fires, more droughts, more significant hurricanes.

And what does that mean?

Homes are destroyed.

When homes are destroyed, my insurance goes up, right?

And then the insurance carriers have to have costs that they have to manage.

And so I think it's not an unsustainable future, but I think we're headed down a path.

I mean, when you look in California, they're paying 60% rates.

Colorado, 50%.

North Carolina up 42%.

I think that we gotta do our point of reducing carbon emissions, but it's not gonna have, we're not gonna get to zero anytime soon and we're not gonna see the number of storms go down.

- That rate's gonna keep going up.

I mean, if you own a house on the outer banks and it's susceptible to hurricanes, you're gonna be paying a fortune for insurance.

- Well, in some profile of the natural disasters that have a consequence relative to insurance or not just hurricanes, it's also drought, wildfire, earthquake, those are all phenomenas that have insurance-related losses.

Earlier this week, the governing body that go looks at the rating of hurricanes announced that they're gonna propose a category six.

Because more storms now are at a sustained wind velocity of 190 miles an hour.

Category five is more than 150 miles an hour.

So the frequency and severity of storms is very likely to continue to increase in the near term future, and as Steve pointed out, a lot of these pressures from the losses that result from natural disasters do drive the factors that determine what the right rate for insurance is.

- So we'll be talking about rates again, because we know the frequency, intensity, and duration of storms, sea level rise, all that.

That is not going away.

It's about what's the right balance, and so that real folk every day at home are trying to understand how do we battle with that and also afford the things we can afford.

So onto the next topic, though, guys, oh, and this is a topic that has been snowballing into an avalanche.

Durham Public Schools is facing a shortage of teachers amid a major resignation.

Durham Public School Superintendent Pascal Mumbenga resigned on Wednesday.

This comes after seven Durham Public Schools closed on Monday over staffing shortages.

Today on Friday, all Durham Public Schools have closed.

Back in October of 2023, an error led to many employees receiving a 25% pay increase.

In January, the pay scale was decreased.

Since then, many teachers and school employees have held strikes over the lowered pay and lack of full staff.

Oh my goodness, Pat, [laughs] what is going on here?

It seems like every day, there's just something where it spirals further.

- Yeah, I would say it's a complete and unmitigated disaster.

I mean, I'll try to sum up.

It's a long and drawn out affair that could probably take 20 minutes to explain, but in sum, in February of last year, a consultant produced a report that the school district wanted to give raises to some of its classified staff, custodial workers, cafeteria workers, folks who don't make very much money, - Sounds reasonable.

- and the consultant put a dollar figure on that of about $11 million.

Turns out there were some mistakes made, and in fact, the value of those raises as prepared and defined and executed was double that, and it seems from news reports that some in Durham Public Schools knew that for most of last year, yet, the raises still went out the door, and it all came to a head in January when I think people said, well, we don't really have enough money to cover these raises.

What is going on?

And it just started unraveling from there.

The CFO of the district resigned in January.

The superintendent, as you mentioned, resigned just this week.

Meanwhile, you have folks who, again, don't make much money as it is, getting a raise, probably making decisions that materially impact their ability to continue a certain, like buying new different groceries at the store, whatever it is, and then to lose that raise without, I think they found out via email on a holiday weekend, which seems awful to me.

Yeah, I think they're understandably really mad and confused, and the upshot here is that anger and confusion has led a number of those staff to call out on the same day, meaning school can't operate.

They can't inspect buses.

Buses can't pick up kids.

He can't go to school.

It's a complete and total mess.

The school board has not figured out a way to make it right, nor do I blame them.

They're stuck with raises that they can't afford, and they're stuck with staff who are expecting those raise.

I don't know what the way out of it is, but certainly not a good situation, and parents are probably pretty upset that their kids can't go to school.

- Well, I can imagine in the immortal words of the philosopher, Scooby-Doo, rut-row was what they said when they discovered this, [everyone laughs] but it does touch the third rail of a topic that's hotly debated in all of public education, and that's pay, and so it becomes a really poignant thing.

Generally speaking, are we paying our teachers and the folks that work in our public schools enough?

The local group there that represents teachers, I think there's a little bit of muscle flexing here, a desire on the part of some public educators, I think, to feel like they could get a union.

We know that unions are not permissible for public employees in North Carolina, but a pay issue does allow an organization to try to make the case, hey, this wouldn't have happened if you had a union.

I get a little sense of that going on here.

- Well, what was striking to me is so that some of the Durham Association of Educators, which in my opinion, is sometimes to the left of Lenin.

Even they, on Friday, said that they're not responsible for the sick out that caused the entire school district to shut down.

If the Durham Association of Educators isn't leading these sorts of things, I think that's an even big, who is in charge and organizing the workers such and are we going to continue experiencing these types of problems next week and the week after if the Durham Association of Educators doesn't even have control over what's happening?

- And my perspective is, also serving as an elected official in Morrisville, I mean, when these kinds of issues come up, I mean, I agree with Pat, this is an actually unmitigated disaster, but at the end of the day, if like a town manager, an administrator that's appointed by the governing body, knows that there's information usually would go into a closed session and you would disclose that to the school board and then you would then come out to the public so that at least you can prepare for it.

In this case, it was like, this was known early on, I think it was early as after, yeah.

- The superintendent knew, didn't tell the school board, and now he's resigning - And so, yeah.

- with I think a $300,000 severance pay that went out this week.

So that's gotta infuriate teachers even more.

- So I think this is a lesson for all of us, transparency, and it's better to be fully disclosed to people about if a mistake has been made, you need to let those employees know.

You need to let the school board know.

You need to let elected officials know so there's no surprises, right, that Sunday surprise where you wake up and go, oh, we overpaid you.

We're gonna take the money back.

Now we're affecting the kids' school too, I mean, no school today, walkouts, rallies.

I want school people happy.

I think we gotta pay them more, obviously.

That's another lesson here, but I think this is a disaster.

We hope they can get through it.

- Meanwhile, the Opportunity Scholarship application portal opened just this month as well, and so a record number of folks seeking scholarships for private school, whether this incident in Durham has an impact on the application right there, I don't know, but also something happening in the background.

- Well, this particular storm, no silver lining, but what may be the lee in the storm is that the retired Wake County superintendent, Kathy Moore, stepping in as the interim superintendent, and I guess the days ahead, we'll see what comes next for Durham Public Schools.

Well, the North Carolina superintendent for all Schools, Katherine Truitt, announced Tuesday the highest number of student credentials for career and technical education programs was recorded for 2023.

The report was released by the Department of Public Instruction, which has been tracking career oriented classes for students, more than half of these classes focused on computer science.

Other courses include food certifications and carpentry.

Truitt says the courses are aligned to employers needs.

Steve, we know that North Carolina has long been a state that employers have looked to, especially because it has all these great institutions of education, particularly here in the triangle, but this is somewhat of a different track.

- Yeah, this really is a different track, and I think what's driving this issue across the country, there's oh, probably seven to eight million unfilled jobs that are requiring technical skills.

And that number keeps growing.

And many of the other jobs in the industry that we talked about, it could be healthcare, nursing, it could be cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, technology.

And even with the advent of AI, which is gonna displace many jobs, there's still gonna be a lot of opportunities to create these new jobs.

The question becomes, how do you train and retrain these workers, and meet the needs of the employers looking for the work?

And I cannot think of a better time.

This was great news from the state superintendent, and I want to commend her and our state, and all the leaders for investing in this kind of training in this and education.

You know, a few months ago, I was actually, about a year ago, I was at a German manufacturing company in Warsaw called Schenck.

And there was a high school kid that was manufacturing the robot that actually was on the shop floor, and he was making a hundred thousand dollars a year.

That's the kind of training, not only for our K through 12 and our high schools.

We have early career high school at Wake Tech, which is doing a lot of stuff with advanced, particularly in life sciences, biotechnology, informatics, but even Wake Tech Community College, right?

So at the end of the day, one of my friends is a United States Congressman, Raja Krishnamoorthi, he, it's a joke, he heads what they call the Samosa Caucus.

There's five Indians in the US Congress, and he called it the Samosa Caucus, [laughing] which is kind of funny.

But Congressman Krishnamoorthi sponsored the Bill that got through, called The Strengthening Education Career Act.

And what that bill does, got bipartisan support is, gives states more money to train, and retrain their employees, give them more flexibility.

So hopefully this will be good things that North Carolinians can come together on, and whoever the next governor is working with the general assembly, because it's about the new jobs of the new economy, and we have to be ready, and we have to be prepared.

- Well, I think a backdrop to that is a declining sense of confidence and trust in higher education generally.

Poll after Poll shows that fewer people think that college and higher education is worth it.

And so combine that with a pathway to sort of a career ready certification out of high school.

And I think you have sort of the right combination for this to come out.

And you also have, I think, higher education, recognizing that there's an issue, and adapting to perhaps be more industry focused, more marketplace focused, able to adapt and serve non-traditional learners.

The UNC system launched Project Kitty Hawk, which disclosure I'm working with them on a little bit, for just that purpose.

So you're seeing something of a realignment here.

And my future NC is doing great stuff, and you know.

- Well you think about it nationally too.

The Democrats have started to see the, the issue that divides voters is educational attainment, where fewer and fewer non-college educated white Americans are supporting Democratic candidates.

In some part, they look at President Biden's call to eliminate college debt, and say, we're model, you know, Molly coddling these college graduates who can't find a job sufficient to pay back the money they borrowed to go to college.

When we seem to have a shortfall of jobs that require a vocational or technical trade.

- That's what I've always said, I should have been a plumber.

- So yeah, as these... [group laughs] - They don't have any jobs in journalism, but a lot in plumbing.

[group laughs] - Plumbers can make good money too.

Plumbers, technicians.

- I know.

I'm being serious.

- I mean, yes.

- Well, you often weld together stories Colin.

- Yeah, same deal.

I'm sure I can reinvent myself.

- But can I say for some levity, we need journalism.

Don't we need journalism for democracy?

Don't we need critical thinking that we get in college with, you know, humanities and in liberal college education, but also when we think of the shortages that we have in nursing, police officers and other areas.

So when we a again, this is all great stuff, the technology, but what about these other areas where there are already some shortages?

- Yeah.

And it's hard to fund those positions because they're all, a lot of them are government jobs, or their jobs in a field like journalism where the economics of the industry is sort of in flux.

And so it's, it's hard to figure out how do you make those jobs attractive, when you can go make a hundred thousand dollars, you know, building something in a manufacturing facility.

- And I know medical providers that are having a hard time running their smaller independent medical practices because of nurses leaving, or they can't find enough nurses.

And so this healthcare is a big, big problem, right?

In terms of not having enough people to run your practice.

That's why a lot of these independents are getting bought out by healthcare systems.

But it's hard to be a small primary care doctor now, or pediatrician because you don't have the nursing, or you can't find the staff.

So we're gonna see spill over all these jobs are important, but as we automate, this is gonna be more, and more, and more jobs that we've traditionally known of, your desk jobs, your white collar jobs, they're gonna be gone very soon.

And it's gonna be very important for our children to be able to get those skills, and then maybe not even go to, go to a four year college initially.

We, we all want to go, we have great universities, Carolina State, Duke, I'm gonna cover myself there.

All, [group laughs] you know, but that I got, I got one of each, one of Carolina, one of state.

But at the end of the day, you could go out of high school, get a job in technical education, and then go to college, right?

Or get a good job and not go.

I mean... - This will be something that we'll be talking about for some time to come.

We'll see what happens.

Guys, we want to thank you so much for being here.

Thanks to all of our panelists for joining us.

I am Melody Hunter-Pillion, thank you for watching, and we will see you next time on "State Lines."

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