[upbeat music] - [Kelly] Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson addresses the national GOP convention, and we examine how the Trump assassination attempt and now RFK Junior's inclusion on the 2024 ballot will affect campaign '24 here at home.

This is "State Lines."

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, a great panel.

Dawn Vaughan of "The News & Observer," Senator Paul Lowe of Forsyth County, and beside him is Senator Benton Sawrey of Johnston County Seat 4, our radio professional print turned broadcast maven WUNC's Colin Campbell.

Hello, everyone.

- Good to be here.

- Hello, hello.

- You know, there's a lot more than five topics we could talk about, so I hope we picked the right five, Dawn.

You know, hope we're ready for this.

But we're gonna start with Senator Sawrey.

The Trump assassination attempt stopped politics in its tracks last weekend, including here in North Carolina so that's where we wanna bring this discussion down.

We all saw President Joe Biden address the country to urge calmer rhetoric.

Thursday night, Donald Trump tossed around the word unity in his GOP nomination speech in favor of a new tone.

There's a lot of public pressure late this week from Democrats being applied to Joe Biden to drop out, and the Vice President's in Fayetteville campaigning.

What does it mean, Benton Sawrey?

An assassination attempt, pressure on the President, COVID for the President, and Kamala Harris being very active out there for the ticket.

- So, I mean, before we talk about what it means for the voters, I think we need to talk about, you know, the seriousness of what happened this past week.

You know, a person died, three people were seriously injured, and somebody attempted to assassinate a former president of the United States and presidential candidate.

I worry that we've become a little desensitized to new cycles and violence just because of what we see on a daily basis.

I thought Donald Trump did a great job this week talking about unity and taking the temperature down and the rhetoric, it's something that we need to focus on as a country and as leaders.

I thought Melania Trump's letter was outstanding.

I think you saw that reflected in the convention this week with great statements coming around the flag with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and others.

Donald Trump hit a great tone last night with his acceptance speech at the RNC too.

I think it was on key, it was perfect, and it was a great way to move the country forward.

But what it means for the regular voters, I don't know that it means much at all right now.

You know, the voters that were gonna vote for Donald Trump are gonna go out there and be more motivated, perhaps.

But the Democrats, and I saw a poll from Newsweek this morning that showed that nearly 1/3 of Joe Biden's voters thought that the assassination attempt was staged.

That's concerning as to where we are as a nation.

You know, we need to do a better job with our rhetoric, talking about politics and talking about our leaders.

- Well, being skeptical of the government conspiracy theory, that's not isolated to the Democratic Party mind, Senator Sawrey.

A lot of Republicans have a lot of ideas Democrats consider conspiratorial going back 10, 12 years.

So it is the tone.

But Senator Lowe, Joe Biden addressed the country too following his opponent's assassination attempt or the attempt on his life.

What did you make of Joe Biden's performance this week from the Oval Office and the subsequent fallout from what his words meant to America heading into the GOP convention?

- Well, I think that violence has no part in our political system in terms of what we do and how we campaign.

And to hear of anybody, whether it's somebody I support or don't support, you know, someone trying to kill them, I mean, that's just really, really hard to take, and we don't want that for any of our candidates.

Being a child of the '60s, I remember vividly, you know, when Dr. King was killed.

I remember vividly when Robert Kennedy was killed.

You know, I remember those things.

One reason I remember, we only had four stations, you know?

ABC, NBC, and CBS, so we had to watch that stuff.

And to hear about something happening like that in this day and age, you had hoped we had gone past that, but apparently we haven't.

And it just shows how divided this country is.

I mean, it's extremely divided.

And though, you know, it's disheartening, so I don't know really, really know what to say except, we don't need this, we don't need this kind of violence.

Now, I think the President did a good job of speaking towards it, and it was the right thing to do, so.

- Colin, political violence in this country goes way back.

We started, this country was born from a revolution.

We've been through Lincoln and Garfield and McKinley and Kennedy, and candidate-speak what somebody tried, Gerald Ford, George Wallace, even back in the day.

- George Wallace, Yeah.

- Ronald Reagan.

So we're not better than our ancestors when it comes to political debate, but why does it have to be so nasty?

And then of course, attention turns to the media.

They blame the media for riling up these people to make them think it's a good idea to attempt to take the life of a politician.

- Yeah, and I think there's been a lot of speculation on the motive.

We still don't know a whole lot about this.

And, and frankly, I mean this is sort of a worry in general, you know, we've got a lot of people who have mental illness issues for one reason or another.

They've got access to guns.

These sorts of things happen, whether it's a shooting at a newspaper office, which sort of hits close to home to us as journalists or something at a political event, which, you know, something like this could have been a whole lot worse if it wasn't one where the secret service take immediate action to bring down the shooter.

So there's a lot of tendency to lay blame, whether it's the media, whether it's the other party for the rhetoric.

I just don't see much changing on the rhetoric.

Even this week it seems like we're still, the message from the Dems and the Republicans is pretty much the same despite a few sort of boilerplate calls for, you know, toning down the rhetoric a little bit.

I, this is just the nature of where we're at, unfortunately.

- What's the difference, Dawn, in toning down the rhetoric versus just being very partisan and telling your opponent your ideas are bad for our state or bad for our nation.

That that's not hateful speech, but how do we keep it there as opposed to sliding into other more violent or more just unsavory lines of communication?

- Yeah, I wish, I mean, just overall people were a little more professional and cordial and polite.

When you can oppose somebody and not personally attack them, someone's not a terrible person because they have an idea that, that you don't like.

And I don't know if this, if the gunman is any related to political discourse.

You know, there's been, people have known him over the years, talked about his, you know, he is a registered Republican.

Some said that he was more left, some said he was, you know, very conservative.

So, so I don't know.

I mean, and there's, you know, he is a couple years out of, out of high school, school shootings have become a regular part of our life.

The statistically you're, you know, you're safe.

But when you know kids growing up and they're like, oh, someone was shot at this.

A school was shot.

A public place was shot.

Someone tried to shoot the former president.

It just really just wears people down, I think.

- Alright, well an aspect of the GOP convention was the invitation given to North Carolina, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who addressed the crowd in Milwaukee this week.

- I'm not one of the political elite.

I grew up poor as the ninth of 10 kids in Greensboro with an alcoholic father who beat my mother.

I love to tell you that I graduated from high school, found success, never worried about money again, but I can't.

I lost two jobs, two manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA.

I lost my car and my house.

I was desperate.

But you know, my story isn't unique.

Now I stand before you on the verge of becoming the first black Governor of North Carolina.

[audience applauding] - Colin, we had, that's three different clips from a much longer speech that you can find online.

But that's just to set the tone for this conversation.

Lieutenant Governor Robinson took to the stage.

I watched the speech just before 8:00 PM I think on Tuesday night.

Not the tone in that speech that we are told he's giving in the church in White Lake, North Carolina.

That speech sounded like he was describing his biography.

- Yeah, there's sort of two different types of Robinson speeches as I've covered him in his rise to where he is running for governor as the Republican nominee.

You've got sort of his church speeches where he's sort of in front of the sympathetic audience.

There's no time limit.

He's often not speaking from notes.

And that's where you'll get the sort of, particularly incendiary remarks.

Things like some people need killing that have made headlines.

And then you've got the, the sort of scaled back, toned down Robinson.

This was only a four minute speech.

It was very tightly choreographed and he focuses on his personal background, his sort of rise from poverty to being a leading political figure.

Two different faces of him.

So I think he managed to sort of stick to the, the script on Tuesday night, which I think will help his campaign overall in terms of getting his biography, his personal story out to a larger array of Republican voters who may contribute to his campaign.

He's behind in fundraising with Democrat Josh Stein.

So this sort of helps raise his profile and maybe gets us a little bit away from sort of the sound bites that we hear from some of his other speeches.

- Senator, sorry.

Very interesting speech from my, from my standpoint, 'cause I'm from rural North Carolina.

My grandfather was a diehard Democrat and he always believed, and my father believed that Democrats represented the working man.

I saw a working man giving a speech to the Republican National Convention.

It, has it always been there or is this an effort by the Republicans to go, hey, we are, you know, with the jobs with trade policy, we are here for you working person in, in North Carolina, or in his case, North Carolina.

- That was one of the best speeches I've heard Mark Robinson give.

It was, it was outstanding.

It was in line of what I think the rest of the theme for the week at the RNC was.

I mean, you saw that with Senator JD Vance's speech.

He talked a lot about the, the working class.

I mean, that, that's his background.

That's how he, his rise to politics.

What was talking about those same issues.

And you saw, you saw union leaders, labor leaders at the, the convention this week, which is very different.

I mean, I think this is a, this is the next step of the progression of the Donald Trump movement within the Republican party.

But, but again, Mark Robinson's story, it's very compelling.

It's very compelling.

The speech was outstanding and I think he resonates a lot with, with voters North Carolina right now, who are concerned about inflation, security.

He's speaking to them with respect to the issues that matter them at the dinner table every night.

- Senator, you could speak to Republicans, you're a Democrat, you would have your side of this.

But you know, it does seem like the parties are, are reassessing certain aspects of their platform, hardening in some areas, softening in others.

Your take on Mark Robinson's speech coming to Republican voters as an every man who lost two factory jobs and as a result had to declare bankruptcy due to trade policy.

- I didn't hear the speech, so I'm not really able to speak to that speech, as an African American male, I've certainly gotten some jobs and I've lost some jobs.

You know, I've been fired before.

I've been downsized before.

So I think that's an experience of a whole lot of African Americans.

You know, we used to often say, you know, "The last to be hired and the first to be fired."

So that's not new in terms of coming from a background that had a whole lot of money.

Well, my parents didn't have a whole lot of money.

My father was a factory worker at Boeing.

My mother was, until she got the opportunity to go back to school, which was part of The New Deal, she, [laughs] you know, she worked as a domestic.

That's not new for so many African-Americans that I know and I grew up with that didn't have a silver spoon, didn't have a whole lot of money, but we did the best that we could with what we had.

And I went to college, but we did the best that we could with what we had.

So that doesn't sound like a new story to many, many of us.

And I think it is important that whoever is running, talk about regular middle class folks, because that's the folks that are really hurting right now and that really need, you know, a hand up, a leg up, however you want to say it.

- Dawn, did you watch the speech?

- I did.

I wrote a story about it.

[laughs] - Oh, thank goodness.

- No, I've heard elements of the speech.

It's just condensed down.

- Yeah.

- So what do you make of the Robinson speech?

That was him on the national stage, not talking to PBS, or not talking to the news and Observer, any in-state or local outlet.

- Well, he's trying to, people who don't know who he is, he is basically introducing himself.

The speech was pretty short, it was about three and a half minutes, and he is giving a little bit of his bio, which everyone in North Carolina, well, people that pay attention to politics, I think, are familiar with.

It was in his autobiography where he's talked about this a lot.

He didn't talk about policy, he complained about prices and blamed Biden for it, which, you're at RNC, you're gonna do that.

But I thought the Teamsters head speech at RNC was one of the most interesting because generally Democrats are the ones that have the union worker voters, not Republicans.

So how this is gonna play out now with vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, and that populism appeal, at some point, you have to decide what's your policy, what's your tax policy?

You know, do the bosses are the ones that benefit or the workers that are gonna benefit.

And I think we're kind of seeing that play out with RNC and Robinson is an example of, obviously, someone who came from the working class, but's Republican.

- All right, well, polling firms went to work first thing this week, gauging voter sentiment.

It's all over the map, following the attempt on President Trump's life, but one potential effect also on how North Carolina will elect a president this fall involves RFK Junior.

This week, the State Board of Elections approved RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr's inclusion in the 2024 ballot.

He is the nominee of the We the People Party now.

Republicans have always argued, Senator Lowe, that the Democrats on the State Board of Elections were stalling RFK Jr. because it would hurt democratic chances in November.

RFK Jr. has publicly said he'll steal votes from both parties and you got the Justice for All party out there, with Cornell West.

They're off the ballot due to quote, "Alleged irregularities or signature fraud questions."

Here come the third parties, and in this case, RFK Jr. was doing about six, 7%.

That's a meaningful amount of North Carolina votes when you count that we're now above 10 million in population.

Your thoughts, - We've always had third parties and I don't think it's any different now.

I don't know that much about the work of the State Board of Elections, as it relates to this particular event.

You know.

- Do you generally trust them even though in the last year or two, they've let people know fully it's three Democrats to two Republican votes.

That's the new wrinkle.

Used to, we wouldn't talk about that, it would just be the board voted.

It's politicized now, I should say.

- I think it's politicized and because it's politicized, there's certain things that come out of that.

Certainly the media, you all have more to write about now, [laughs] you know, because it is politicized.

But I'm not sure it means that much in this instance.

Cornell West, for whatever reason, wasn't made a part of this.

Do I think that it'll steal that many votes from either party?

In this country right now, we got a two party system.

Good, bad or indifferent, that's what we have, and I think that for any of those candidates to flourish, they've gotta really do something that hasn't been done in modern history.

- You know, it's interesting, Senator, sorry, this issue, libertarians don't have trouble staying on the ballot.

The constitution party has to work, but it seems to always make the ballot, and RFK Junior is a high profile candidate.

If the Democratic ticket and the Republican ticket, if they don't stay on this course of calmer rhetoric, if you will, could RFK Jr be a viable option if nothing else for a protest vote to keep, for voting for someone that you just can't support?

- It wouldn't surprise me to see RFK get 10% of the vote in North Carolina.

I think right now he's polling in the high single digits.

You gotta keep mind, North Carolina's on track and maybe it is today.

You know, one of my other panelists might be able to confirm this, but I think our largest political party is no political party, is unaffiliated North Carolina.

So, I mean, I think the voters are signaling that Republicans and Democrats need to do better with their issues, talking to the voters and getting people on board with it.

So it's no surprise to me to see RFK, it would not surprise me to see a significant protest vote.

You see libertarians across the state have signed up to run for State House and state Senate seats.

It's healthy for democracy to have lots of different voices at the table.

And I think it'll be an interesting debate going forward.

The fascinating thing will be whether RFK gets on the debate stage with former President Trump and whoever the Democrat nominee is.

- Joe Biden right now, Colin, I hear a lot of elected leaders refer to the unaffiliated voter, unaffiliated doesn't mean you're unopinionated, just means you don't wanna be bothered by a political party, I mean.

- Yeah, I mean, part of the reason unaffiliated has become so popular in this state is because you get options in the primary.

You can pick which primary Democrat or Republican you want to vote in.

You know, in an era of political polarization, you can't look that person up and see whether they're Democrat or Republican.

So as a journalist, I like having that option, but I think a lot of other people do as well, just to sort of keep their political views under wraps.

But a lot of these unaffiliate voters, they go one way or the other.

They're not twitching back and forth between the two major parties every time, they lean left, they lean right for the most part.

And so there's only a small percentage of people who are looking for an alternative that is not gonna be a party that wins, potentially throwing away your vote.

And there's now gonna be an array of options for people who want a third party, whether they're on the right and they don't like Trump, they can vote for the Constitution party.

If they're on the left and they don't like Joe Biden or whoever the nominee is, they can pick the Green Party or RFK, potentially Cornel West, if he's successful, in suing the elections board to get his name on the ballot.

You know, a lot of options out there.

- Don, with so many candidates out there.

And in this case, Cornel West is a nationally known figure.

And RFK Junior, of course, he has been for a variety of reasons, but in a limited newsroom, from your perspective, when you have these huge parties out there with big money, how do you divvy up the attention now to covering in-state campaign activities?

What is now three, maybe four high profile candidiases?

- Well, I think it's, I mean, it's driven by the news, Board of Elections decisions, so of course that was some sort of action.

So that's when we write about it.

But, if, let's say Stein Robinson and everyone's having an event on the same day, you kind of have to pick and choose.

But there are slower news days than others.

And we do a lot of enterprise work where you spend more time on, and that's kind of where maybe our coverage with third parties would be.

- And they always say that the third parties always fall back to one or 2%.

Senator Low, but do you see resilience in this ticket with all the turmoil, not only with the Republicans dealing with what they've dealt with, but now with Democrats dealing with the Biden.

- I don't see that much resilience.

I don't see it, but it may be there and I'm missing it, but I don't see it.

- We have pretty close elections in North Carolina though.

So a percent here and there can make a difference.

- I think you're seeing the potential for five to 7% being taken away from the top two party candidates, and it seems to be impacting the democratic ticket more so than the Republicans right now.

- All right, well, the wind down of the 2024 legislative session is giving lawmakers, I'll leave it to you gentlemen to tell me if I'm right about this, an opportunity to catch your breath and for a few of them, a chance to resign and retire from office to do other things.

Senator Jim Perry out of Eastern North Carolina, there he is on our show.

He resigned this summer.

This week, State House appropriations chairman, Jason Saine says he's resigning to do other things, as is Democratic representative Ashton Clemmons.

She's joining the UNC system for a new career change, you can't be a lawmaker and obviously work in the UNC system, which I don't think you legally can, but let's go from there.

Dawn, lot of, well, I will say this, few people, lots of talent leaving the general assembly.

- Right, some of that higher profile, whether it's because of their power, obviously speaker Moore is one of the two most powerful people in the building.

- [Speaker] Speaker Moore course.

- Right, he's leaving.

And representative Jason Saine, of course has been on Stay line so many times.

He is a, I mean, there's three head budget chairs in the house.

There's also Dean Arp and Donnie Lambeth.

But sane is the more, as you've all seen on State Lines, a little more gregarious.

Yeah, more affable and cordial, charismatic.

And what I was saying about, he's polite professional when he talks about people, whether, you know, they agree or not.

So I think he's got a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle.

So him leaving is gonna be a big gap in the house.

And Ashton Clemmons has had leadership position.

And I think the same could be said for her with being able to work well with her own party.

And Republicans too, and Perry over in the Senate.

It seems like to me a lot of people are leaving.

And statistically it's maybe about the same between sessions.

People find other jobs, wanna run for other things, do something else, but because they're all so high profile.

And then earlier this year when Hardister, who was, you know, house Republican whip, when he stepped down, and then Mary Wills Bode from the show is not gonna-- - [Kelly] Mary Wills is gone, yeah.

- So, yeah, it's gonna be really big change, I think, for Colin and I covering the ledge in 2025.

Of course, these two senators are sticking around, it looks like, so we'll still see you next year.

- Are you sticking around, gentlemen?

- Yes.

- Okay, good.

You'll hang in there with us for your vow of poverty.

[all chuckling] So Lou, what do you think?

I mean it's okay when people, some legislators hang in there to the bitter end.

And then some get fed up with it and say, I've had enough, I wanna make a living.

Or, I've watched my child grow up from afar, because I've been in Raleigh.

- Well I mean, Senator Perry, we've worked together on various pieces of legislation.

And he's been a good person to work with.

And I would call him a friend.

And you know, he has some family dynamics, and he wants to spend more time with his family.

And this does take up a lot of time.

When I look at him, and then I also look at Jason, who-- - [Kelly] Saine-- - Yeah, Jason, Representative Saine, that he wants to do other things.

He's young, he's still open to doing a lot of significant things.

He did some significant pieces of legislation in the legislature.

So he's taking advantage of other opportunities, and I think that's an exciting thing.

I don't know that much about Ashley, in terms of what she will be doing.

But I think that another career opportunity, certainly.

And that sounds exciting for her.

- Not the first legislators to move on.

But, Senator Sawrey, you worked on the budget a bit, did you not?

- I had the chance to participate in some of the meetings.

- Wouldn't it be frustrating, this is my opinion, I've thought about this.

If you're in office a long time, and you work for months as you did with the House, and you do all this work, and half of your platform and all the work gets thrown out, because they two caucus leaders decide to go home.

Is that not reason just to quit, too?

If you're looking for a reason, why would so many people leave?

Is it okay for them to be frustrated?

They haven't told me anything.

I'm just looking at the trajectory of the 2024 legislative session.

- Well with the budget, keep in mind, we have a budget in place already.

And that may have played a part of with the schedule.

It was something, I can't speak to that.

But keep in mind that we are part-time citizen legislators, at the end of the day.

I have a career.

- You're almost full time.

In fairness, statistically, you're almost full time.

- Sure, statistically, but pay is not the case.

I remember, one of my favorite questions that I ever asked at a meeting was, somebody accused us of making $100,000, similar to that, be up there in Raleigh doing this.

And so I asked, I did a poll around the room.

How much do people think that we get paid?

And nobody really realized the financial compensation was as low as it is.

So a lot of these people are making big sacrifices away from their family, away from their careers, away from anything back home, in order to be there.

So I don't think that we as a body are designed for people to stay there a long period of time, like you see in Congress.

Very few of my colleagues have been there for a decade.

And let's not forget that we're also, Senator George Kravik is leaving the Senate.

Senator Dean Proctor is leaving the Senate.

Both of those are committee chairs.

We have a lot of institutional knowledge that's moving on.

It's an exciting opportunity for the people that are going to be there to step up and carry on their work.

And I consider Senator Perry a great friend and mentor, Representative Saine is another just vast wealth of knowledge of how state government works.

We're gonna have some serious work to do to make up those big shoes that they're leaving behind.

- They'll still be around, they're not leaving the state of anything.

- No, they're going to-- - Hey, thanks everyone for coming in, we're out of time.

I wanna give the two Senators' thoughts on that last topic.

Thank you for watching, folks.

I always appreciate you.

I appreciate your emails as well.

You send them to me, I read them, I reply.

Statelines@pbsnc.org.

Your viewership is most important to our show.

I'm Kelly McCullen, thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.

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