- [Kelly] The 2023 legislative session enters the summer with key issues being debated, and redistricting on the horizon.

This is "State Lines."

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

I'm Kelly McCullen, a great panel this week.

Political consultant, Brad Crone, Senator Mary Wills Bode of Granville and Wake Counties, Senator Benton Sawrey of Johnston County, and a great friend of PBS North Carolina, "The Carolina Journal's" Donna King.

Welcome, everyone.

- Good to be here.

- Great weekend, great week.

Let's talk about the 2023 legislative session.

It's entering the summer, having drawn attention for a host of issues.

Republicans have practically and statistically driven the political agenda by leveraging veto-proof super-majorities.

Governor Roy Cooper has been using his bully pulpit to bring attention to a host of issues, and House and Senate Democrats have largely stood with him, Donna.

It hasn't been a boring legislative session.

- Certainly not.

- And I mean, culture wars and a big budget coming out.

Size it up, we're entering those summer months when they're supposed to be finishing up, and I'm not so sure.

- It's not looking like it, actually.

Right now, we're really watching closely to see that budget.

So the conferees are working on the state budget.

They'd already agreed to a top line around $30 billion, about 10% more than the last budget, but we've also got a lot of other factors involved, including inflation, so we're watching that closely to see how this budget emerges.

I think, in general, we're looking at probably teacher raises, raises for state employees, how much depends, but also policy, there's gonna be a ton of policy in here, because lawmakers are focused very heavily on Medicaid expansion that was signed into law earlier, and a lot of what comes in the budget hinges on activating that Medicaid expansion.

So that's what everybody's focused on, but I'm hearing they're really far apart, that we may not really see the end of this on July 4th, which is always the goal, rarely seems to be hit, but I'm hearing they're pretty far apart.

- But Brad Crone, all Republicans are the same, just watch Twitter, all Democrats are the same.

Watch Twitter, it tells you what you need to know, right?

- It's a dangerous smoke and mirror enterprise for sure.

And you see some really ugliness on Twitter when people would never do that face-to-face, so even at the legislative level.

It's interesting to me, Kelly, that the Democrats have been belly aching about the legislation and the rate, the pace of the legislation, and they gotta understand elections have consequences.

You lost last year.

- [Kelly] Talk to her.

[Kelly laughs] - Well, I won.

- You had one person switch.

So, the strategy for the Democrats should clearly be working on building an agenda and a message that will allow you to win voters in a Husky, that will allow you to win voters in Nashville and in Oxford, three locations where you lost House seats last year.

When you start winning elections, you can put your place at the legislative table.

- Does the budget have any bearing on people as they plan for their primary votes next winter and the 2024- - It could be used in the primary, but I have never run a campaign.

I've run over 400 campaigns in the state of North Carolina, and we've never had a campaign specifically on whether or not you voted yes or no on the budget.

Now, you may get tapped on Medicaid expansion, you may get tapped on public school education funding or transportation funding, but rarely do you see someone get tapped for a yes or no vote on the budget.

- Senator Bode, your take on the budget process as it's ongoing.

Are you liking the flow?

Is the pace of negotiations fine with you in the minority party?

- Sure, so I don't have a lot of visibility into the budget process.

I am not a conferee.

We do have two Senate Democrats, Senator Lowe and Senator Woodard who are conferees.

And my understanding is that the negotiations have been ongoing, but there is a start and stop, obviously, to the cadence as additional policy provisions have been negotiated.

We've had sports wagering, we certainly have had Medicaid expansion, we've had a lot of big bills, big policy bills.

We have this election law bill coming up.

And so I think going alongside the budget process, we still have a lot of big policy decisions to make.

And my understanding is that that's slowing down the budget process, which is not unusual, as it makes sense that it would be that way.

- Your insight, Senator Sawrey.

- Certainly, I think the legislative pace has been quick.

Senator Berger laid out a really clear message at the beginning of the session with regard to what we are gonna do as a chamber this upcoming year and so far we've done it.

It's been very methodical.

It's been step by step.

We've tackled some really big issues, Medicaid expansion, senate Bill 20 with the pro-life/pro family legislation that we passed, obviously, diving in to the budget issues now.

The senate budget had some really great points in it that I think we're spending a lot of time negotiating over right now.

The tax cuts were outstanding.

We made some really great investments in mental health, capital improvements in investments.

And obviously, we wanna take a look at what's going on with veteran teacher pay, with state employee pay, just because of the current climate with inflation, state vacancies, excuse me, state agency vacancies around the state.

We've got to tackle that crisis, so that state government continue to function and do the job that it needs to do for citizens of North Carolina.

- Donna, what is this inflationary environment doing to conservatives who like to tie...

They fund education and pay raises in real dollars Well, in an inflationary environment, real dollars, it's about the percentage of inflation.

- Just like families and businesses and everyone else, the state government and county governments, they're suffering with inflationary prices as well.

But I think it's important to look how far we've come over the last decade.

In '07, '08, we're talking about furloughing teachers, and they were furloughing teachers during that time.

Now we're talking about whether they're gonna get a 5% or a 10% raise or anybody getting a 10% raise in this economy.

So I think it really is important to look at how far we've come, but it impacts the state government just like it does families.

- Another issue that governments up and down the level from the federal, state, county, municipal facing workforce shortages in every single sector, not only first responders and law enforcement, but the folks who are out working on water/sewer, the folks who are delivering rec and parks programs, park and recreation programs.

There's a critical workforce shortage, and that's all a result of the pandemic and the Great Resignation.

That's universal across the economy.

- And when folks come and of course we wanna address those workforce shortages and be able to help assist in that process, but I think the other part of that conversation is how do we fix that long term?

Of course, wages are a big part of that to help people keep up with inflation and other costs.

But what are we doing to address the pipeline issues with nurses, teachers, first responders and- - [Brad] Correction officers?

- Sure, and that broader perspective of how we really address this problem, not just in this budget, but in policy legislation yet to come.

- So one of the things I think, that we did a really great job with, and in the Senate budget specifically, was addressing that exact issue with starting teacher salary.

Several years ago, you'll recall, we made that policy transformation by putting as much money as we can in this first couple years of teaching.

And I think I've seen that that actually increases career earnings by several hundred thousand dollars.

And I think we had something like an 11% pay raise for starting teacher salary.

We've addressed issues, law enforcement salary disparities, compared to some of our neighboring states, so we're doing some really targeted things.

Another point to what you said was some money that was set aside for a high cost education services, like nursing, science, tech, and math.

One of the issues, I was a community college trustee, we can't keep nursing faculty on staff, because they cannot compete with hospitals in the private sector, that's a problem.

We can't train the next generation of nurses if we can't actually have people that are filling those jobs in our community colleges.

- And one point I wanna say specifically on nursing too, is that I think Medicaid expansion is gonna help a lot of this, because nursing aids, who are traditionally on the path to becoming nurses, to go to nursing school, you have to have health insurance, and you may not be able, you may fall in the gap right now.

And so I'm really hopeful with the passage of Medicaid expansion that those folks will be able to enroll and continue their professional career in a meaningful way through that nursing program.

- As a next step to the Medicaid expansion, I'd like to see more Certificate of Need reform, so that those folks can take those skills out of the urban areas and move more to the rural areas and be able to set up their own practices and expand our healthcare infrastructure and labor force.

- Brad, do republicans run a risk here?

Inflation requires the spending of more real dollars, and so therefore, you could take a conservative who wants to track inflation and accuse him or her of spending more and growing government.

Can you see that coming in future elections or are voters too savvy to understand things cost more money, salaries need to go up?

Maybe I shouldn't say need, that's a subjective statement.

- I think the voters are very savvy.

But I'll say this, I've been following state government since 1980, and we have the best ballot sheet in the history of our state when it comes to the operations of the state budget and the reserve funds, the cash reserve funds.

And I know I'll probably get a lot of heat from my Democrat friends, but the truth is the truth.

You've got the best ballot sheet, the best general ledgers the state's ever had.

- To that, we'll switch gears to redistricting preview, going back to you Brad.

More attention's gonna come for election 2024, whether we like that or not.

We got primaries too.

It will be a lot of fun.

In North Carolina, voters can likely expect a new round of redistricting.

The North Carolina Supreme Court, the current one, overturned the previous North Carolina Supreme Court's ruling to say the 2022 legislative and congressional maps were drawn under an incorrect interpretation of the North Carolina Constitution.

So essentially, the formally Democratically-controlled Supreme Court ruled that political gerrymandering of districts is unconstitutional.

When the Republicans took over the Supreme Court, it ruled political gerrymandering, Brad, is a political question.

The current maps that are in place were overwhelmingly approved by the State House and Senate on February 17th, 2022.

So Democrats were on board with that round of the new maps, but they have to do something ahead of 2024, and people are gonna get absolutely inundated with gerrymandering and threats to democracy, and what other things can we discuss?

- There's gonna be a lot of hyperbole.

- Hyperbole, there you go, that's why you make the big bucks.

- [laughs] Seems unusual.

- We gotta understand that going into the process, but again, it goes back to elections have consequences.

If the Democrats had won the statewide races at the Supreme Court, we probably wouldn't be sitting here dealing with this issue.

But when you look at the redistricting, they're going to redistrict congressional and legislative maps.

If I was Don Davis and Wiley Nickel, I'd be really worried, because the Republicans, you have to respect the fact that they use the power that they have to their own benefit.

And the Democrats have done that forever too, in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

That's not a new trick that was formed.

So, I think those two members of Congress have to watch out.

They say Jeff Jackson could be a target.

I doubt it seriously, because when you manipulate Mecklenburg County, you will also impact Dan Bishop's district on the eastern side in Union, Anson, Richmond and Scotland Counties.

So I think that the Republicans will be judicious there.

On the legislative maps, I don't see how the Republicans draw the maps any better than what they've got right now.

You're in a super majority in the State Senate.

You're right at a super majority without the switch in the State House.

If there's tweaking, I think you'll see tweaking in New Hanover County, and New Hanover County will be the battleground county in the 2024 election.

But I don't see a lot of manipulation at the legislative level.

I think two Democrats are in real big trouble, and that's Don Davis and Wiley Nickel.

- So just to highlight that point, North Carolina, in my opinion, has one of the strongest anti-gerrymandering provisions in the nation, just built in the law with the whole county provision and the Stephen's decisions that came to play.

You talked about what the Democrats did and their previous decades, and they were literally textbook examples of what political gerrymandering looked like.

When the Democrats are only winning 28 counties statewide, they have a messaging and a geography issue when it comes to how the legislative maps are gonna be drawn.

Right now, I know the maps that are gonna be put out there, if they choose to do so, are gonna be in consideration of what the law is and what the requirements are at that time, but at some point, you've got to look in the mirror with what the Democrats are actually sending out there and realize that you can't just appeal to urban voters and people in these urban cores, you have to get out there, and as you said, appeal to voters in Husky and Smithfield and Nashville and places like that.

- Sure, I think that whole county provision is actually a really, that's an important point to make.

That was something that Democrats did before, but now it's working against them as you see these cities grow and places like Johnston County, Union County are becoming more red.

Well that hasn't really changed.

It just means that now they have to be a whole county.

And the congressional maps were always gonna be redrawn anyway.

That was a one-time map.

So the overturn of that case means that the legislative maps will too.

You're already seeing people jump in Don Davis's district.

I think you saw a lot of people jump in early last time around.

They may keep their powder dry a little bit, wait and see what these maps look like.

But when we end up, if you were to take the entire state and create a evenly split map, that's not what our state looks like.

We're very blue in some areas and very red in others.

So that's really what you... You're not gonna end up with an even 7-7 map, regardless of how overall even the state is, because it's not representative of the area of the state.

- But he current congressional map is 7-7.

- Right.

- Right.

And I think one thing that I think is important to note, look, North Carolina has been involved in redistricting litigation for four out of the past five decades.

So, 40 out of the last 50 years, taxpayers have been paying a ton of money for litigation costs.

Our legislature has been spending an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources on fixing these maps.

And for me, one thing that I'm really looking forward to is I hope this is the last time we do this, this decade.

I think these districts, I have already run in two different districts, although I have only run for election one time, and so it creates so much confusion for voters.

It is so incredibly time consuming for the legislature.

And I think at this point, the Supreme Court has spoken.

Whether I agree with that or not is a completely different matter.

But the federal court system has also spoken and said this is a political question.

And I am looking forward to these maps being finalized for the next, hopefully rest of the decade and for us to be able to move on.

- Brad, those congressional districts, I've heard from the Nickel team that they think they have a great district, because it goes right across a lot of Republican House seats, Rowser and that crowd.

And they go, "They should leave us alone, because it creates "all these other Republican majority districts.

"Go for Jeff Jackson and Charlotte."

Do you see Democrats, do you see those kind of whispers going into the people that are drawing these maps going forward, and is it a fair assessment?

'Cause I know they think they've got a nice, they're nicely tucked away between, what is it, Apex and Mount Olive?

- Absolutely, and all the way over to Goldsboro.

The interesting thing, a lot will depend on whether or not Jeff Jackson's willing to play those cards and announce if he's going to run for Attorney General or run for a statewide office, or if he wants to run for reelection in the Congressional District and maybe look at a challenge against Tillis in 2026.

Those are all options on the table.

It'll be interesting to see.

I keep hearing the legislature's coming back August, September timeframe after they get the budget done to address redistricting, so they've got time.

But I clearly think the easiest squeeze would be for the 1st district and the 13th district.

- We need some animations on this show, so we can draw it out, just like John Madden on the old football game.

- But I will say, having worked in the redistricting space for a number of years, I think voters are much more well educated about this issue and much more apprised of what's going on, regardless of, it is very confusing to voters.

Oh, this was my representative last time, now I'm in this district, although I haven't moved.

I think that people are closely watching what is happening.

- The one thing Benton didn't mentioned is that the foundation of the Stephens decision came out of 2003 with Knox Jenkins, the superior court judge in Johnston County, and then State Senator Leo Daughtry or State Representative Leo Daughtry.

And they really did lay the foundation on respecting the boundaries of a precinct, respecting the boundaries of a municipality, and respecting the boundaries of a county line.

- And to piggyback on that, I think there's actually a quote in that Court of Appeals decision that talks about how Johnston County is the center of all legal knowledge [panelists laugh] and redistricting in North Carolina, but really- - Don't believe everything you read.

- Yeah, that's true, but as a Johnston County guy, I'd like to think that of course.

But no, you cannot engage in the same types of gerrymandering issues that you used to see in the 1990s where we'd had the snake district going from Winston-Salem to Charlotte because of that.

And I really think that that's what puts North Carolina in a much better position.

It disappoints me some of the dialogue and the rhetoric around partisan gerrymandering when you just don't see that anymore.

We're respecting boundaries, respecting precincts, respecting communities of interest, which are your traditional redistricting criteria.

- So- - I'm sorry, go ahead.

- I remember Johnston County in the '70s when Jack Gardner and George Brennan were in the State Legislature, and the Democrats used multi-member districts as a means to suppress African-American vote at that point in time from the late 60s and the early 70s.

- Well, which I wanna be clear, racial gerrymandering is very much unconstitutional, and we have seen the Supreme Court yesterday with the Milligan-Alabama case really keep intact the central tenant of section two of the Voting Rights Act, which reaffirms the constitutionality of making sure that people's votes aren't diluted.

And so, that still very much is illegal, whereas partisan gerrymandering and the question of whether or not you can manipulate boundaries for partisan advantage has, by the North County Supreme Court and US Supreme Court now, been said is a political question, not a legal one.

- Donna, does it make sense for Republicans if they redraw and when they redraw to simply draw it as much as they can get and then you know it's going to court, so why not go for it all?

- Well, I think we are gonna see a lot of court, and it's hard to say after what the state's been through in this process.

I don't think so.

I think that it's gonna end up in court either way.

We're already seeing things gear up.

We saw another filing go into the voter ID and change of council go in for the North Carolina Supreme Court for voter ID.

So I think this is gonna be litigated continuously through the process and certainly through 2024, but voter ID will be enacted in time for the 2023 municipal elections.

- There you go, Senate Republicans are leading a summertime effort that could implement election law changes that would affect the 2024 election cycle.

There's a lot of things being proposed in this omnibus bill, absentee ballots must be received by 7:30 PM on election day, with exceptions for overseas and military ballots.

Absentee ballots could be reviewed by the public up through election day.

Any person who helps another voter cast a ballot would have their name or identity logged in some fashion, and should a judge order extended polling hours in one county, then all 100 counties would feature the same extended polling hours.

Mary Wills Bode, this is a bill that you say you're tracking and watching very closely.

How do you stay on top of all these provisions?

It's literally dozens.

- Sure, yeah, I think this bill is like 16 or 18 pages long of various provisions, some of which you mentioned.

One provision that I'm particularly interested in is in section eight of the bill.

And when I think about election law, and I think about voting, I think there are two really important considerations that you have to balance.

It is, in my opinion, just as important that lawful, eligible voters to be able to cast their lawful vote as it is that we make sure that ineligible, unlawful voters are not able to cast their vote.

And I think that this bill really takes that equilibrium and skews it, specifically with the same-day voter registration ballot casting.

So under this bill, those will be deemed provisional ballots, many of which will not be voted until after the election.

And the practical implications of that, this is gonna take a lot more time, a lot more resources, it's gonna extend early vote lines, it's gonna require a lot of additional money and manpower out of early election voting sites.

And when I looked at the data for Wake County, for example, in 2020, there were, I think 9,866 people who used same-day, early vote registration, and 22 of those ballots were sent back, or the voter registration cards were sent back in the voter verification process, but none of those 22 were deemed to have been fraudulent.

It was because of a transcription error or someone had moved or some other reason for the postal service, it didn't get verified.

And so that's 0.2% of these ballots.

And so, when I look at it, I just don't see a logical nexus based in evidence that why we need to introduce these additional barriers for people during same-day voter registration during early vote, and I'm really concerned about the additional barriers that are being placed.

- Yeah, so in a universe where we had a Supreme Court election that had a margin of victory of less than 500 votes, every vote matters.

We have a circumstance across the state where a significant portion of our population, both Republican and Democrat, are losing faith in our election process.

- Which parts of it though?

- Which parts.

- I hear that generic term all the time.

They're losing faith in democracy.

- We're losing faith in the idea that our elections are fair, that our elections are free, that our election results are accurate.

And it's something that I think has certainly come about over the past probably 10, 20 years or so.

It's got a genesis going all the way back to the George Bush presidential election and up through some of the recent ones.

I think that some of the changes that are being talked about, there's some hyperbole, there's some rhetoric here.

The provisions about the absentee return data, there is 30 states that still have that same provision.

We are asking for the absentee ballots, excuse me, the same-day voter registration to go through the same process that you go through a voter registration on a normal basis in North Carolina.

I just don't see it.

I think this is just common sense, logical steps in order to take advantage of a process to make sure that our elections are fair, that there is integrity, and that people can be confident in the results and the outcome.

- How can one issue be seen so differently by two different people, two different parties.

- Sure, I think I see a lot of commonality in these positions actually.

But I think you bring a good point, that 50% of North Carolinians say that they don't think this will be free and fair, more than 40% of unaffiliated, so this has nothing to do with Democrat and Republican.

So I think when you say that we would join the company of 30 other states, I don't see where it would be controversial when we're talking about a postmark, for example.

This would make, your ballot would have to be in by election day.

We have the earliest absentee ballot distribution of any state in the country.

We're sending Labor Day absentee ballots for a November election.

So the idea that you would have to have it in by, given that there would be lots of notice and lots of communication about that, printed very clearly when you get your absentee ballot, the idea that it would have to be in by election day doesn't seem unfathomable to most North Carolina voters.

Even last year, it was supposed to be within three days, but then they were counting ones without postmarks at all and ones that were coming in after three days.

So I think part of this is a real effort by this North Carolina's Board of Election, and they've done a lot yeoman's lift in this, is to make sure that everybody is confident in the results.

- One of the key things that I think is addressing the concerns that voters have when it comes to the tabulation process.

North Carolina has one of the most secure tabulation processes in the nation.

None of our tabulators are connected to anything other than an electrical outlet.

The tabulations are brought back into the County Boards of Elections, and they're tabulated.

So I've been to the public hearings, I've been to the meetings from the state board, the open houses, watched the two main election systems we have here in the state on how the votes are being tabulated, and it is a clean process, and it is imperative that our Board of Elections and our elected officials and people engaged in the election process let the public know that this fairytale that's out there, that somehow they're able to nefariously hide votes or miscount votes is totally incorrect, and we need to put a stop to it.

- [Kelly] So have faith in the process.

- And the tabulation process at least.

Now the other is window dressing.

- Well, I've got 20 seconds left in this show, or the people are gonna be very upset with us, Brad.

- They're gonna lose faith in you.

[laughs] - We're gonna land on time.

Never lose faith in Mr. [indistinct].

Thank you guys for being on, thank you everyone, our elected leaders, and thank you for watching.

Email us at statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll read the email and share it.

I'm Kelly McCullen and thanks for watching, and we will see you next time.

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