- [Kelly] Governor Roy Cooper travels North Carolina to generate support for an abortion bill veto.

And the 2024 governor's race could add a new GOP primary candidate.

This is State Lines.

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

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me for this week's discussion, good friend Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation.

Representative Sarah Crawford, Democrat from Wake County.

Republican Senator Lisa Barnes, and you covering three counties, Franklin, Nash, and Vance, well represented.

And Conen Morgan, political consultant.

Thank you all for being on.

Three first timers on State Lines.

Welcome aboard.

No one said, [guests speaking indistinctly] "Thank you very much."

There we go.

[guests laughing] Well, save your word, we have a lot to talk about, including Governor Roy Cooper publicly calling out several Republican lawmakers this week.

I mean, not several, three or four, in hopes of convincing just one of them to sustain his abortion bill veto.

Senate Bill 20 would ban elective abortions after 12 weeks, abortions for rape and incest at 20 weeks, and fetal genetic conditions that affect viability at 24 weeks.

The current state abortion ban starts at 20 weeks in the current law.

The Senate is almost certain to override a veto.

The House Republicans, they cannot afford to lose one vote.

If every representative shows up on the night they vote to override or sustain the veto.

Sarah, we'll start in the House.

That's where every vote counts.

Your thoughts.

- Absolutely, every vote counts.

And what I like to remind people all the time is, I am only in charge of one vote.

But this abortion bill, yeah, I certainly never thought that I would be fighting for rights that we already had or fighting for my children not to have fewer rights than we do.

But we did pass, the legislature pass the Senate Bill 20 last week.

It feels like almost a lifetime ago now.

But you laid out what the bill does and this 12 week abortion ban is just, it's incredible.

But the governor has been on the phone talking with legislators.

There are four individuals that he's called out.

And it is certainly my hope that we can sustain the governor's veto on this.

This bill, this legislation, is insulting for women, not just insulting for women in North Carolina, but everywhere.

And we need to trust women to do the right thing, to make their own decisions.

Excuse me, let me rephrase that.

We need to trust women to make their own decisions and politicians do the right thing and get outta the doctor's office with them.

But what I would say is, if anybody watching has any connections with one of these four legislators, please call them and encourage them to do the right thing for North Carolina.

My concern, of course, is that we've seen before that Republican lawmakers have been more interested in defeating the governor on vetoes than they have about keeping their campaign promises and doing the right thing for North Carolina.

- Well, Republicans have been just as unified as Democrats have with their particular position on that.

Senator Barnes, this is a ban to the Democrats.

This is just rolling back a what, eight weeks if you're a Republican.

I know there was a big do-over using the word ban during the Senate Florida debate.

What's your take on this bill and how likely is that Governor Cooper can coerce those handful of Republicans to flip?

- So what I'm seeing here is a couple things.

First of all, the governor is doing what any smart politician would do in his position as a lame duck.

He's canvassing the state, he's making speeches.

He is rallying, really rallying his base doing this.

The second thing that I see him doing in calling out these four members and going to their districts and trying to pressure them into changing their votes is, I don't think I'm going to work.

I think he realizes that he's not gonna change their vote at all.

They are solid and they're not gonna be pressured into changing their votes on this issue.

This very, very important issue.

And so the third thing I think I'd like to bring up is that so when you've got the microscope being put on these four members and then all of the attention that's put on the legislation and attacking the legislation, criticizing it and bringing, it's a lot of misinformation being put out there and false claims about this bill.

So you've got all this stuff going on over here so that there's no pressure on the governor to really voice his stance on abortion.

I think the public would like to know exactly where he is on abortion, how many weeks is it okay during a pregnancy to have an abortion, and at what point would you want to defend that pre-born baby.

Those specific questions.

Because all I've been hearing for the last week is this is an extreme bill, it's bad for women, and I'm gonna veto it.

So I think we need to hear more.

- Conen, the great thing about this if you're the governor is, does he have to even say anything or does he just trot the bill out and, say, voters in these districts, it's four districts, it's, "Hey, what do you think of this?"

- Part of this is many folks on the right are saying that the Democrats want a full-term abortion bill on the table or having unlimited abortions, and that's not the case.

It's been stated that the actual federal mandate was good enough and that there's not been an overwhelming clamoring to be able to change the existing law.

So that's first.

The second part of that, out the four actual people who are being targeted by the governor, three of those are in tenuous seats where if we keep the current redistricting lines the way they are, you could have a very much different conversation when we get to the ballot booth next November.

So, we're in a situation where he is doing the right things politically to be able to put pressure on folks because these people have to answer to their constituents when it comes time to go vote next year.

- Mitch, is it fair that he pulls the old tweets and the old campaign statements to say, everything's just fine at 20 weeks and all of a sudden op-eds in the "Wilmington Star" and different newspapers and clarifications on behalf of these locally elected Republicans in some cases.

And you have Tricia Cotham who was a Democrat until a few weeks ago.

- Well, it's all politics.

I mean, you look at what people have said and done in the past and you bring that up if it seems as if they have changed their position.

To me, the most interesting part of what Governor Cooper is doing is he's using the same sort of strong arming bullying tactics that he's used for a number of years on his own party, which has been pretty effective 'cause no one has really gone against him when the chips have fallen down.

You have several legislators who are Democrats who have voted with Republicans on particular bills and then after gubernatorial veto have changed their votes because they don't want to cross Roy Cooper.

In this case though, he's trying to put pressure on Republicans who probably don't really care what he thinks.

And if you look at a couple of them, Tricia Cotham, as was referenced, if those district lines stay the same, she's not gonna win in that district.

But they aren't gonna stay the same.

They're gonna redraw 'em.

John Bradford, one of the other people who's targeted, isn't even gonna run for the House anymore.

He's gonna run for state treasurer.

So I don't know that this particular strategy is gonna help him much.

- But you use the word strong arm and bullying in relation to Roy Cooper being the governor, elected twice.

If you got the power, why not be a, quote, political bully and be someone who applies strong arm tactics to convince people to vote your way?

I thought that was politics.

- Well that's one way to go about it.

I mean, that's something that he has used successfully to block legislation from Republicans that he didn't like when they didn't have veto proof super majorities.

I don't know that the same tactic works on the other party that it does on his own party.

- All right, let's talk.

Oh, go ahead.

- I think it's important too, the point was made that these Republican legislators aren't gonna change their vote.

Let's remember there's one republican legislator that hasn't even voted on the bill, and that's Representative Davis.

He did not vote on SB20 when it came through the House last week.

- Can you take a walk on this one the second time around?

As they say he's taking a walk.

- He certainly can take a walk.

He wouldn't be present for the vote.

It would change the numbers that would be needed.

And if they lose that one, then we have a chance to sustain the governor's veto.

- If all of your colleagues, and the Democrats show up, which didn't happen in the first vote, which is why Ted Davis's vote didn't matter.

- And will your team be there?

- I control one vote, and I expect all of my team to be there.

- Well, you're representing every Democrat in North Carolina right now.

Hey, former US Representative Mark Walker is expected to enter the 2024 Republican primary for governor.

A press conference is coming later this month.

Mr. Walker would join Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and State Treasurer Dale Folwell in this GOP primary.

Walker represented the Sixth Congressional District last decade, 2016 through 2021.

He also tried to run for US Senate just last cycle.

Mitch, Mark Walker against Mark Robinson against Dale Folwell.

What does Walker do?

- Well, it's gonna be interesting to see what he does.

I think a lot of these folks who are thinking about the governor's race really haven't been paying much attention to the polling among Republican primary voters.

'Cause the polling says, Mark Robinson has it won.

It's already done.

But a lot of the people who are looking at other candidates are saying, okay, Mark Robinson's gonna win the primary.

What happens in a general election?

And I think that's where Dale Folwell and Mark Walker are coming at this.

They're saying, look, we are not only conservative candidates, but we are candidates who can win a general election.

They don't think Mark Robinson, the Lieutenant Governor, can do that.

And that I think is definitely a debate among the Republican circles.

But if you look at all of the polling, including our most recent Civitas poll at the John Locke Foundation, it was Mark Robinson here, everyone else, even candidates who haven't declared, way down here.

So it's gonna be an uphill battle.

- Conan, during the last US Senate primary, Ted Budd was only 30, 35 points down early on.

And look where we are now against Pat McCrory.

Should any candidate be undeterred from running?

And I mean including Josh Stein, would he, I mean there's no air in that Democratic primary right now it doesn't seem.

- Well, we live in a democracy so anybody could run.

- [Kelly] Anybody can run and come on.

- Correct, but let's talk about it from Mark Walker's perspective.

He has to do better than third place last time.

He had an actual restart of his campaign with a rap tour bus that was able to get him out there for US Senate.

So he's gotta make a compelling argument to everyone that he's serious about fundraising and having momentum in this actual primary.

But make no mistakes about it, Mitch is correct.

Mark Robinson is the runaway freight train in North Carolina.

And I say that from two different lenses.

One is that Facebook Mark will say and do anything to galvanize his base, but Money Mark is the most well-funded Republican nominee for governor that this state has seen ever this far out from the election.

- Can you respect what he's doing as a?

I mean, on Twitter and in the media, there's a love hate thing with Mark Robinson.

There's a business side to that campaign that you've mentioned.

Does it even impress Democrats right now?

- It impresses us from the standpoint of seeing people actually follow him to a tenement where we have not seen this much enthusiasm for an actual gubernatorial candidate.

Seven of the last eight gubernatorial elections have gone the Democrats' way.

We have not seen a huge enthusiasm going for the actual Republican nominee.

And this is different.

This is a much different conversation.

This will be the only contested gubernatorial race in the country next year, and we expect $60 million to be spent in this state.

So everyone has their eyes and lenses focused on this.

There was a CNN report specifically on Mark Robinson released yesterday about some of his online commentary.

And folks are going to pay attention to all the candidates on the Republican side because let's be very clear, folks may like Mark Robinson from an actual polling perspective, but the Republican establishment will not give him a free pass to run for the nomination.

- Well we have a senator right here, representative of the GOP.

You're on the team with three candidates with different walks, different professions, and, well, different backgrounds.

How do you wade through that as a senator of three different counties?

And he's right.

Mark Robinson's ahead right now, but Dale Folwell, popular with state employees and that's a huge constituency.

- Well, it's pretty obvious that republicans like to have options in their primary.

So, and Mark Robinson, I agree, he is a force to be reckoned with.

He's an excellent communicator.

All three of the candidates have run statewide races in the past, so that's nothing new for them.

They're all three solid candidates, and as you say, have different personalities, different life experiences to bring to the table.

So it's still early.

There's a lot that can go on.

There's a lot that can happen between now and the primary.

So we'll just have to wait and see.

- Does every senator, are they, is every senator expected to make an endorsement of these candidates for governor and lieutenant governor?

And how do you go about that?

Is it, are there people telling you who you need to support or is it, or do you get to go, I'm gonna support this person, win or lose and take the fall out of it?

- Right.

Well, it's been my policy not to get involved in primaries.

That usually doesn't pan out well.

So that's what I fall back on.

Nobody tells us who to endorse or not, so.

- Well, Representative Crawford, you don't have that problem in the gubernatorial primary.

Right now it's Josh Stein by a mile and all the apparatus is behind him.

What does it do for the Democratic side of this to have three high caliber candidates running in the GOP and one focused candidate running for Democratic governor?

- I think it's excellent.

Let's let the Republicans fight amongst themselves.

Let's see if Mark Robinson, as Conan said, the runaway freight train can pull Dale Folwell a little bit to the right and so that these folks can try to out-right each other.

That's typically what happens in primaries on both sides of the aisle.

And let's get them spending their money early, and let's see if we can keep that fight going for as long as we can.

And then let's have Josh focused on everything he needs to do to win the general.

And I endorsed Attorney General Stein early.

I endorsed him back in the fall when he first announced.

- One other interesting note about this, Mark Robinson, people who have followed him know his pluses and minuses, but one thing that he brings to the table that's going to be very different for Republicans is potentially bringing in a whole group of voters who hadn't ever thought about voting for Republicans before.

I saw he just had a video this week where he is sitting down with Clarence Henderson, civil rights icon who didn't actually say endorsement in the video, but he is talking about Mark Robinson speaking truth and doing a great job.

And I'm thinking, if he can pull some voters who you wouldn't normally think would go to Republicans his way in a general, that really creates a lot of interest.

- How much of a dent can Mark Robinson put in the Black vote in North Carolina?

- Significant.

We've seen the erosion of that happen even just in the last cycle in 2022 of actual enthusiasm gap amongst Black voters.

But let's be clear about what people think about Mark Robinson from the endorsement process which Senator Barnes mentioned.

Even the leader in the Senate was there at the rally and then said, oh, I didn't endorse him.

It would be present on stage.

So we're seeing the actual establishment Republicans be very gun shy about whether they wanna put their full weight and support behind Mark Robinson, and Mark Robinson is gonna have to carry even a heavier load to the voters to be able to get full support.

- That establishment is powerful.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Katherine Truitt released a quote saying she opposes extending federal Title IX rules, potential rules that would cover transgender female athletes.

Federal officials were accepting some public comments before changing Title IX that would then require the inclusion of transgender females in women and girls school sports.

Several states have passed bans or limits on such participation.

They say people born with male anatomy and male hormones will have two great a physical advantage over athletes that are born, quote, biologically female.

Superintendent is quoted as saying changes to Title IX would undermine the intent of Title IX which was to increase opportunities for female athletes.

Senator Barnes, this issue just kind of floats out there and floats out there and floats out there.

Does Superintendent Truitt's words ring heavier now, or should that have come during the bill debate?

- Well, she actually, she spoke in the committee.

- Yeah, she did speak on in the committee, I do remember that.

But where does it, what does her weight, how does her weight flow to DC when they're taking public comment?

Is she one of a million people that's gonna comment on this?

- Well, I mean, she is superintendent of our public school system.

So, I just will start out by saying I support her decision in opposing those proposed changes to Title IX.

And when you think about the purpose behind Title IX, it was to protect individuals and to promote fairness and equality.

So, that's what we need to stick behind and to embrace.

I think, you know, when you're talking about women's sports that, you know, it's been proven that a biological male is going to have genetic inherent, genetic features that will, you know, give him an advantage.

And I think that's not fair to our women who have worked so hard and really made some amazing accomplishments and milestones in athletics to have this diminished by changing this policy.

So, we heard some compelling stories during the committee debate from female athletes about their experiences and how they had been harmed and been physically injured when we have biological males playing on the same team.

So, you know, I like what Senator Sawyer said that, this is not an anti-trans issue.

It should be a non-partisan issue.

And it's a pro-woman issue.

You know, I believe in, you know, helping women and this is what we need to do to help women in sports.

- Representative, it's this is one that even writing the scripts for a television show and how to describe the situation it's very difficult and unnerving to be quite honest with you.

What's the balance here?

You're seeing some very progressive liberal women born women, so hey, wait a minute.

Pull back.

Let's get creative here with how to be inclusive.

What does this do?

Title IX is big money for North Carolina.

- Yeah.

- If it goes against the state law - Yeah.

Title IX is big money.

And I think, you know, if these proposed rule changes go into effect and you know, of course, we just passed legislation recently that would go against those newly proposed rules that would be just detrimental to the state.

And I think, you know, you could be looking at another HB2 situation on your hands where we're talking about the amount of money lost in the state of North Carolina.

You know, for me, we shouldn't really even be talking about this issue.

You know, again, this is another area where politicians are trying to put themselves in personal lives and what Title IX is really about.

Yes, it's about protecting women's sports and equality and fairness.

But let's go back to that equality of fairness.

Why aren't we letting young people be their authentic selves and participate in sports in the way that where their gender identity lines up?

That's what we ought to be focused on.

You know, in North Carolina, we had two cases, two cases of trans women competing in women's sports in high school.

That's it.

It's not like this is some big rampant issue that is causing harm to female athletes everywhere.

We need to make sure that sports are inclusive for everyone.

So, you know, I don't, you know, at a time when suicide rates are among the leading cause of death among our young people, we need to be doing everything we can to promote healthy children, promote mental health and our children.

And this is one way we can do that.

- Mitch, the debate over transgender athletes.

If there's only two athletes that it would be affected in North Carolina.

And this is a nationwide trend of legislation.

Let's least in some written, many red states.

What does it say about this debate?

Shall we be as worried about it as we are?

Should we even be talking about this debate in media or-- - Well, obviously legislators think it's something that it's interesting to deal with and that they ought to be dealing with whether it is a big issue or not at this point, it's not something that we particularly spend a whole lot of time on.

We'd rather they talk about lowering taxes and reducing regulation and that sort of thing, keeping spending under control.

But obviously this is something that among a certain segment of the population, including parents of young women who don't want to see boys bashing their girls in the head with a volleyball.

- That a testimony.

- I remember that is something that's very important to him.

Back to your earlier question, Katherine Truitt's impact on the federal issue.

I doubt that it has much of an impact.

She makes her statement, she stands with what legislators have done the legislation that has been moving through the general assembly.

But in terms of affecting the Biden administration, I don't think her comments will affect him.

- Conan, can viewer voters on the left and right simply get tired of all this, tired of us bringing it up on television shows, tired of the op-eds and tired of politicians pushing it?

- No, not at all.

- [Host] You don't think so?

- And part of it is this is just a continuation of the culture of wars.

I actually agree, Mitch.

We should be talking about substantive policies that are focused on the economy and how we get more people to get back to work and trying to lower the actual prices of many things in the grocery store.

But we are in a situation by which people are going to take one issue and try to drive as deep a wedge as they can amongst our actual base of, for both sides of the chamber, see me in before both parties in order for them to find a way to get more people to pay attention to things that are not important.

- For someone who's worked on campaigns and strategies, do you think many people realize that they say social media doesn't matter and ads don't count?

No, nothing influences my decision.

Is the mass media and the mass use of of ads in these campaigns, is it more effective than the average person anticipates or expects?

- Yes.

And the echo chamber is right on our phones.

You're gonna be influenced more in the upcoming election by your peers than you will be from commentators.

And they're gonna re-share what they feel like is truthful whether it's been fact checked or not.

So the influence is still there.

It's just a different connectivity of how that happens.

And we expect to see more of it in the coming election.

- All right.

Let's go to our last topic.

The state legislature was rather quiet this week.

There's a debate on what quiet really means during a political season.

It was crossover last week.

The deadline by which anyone that's elected must have their bill passed either the House or the Senate to remain under consideration for the most part throughout the 23-24 legislative session.

But weather's warming up.

That means attention's gonna focus on a state budget bill that's still being hammered out.

Also, we've got redistricting that I have to put on the record this early though.

I really do not want to, Conan, can we start with a state budget?

We've heard rumors next week, Senate's gonna come out and will that be the deal?

And here we go.

- We're looking forward to the Senate budget on that end so we can see what the priorities are for the Senate versus the House.

And that by constitution is required for everybody to be able to go home, though there's been a couple handful of times where they decided to hold you all there for the rest of the year.

So we need a budget.

We've gotta pass a budget.

We're looking forward to see what the priorities are spending on a budget.

And we really need to prioritize how we're gonna be able to take some of the windfall money that we have currently in reserves and see how we're gonna spend that part.

So that's one.

- Senator Barnes, $3 billion in what they call over collection.

'Cause the economy's been pretty good based on how you've budgeted or the Republicans have budgeted your take on the budget situation and how's it gonna affect your early summer.

If you can get a budget bill out next week.

- That would be amazing.

I think it would be the first time in several sessions that we've actually had a summer and had the budget passed in a reasonable amount of time.

So that's kind of what the conversation is at the General Assembly these days lately about the budget and getting the budget passed and getting out of there.

- I see smiles, Sarah, if Republicans spend 10% more than they did last cycle, is that a victory for Democrats as well?

Or do you have to plant the flag and be the loyal opposition?

- I think it depends on how that 10% more is spent, right?

I mean, you know, we can have lots of debate about where to spend the money, you know, we'll have to see what the Senate budget.

I voted against the House budget when it came.

It just missed the mark.

And I would argue that if you've got 3 billion in over collection and you've got reserves that we're sitting on, those aren't really reserves or over collection.

We just have unpaid bills for the state of North Carolina.

And so it's not really savings when you've got unpaid bills.

So we've gotta figure out how to spend that in the right way for North Carolinians, you know?

But you know, we've got some big priorities in the budget.

Medicaid expansion is tied to the budget so that's gonna be something huge that Democrats are watching out for what else is packed into this budget.

And we always have to make decisions about what we can live with.

But I agree with Senator Barnes about getting out early.

I think she and I we were freshmen together in the Senate last year and we served in the longest long session I think in the history of North Carolina.

So it would be nice to have a shorter, long session.

- You've got 20 seconds.

You better hurry up, Mitch.

- Well the budget is going to be about numbers, but it's also gonna be about policy, which will be very interesting to see what the Senate has in its plan and then what comes in the final deal that goes to Governor Cooper.

- All right, we've got it.

Thank you to our panelists, Mitch, Sarah, Lisa, Conan.

Thank you so much and thank you for watching.

Join us next week.

Also email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

Statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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