- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row".

Trump-backed candidates dominate the GOP primary in Ohio.

A national opioid settlement means money for North Carolina.

And the US Supreme court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, next.

- [Narrator] Major funding for "Front Row" is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen, through the Yuen foundation.

Committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at PBSnc.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back, joining the conversation, Donna King, Editor-in-Chief of Carolina Journal.

Broadcast journalist, Jonah Kaplan.

Political analyst, Joe Stewart.

And Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation.

Mitch, Trump-backed candidates had a big night this week in Ohio.

- The big story is the hotly contested Republican primary for the US Senate race.

Like North Carolina, this is an open seat because of retirement.

J.D Vance is the author of "Hillbilly Elegy" and has been in the the news and the public consciousness for a while.

But he had never run for office before, and Ohioans had not elected a US Senator who had never run for office before for more than a hundred years.

And going into this race, a hotly contested race, multiple candidates, some with big political backgrounds, Vance had been trailing in some polls before the big endorsement that you're talking about.

He was down by about five points to Josh Mandel.

Donald Trump, the former president endorses J.D Vance, entrepreneur Peter Teal, throws in millions of dollars.

- $15 million.

- Millions of dollars to the Vance campaign.

And it turns out that that ended up helping him.

He gets 32% of the vote in this multi candidate race.

Wins by eight points, a big victory for Donald Trump.

It's not just that race though, also in congressional races.

Max Miller in the 7th district, Madison Gesiotto Gilbert in the 13th district.

Most of Donald Trump's candidates in Ohio they are successful.

And the Trump team is saying, if you look across the country right now, their record in these primary races, 55 and 0!

So that's something that he's really touting at this point.

- Joe, you questioned the 55 and 0, right?

By the way, the club for growth was in that race too for Mandel.

- No, absolutely.

Well, 55 and 0, they're certainly bull eligible.

I give 'em that.

But I think it's easy to overstate that a single factor makes a difference in an election.

In this regard, interestingly enough, for me, Trump endorsed Vance, but Vance has been critical of the president in the past.

It appears Donald Trump is becoming a little more sophisticated and savvy about how this game of politics is played.

- And how they pick.

- And he said, even in his endorsement of Vance.

President Trump said, but it's a good field.

They're all good candidates, but I'm getting behind Vance.

So to some extent, I think it's, without question Donald Trump cast a very long shadow over the Republican party these days.

But Trump himself, I think, is becoming a better, more sophisticated, more savvy political operative on his own behalf.

And we'll see how that plays out for the rest of the primary season.

- Donna, would Trump-backed candidates play well in a general election, you think?

- Well, that's a big question for us.

I think that's the big question for us, 'cause as we tip O'Neil all politics is local.

So we're really seeing a few candidates across North Carolina performing pretty well.

Ted Budd's a good example in the Senate race, he seems to be performing pretty well with that endorsement.

But the big key is, in North Carolina, our largest single chunk of voters are unaffiliated.

Now in Ohio, there's a really high turnout of GOP voters.

Here we have so many unaffiliated, the question is, are they gonna grab a Republican ballot?

Are they gonna grab a Democrat ballot?

And which way will they break?

Will those unaffiliated voters, could they break for a Trump-endorsed candidate?

Or could they go the other way?

If they're not happy, if they're, you know, disenchanted a bit with the Democrat, with the way Democrats are running the country and the state right now.

But there's also candidates in the 13th across the state that have that Trump endorsement.

- Jonah, do you think if Budd wins, there's a power shift in the Republican party here in North Carolina?

- There very well might be.

I mean, there's no question that I was looking at kind of a collection of polls, dating all the way back to January and then last year.

I mean, McCrory was polling at 50-51% and Budd was maybe in the twenties, and it's just flip flopped now.

I mean, Budd is not nearly at that 50% mark, but it certainly shows.

I mean, here was a guy that had never run for statewide office.

Not well known outside of his district.

And now he's the front runner for this, but whether the statewide election.

I mean, that's gonna be the big indicator for all these races.

Yes, it's significant that it shows these primaries president Trump does have command, that is now the establishment of the Republican party.

But let's not forget that Donald Trump, he's never won a popular vote in the nation.

So, do these candidates win statewide elections?

Will they win over independence?

- To one of your points, I think it was a big loss in Ohio for the establishment, but I want to come right back to you and talk to you about the National opioid settlement that AG Stein helped negotiate.

- Well, this has been something in the works for many years and especially here in North Carolina, where we have many rural and farm communities that have been decimated by access to opioids, to fentanyl, to addiction crisis.

And what happens is, when you have these small counties rural counties that don't have much in the healthcare, ambulances, law enforcement, and they're devoting so many resources to treating overdoses, answering these overdose calls, hospitals almost like COVID-- - $750 million.

- So, I'm saying, they wanted to recoup money for these losses.

So North Carolina was awarded $750 million as part of a $26 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal and Johnson & Johnson.

Some of the distributors for these drugs.

The big question though is?

Where is this money going to go?

County governments are gonna be reimbursed.

But then there's a question of, should they go to religious-based treatment facilities, treatment programs?

Should they be government-run, private?

That's a lot of money coming in, and obviously it's for a good cause, but who is gonna be in charge of it?

But the attorney general obviously very proud of getting that cash for some much needed relief to these local governments.

- Donna, can we really get a handle on this epidemic when all the fentanyl is flowing in this country?

- I think that that is the big question.

We're seeing a tremendous amount and it's not, you know, these fentanyl poisonings are happening in part because they're ending up in more common, illegal street drugs, where perhaps a buyer buying 'em illegally doesn't know they're in there.

The big question about this particular amount of money it's something that the attorney general focused on is accountability tracking, knowing how it's spent because some of that is blow back left over from the Golden LEAF Foundation in the tobacco settlement.

There's been audits recently saying that it wasn't well tracked, that they don't know where it went.

They don't know how it was spent.

And there's not a lot of feedback on how that money was handled.

So the attorney general says that's not gonna happen again this time, but that's something that the state really needs to be watching closely to make sure this money really does mean something.

- Mitch, accountability is key.

- Yeah, that's certainly true.

And the fact that the attorney general was talking about transparency and accountability is a big thing.

It's also helpful to see that a lot of this money is going directly to counties.

We have seen in the past with that tobacco settlement with the hog farm deal, that a lot of this money ended up in what critics called slush funds that these elected officials in Raleigh- - [indistinct] funds, I mean, it was really bad.

- Yeah.

The elected officials in Raleigh got to doll out to their favorite candidates.

In this case, about 15% of the money is controlled by the state.

But the rest of it goes to the counties which will open up its own set of issues, but at least it's not the case that one politician is going to be using this to try to enhance his own political career.

- Joe.

- Yeah, Jonah makes an important point here.

And a large part of the epidemic was really in rural America.

And in part, it was people self-medicating for depression that came about as a result of a lack of economic opportunities, sort of a general deprivation of what they had with the resources locally.

They felt sad.

They were disappointed about their own prospects and they became depressed and self-treated.

Some part of this is an opportunity for the state to build out a better mental health system to make sure people who are legitimately challenged with just a sense of frustration and disappointment born by economic deprivation, that they have access to resources so that they can treat that mental health condition and not necessarily fall prey to the self medication of some narcotic.

- Okay.

Wrap this up in about 40 seconds, my friend, if you can.

- Well, and again, the reason for the settlement, the reason that these drug companies are in trouble is because this pill was overprescribed.

And so again, when you don't have access to adequate healthcare whether it's back pain, headaches, whatever, they were throwing opioids at people.

Here's your narcotic.

And that's how they built this kind of addiction.

And so getting off of that, that's gonna take time and it's gonna take money - Donna, now I want to talk to you about the big controversy in Washington and that's a leak Supreme court opinion.

- Yes This really dominated the news this week.

Earlier this week, there were multiple leaks, the biggest one coming through someone they believe at the US Supreme Court leaked an early draft of an opinion that was written by Justice Alito.

It leaked it to Politico that indicated the court is prepared to take Roe versus Wade to overturn it, but move those decision rights that those decisions over abortion, any kind of regulations, legality, all of it, move that decision right to the states rather than- - So you have to vote on it?

- Well, they still have to vote on it.

You're correct.

That draft does not mean that this has already happened, but what this draft indicates is that they're willing to move those requirements, move that law making to the states individually this has set off a firestorm, political firestorm.

It may have been one of the reasons it was leaked, but right here, right at the beginning of the primaries, we're seeing protests across the country, at the Supreme Court.

And it appears that over the weekend, perhaps at the homes of the justices on Mother's Day.

- Jonah, is the court becoming too politicized?

- Undoubtedly.

And I think that's part of the reason also people can't say, well, was this a liberal person clerk that wanted to expose this to try and drum up political pressure?

Was this a conservative clerk who wanted to make sure there's gonna be five votes for this?

Maybe if one of the conservative justices was kind of waning on this and why does everything have to be extremes?

You either have to say the leak was bad, but you can't say that the opinion might have been bad.

You can't jeopardize and you can't say, well, it's either all abortions are legal or none of them are legal.

Where is the middle ground, the pragmatism where most Americans are?

- But, Mitch, this is unprecedented, this leak.

- Yeah, it certainly is.

And one of the things that people who don't follow the Supreme Court closely don't realize is all we really know about this is that Justice Alito back in February circulated a draft that he thought he could get five votes for.

That would overturn Roe V. Wade.

We don't know what's happened since then.

There may have been others who said, I agree with this piece of your opinion, I don't agree with this.

You're gonna have to rewrite this.

There may have been a lot happening between February and now that would've changed the ultimate outcome.

And that's the problem.

- Well, this leaked opinion, do you think it'll move some of the justices off that type of opinion?

- I don't think the leak- - The pressure?

- I don't think the leak of this opinion changes anyone who was going to go with the opinion.

The problem is we don't know how many of the justices were going to go with what Alito wanted.

He thought he could get five votes for what he put forward, but they might already know behind the scenes that they don't have five votes for that.

- Joe.

- Yeah, the interesting factor in this now is how, and Donna alluded to this, when the leak came about it instantaneously politicized the issue in the context of this as an election year.

Democrats in Washington many- - [Host] Great point.

- Many of whom were saying they felt like this would help energize based democratic voters to turn out in what is all by all counts and purposes looking to shape up like a very big red wave election.

- Was it your opinion?

I mean, is it a base motivator for Democrats but isn't it a base motivator for Republicans as well, abortion?

- I think that's an excellent point.

And the question is among the democratic performance voters people that consistently vote for Democrats and consistently vote in elections, are they not already pretty likely to turn out in this election cycle, is an issue really gonna galvanize voters that we're already planning to go?

The question is for the voters that don't feel energized, does it become an issue above things like the economy, national security and even still the response to the pandemic, time will tell.

I don't think it's likely as an issue in the context of the election to become a problem there.

- So you don't think it'll be a definer in the election.

Inflation will still trumpet, correct?

- I think economic issues will remain the dominant issue in this election cycle- - Jonah, rap this up.

Oh, go ahead.

- I was just gonna say, depending on what the actual decision is, we're gonna know in June what the decision is, whether that was accurate whether or not they might have moved on from that.

So it's tough to even gauge how much of an impact this is gonna have in November.

- Wrap this up in about 40 seconds - But then we have the primaries before, which is totally completely true.

It may really motivate the more progressive wing or the more conservative wing, it really is in each primary, who are they trying to bring out?

But again, I do think it's gonna come down to inflation.

It's gonna come down to can you hire the people to run your business.

All of those pocketbook, kitchen table issues.

- [Host] Kitchen table issues.

- Those are the big ones.

But the biggest damage that we're seeing is to the court itself.

The court, the judiciary relies very heavily on a good working relationship regardless of people's political views on the bench, being able to work together and work in confidentiality, that has been damaged permanently.

- Okay, I wanna talk about a Meredith College poll.

Very interesting poll this week, Joe, feel us in.

- In many regards it mirrored what we're seeing in other public opinion survey around this time, President Biden underwater in terms of popularity here in North Carolina.

By about 14 percentage points, even while democratic governor, Roy Cooper, seems to be doing okay in terms of popularity.

The president is gonna be a drag on Democrats running for office this cycle, I think, not just in North Carolina, across the country.

His popularity, despite some of the things he's doing now that people find favor with his reaction, Ukraine is an example.

His overall popularity is still suffering.

A generic US congressional.

A matchup where they ask the question, irrespective of the candidates.

Do you plan to vote for the Democratic or Republican in congressional races?

Republicans doing better, 44% to 38% of the generic ballot.

A key sign that this red wave is real in North Carolina.

- Does that track with other polls you've seen?

- I've seen in most generic ballots in North Carolina, Republicans are doing better.

And that generally is a bellwether for Republicans doing well in the fall.

I think that's a key indicator.

On some key issues, The Meredith College poll.

The issue of a hands-free bill to challenge the distracted driving para.

We have 80% supported that.

Expanding Medicaid, 70% supported that.

Making marijuana legal for recreational or medical purposes, 60% supported that.

And to the issue of abortion, a little over half of the respondent said they would like to see something done in state law to codify Roe v. Wade.

So we see on the abortion issue, voters are pretty equally divided in terms of their feelings one way or the other on that topic.

- Mitch, what struck you about this poll?

- I like the fact that we see something that's gonna be a big issue again on Medicaid expansion, where, Joe mentioned 71% support for it.

But the polling always is a little bit skewed toward Medicaid expansion, because people think, oh, hey everyone should have medical care.

When you add in more questions about the fact that this is mostly for able-bodied, jobless adult, childless adults.

And the fact that you can't have any kind of work requirement, the percentage of support drops and drops again.

And I think the other thing that was interesting to me is, the 61% support from medical marijuana.

I think really helps that push that we're gonna see in the state Senate, where the rules chairman, one of the most powerful people in that chamber is the sponsor of the bill for medical marijuana.

I think they'll definitely be looking at that.

- Johnny, your thoughts, my friend.

- It just shows, I think where voters are in terms of, again, their pragmatism, their middle ground.

That about the 50% with abortion, just going back to this issue.

Mitch, I would say you're right with those follow-up questions.

If people say, do you want a blanket ban on abortion?

People would say no.

Do you want a blanket, all abortions are legal?

People would say no.

They don't want extremes, they want people to come together and find some sort of gray, some sort of middle ground.

And that's indicative of this poll, that most people agree on some sort of balance.

Where that balance is, it's very tough when you're voting for extremes in primaries.

And then those are your choices in the general election.

- Donna.

- That's absolutely true.

The more people learn about an issue, the more the numbers change.

One of the things that really struck me about this particular poll was that 47% said that they would support a law similar to Florida's about, you know, requiring kids to be over fourth grade or so before they start learning about any sort of, you know, sexual reproductive or gender identity kind of issues.

That's important, and I think we're also seeing some of the priorities going into the legislative session, which start the 18th, we're not too far away.

They're gonna be looking at a parent's bill of rights.

They're gonna be looking at Medicaid expansion, academic transparency.

This poll is showing that North Carolinians are on pace with what the legislature's gonna be talking about this session.

- Okay, great rep.

Most underreported story of the week, Donna.

- Okay, let's see what we got, mine is, [Marc and Donna laugh] Guilford County commission candidate says, is accusing Guilford County of using taxpayer dollars to promote, as opposed to just educate voters in Guilford County about a bond, a school bond.

It is not illegal for them to educate voters using taxpayer money, but they can't advocate, they can't promote a school bond.

And that seems to be happening according to these accusations in Guilford County.

- Jonah, underreported, my friend.

- It continues to be underreported about the negotiations with Iran and this deal potential reentering a deal between Iran and the world powers.

But the US Senate, two bipartisan votes basically showing the resounding opposition to the Biden administrations, potentially of lifting a terror designation of the revolutionary guard.

And some of the other things, the clauses that would go in this potential deal.

It just goes to show you that the appetite for this is really waning.

And, again, just not a lot of coverage of it.

- Talk to us about who's negotiating for America.

- Russia.

- Okay.

Underreported, please.

- Put this under the category of "things are so bad on earth".

Orbital Assembly, a company is now announced they're gonna build a space hotel by 2025.

- Airbnb?

[all laughing] - Truly air, way up in the air.

But they say by 2027, they will have a hotel for 400 persons in the orbit of the earth.

But they think the first they will only accommodate about 28.

Could come as early as within two to three years.

This is kind of remarkable.

They're saying this is just the start, they wanna build office parks, where people have a place to stay and work and leisure travel and business in space.

But it shouldn't be lost on anyone, all the billionaires are building rockets.

They're trying to get off this planet right now.

Something's wrong.

- Have you made reservations?

- You know what, I did call Bezos, he said I was not welcomed on the ship.

- Mitch.

- North Carolina was slated to fall in the National Educators Association.

The big teachers union's ranking of teacher salaries until the NEA figured out they'd screwed up the numbers, once they recalculated and set the revised number of the average pay of teachers at $54,863.

And actually represented an increase for North Carolina up from 38th to 34th.

It's still below the national average of $66,000 a year for a teacher.

Now, of course, that doesn't factor in cost of living at all.

And some are criticizing the fact that the NEA has numbers that are lower than the numbers that are actually put out by the state of North Carolina itself.

But at least the NEA said it had made a mistake, corrected the mistake and showed North Carolina going up.

- Well, teacher pay, Joe, come up in the short session.

- I think pay for a lot of different public workers will come up, It's an election year, there's-- - [indistinct] employees.

- Well, there's an abundance of riches, there's plenty of money.

Most of it's one-time money, but it's an election year.

So I think legislators be looking where they might be able to raise, pay for some group that they can then campaign on in the fall.

- Donna, you agree with that?

- I think so.

Yeah.

- At least a bonus.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, at least a bonus.

- Okay, let's go to the Lightening Around.

Who's up and who's down this week down, Donna?

- Okay, up, early voting.

So far it appears that in, you know, with early voting starting, we're almost double the number of people showing up for early in-person voting.

Than we were in 2018.

- [Marc] Okay.

- My down, small business in hiring new Goldman Sachs study shows that 90% of small businesses say that they are really having a difficult time hiring and keeping employees on the job.

- Jonah, who's up and who's down this week, my friend?

- What's up is interest rates, the Fed taking an unprecedented step, first time in, I think 20 years I read, that they raised it by .5, I mean 1/2 a percentage point that's gonna affect everything from auto loans, mortgages, credit cards.

People are gonna feel that, that's all to fight inflation.

Who's down is Nina Turner.

We talked about Ohio on the democratic side.

This is a congressional race where Nina Turner, she lost a special election, blamed evil money, tried again, lost by an even bigger margin to Shontel Brown.

- Interest rates will continue to go up though, don't you think, this next year?

- They'll almost have to fight the inflation.

That's sort of the only recipe you got at this point.

- Joe, who's up and who's down this week?

- Who's up "Stans", which is an expression that comes from an Eminem song, the rapper, from 20 years ago, it breaks my heart to think, God that was 20 years ago.

- [Jonah] Your iPod is a lot different than mine, for sure.

- In the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial, the fan obsessed American has become a feature of our culture.

And I think that's gonna translate as more celebrities seek to a public office, their supporters will become like fan obsessed, celebrity trackers on the cultural side.

Who's down?

Fat fingers, a city group, a stock analyst made a mistake in placing an order and plunged the Swedish stock market eight percentage points before it was corrected.

They call these fat finger errors where some trader makes a mistake that causes it, but they were able to rectify it and everything was made cool - Mitch, who's up and who's down this week?

- I was gonna do interest rates from my up, but instead I will say the North Carolina candidates who have Trump's endorsement, they're looking at Ohio and saying hey, this is good news for us.

I think in a multi candidate race where people really don't know who the candidates are- - Who's the most problematic endorsed Trump candidate, Cawthorn?

- Cawthorn, probably.

I think in the 13th Bo Hines has been seen as an interloper coming from Winston Salem into a triangle district, but in a multi candidate race where people really don't know who the people are, having that Trump endorsement's gonna help.

My down is opportunity scholarship opponents, pair of orders from the state court of appeals this week blocked all activity including discovery in that case, what had been happening was the lawyers there were going around and harassing all these private schools to find out what the religious policies were.

- What is governor Cooper's position on opportunity scholarship?

- He's not a fan.

He's tried to get rid of them in the past.

He signed the budget that expanded opportunity scholarship.

But I think that was under a bit of durress knowing it was already gonna pass.

- Donna, headline next week?

- So starting next week, North Carolina state employees, at least those in the cabinet agencies that are under the executive branch, if they get a third booster I believe they get an extra day of vacation.

If they decide not to get that third booster they don't get the benefit.

But they did say that they're going to stop requiring unvaccinated employees in those cabinet agencies to test for COVID once a week.

- Jonah.

- Some new bombshell about Madison Cawthorn.

- He can't get outta his own way.

Headline next week?

- Another four and a half million Americans left their job last month, employers are scrambling to figure out what benefits and salary considerations they need to offer to attract and retain workers.

- Headline next week?

- Committee looking into the future of North Carolina education hears from the public.

- Who's on that committee?

Is it bipartisan?

- It is a bipartisan group.

It's led mainly by representative John Torbett who has been using this as a way to say let's step back and say, if we could invent this system out of whole cloth, what would we do?

- General assembly comes back when?

- On the 18th, the day after the primary.

- Jonah, you have an announcement to make my friend.

- Yes, it's been five wonderful years on this program but this is gonna be my last appearance.

I've been given an amazing opportunity to join a wonderful news organization.

I can't really say much more than that otherwise.

But we are relocating, my family and I, great time to sell a house, terrible time to buy one.

But I wanna thank you all for everything, thank you for enjoying our discussions here and the civility and just showing what a real American conversation can be like.

- Well, you were value added and frankly we much enjoyed having you on.

I know I speak for all of us.

- Absolutely.

- We'll all miss you.

- Okay, we've got to roll, great job team.

That's it for us.

Thanks for watching.

See you next week on "Front Row".

Have a great weekend.

[dramatic music] ♪ - [Narrator] Major funding for "Front Row" is provided by: Robert L Ludy.

Additional funding provided by: Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by: Funding for the lightning round provided by: Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at PBSNC.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪