- Hello, I'm Mitch Kokai, filling in from Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on Front Row, we'll discuss the impact of this week's election results on North Carolina next.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row with Marc Rotterman 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 Nicholas B. and Lucy Mayo Boddie Foundation.

A.E.

Finley Foundation, NC Realtors, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason.

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

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Donna King with Carolina Journal, political analyst, Joe Stewart, State Senator, Jay Chaudhry, and Anna Beavon Gravely of NC Free.

Thanks to all of you for joining us.

We're gonna start with the marquee matchup in North Carolina, which was the big US Senate race.

We know that with the retirement of Republican Richard Burr, there was an open seat and in this race the Republican congressman Ted Budd defeated the Democrat, former State Supreme Court Chief Justice, Cheri Beasley.

Donna, what was significant about this race?

- Sure, absolutely.

So I think the numbers that had came in, you know, Congressman Ted Budd, now Senator elect, Ted Budd got about 51% of the vote there to Cheri Beasley, former North Carolina Chief Justice, got about 47%.

I think one of the interesting things about this is it came in right about where it was polling in days ahead of the election and this was so tight.

It had been neck and neck all summer, really focused heavily on who had the right message, where were they going?

Then there at the end it started to split off, Ted Budd did a 100 county tour, I think that made a big difference.

Cheri Beasley really was tapping into that endorsement she had from Democrat Governor, Roy Cooper.

In the end, I really think it came down to messaging.

Ted Budd stuck very, very closely to his inflation, crime, those messages I think resonated with North Carolina voters.

Cheri Beasley focused much on abortion access.

So in the end, Ted Budd really carried it across the finish line.

- Joe, what stood out to you?

- Yeah, this was a race where I think national Democrats felt very strongly that Jerry Beasley was the best choice and there was a little bit of the clearing of the deck of other Democratic candidates in this primary to give Beasley a clean flight to head up against Bud.

Interestingly enough, though it didn't seem like national Democrats really rallied around Beasley as much as they did in some other high profile states, like Nevada and Arizona, Pennsylvania.

To some extent, I think it probably was a race for Budd to lose, just given the dynamic of North Carolina's political landscape.

The margin doesn't surprise me as much, but the fact that it didn't seemingly help other down ballot Republicans was kind of interesting to me.

- Jay Chaudhry, from the Democratic perspective, obviously Cheri Beasley, this is the first time she had made a statewide run in a political office.

She had won statewide office running as a judge or a justice.

She seemed to make a pretty good showing though and for a long time, this was really seen like a race that could be the Democrat's to win.

- Yeah, no, I think you're right.

I think the trajectory and the difference we saw from the summer to election day clearly changed for Justice Beasley.

I mean, you know, my takeaway are two things, one is Donna is exactly right, actually if you look at other US Senate races versus the US Senate race here, the polls were pretty accurate in predicting what the outcome of this race was, which I think was just reflective of the dynamic of the race itself.

And secondly, it's my sense that there was an under performance of democratic turnout in urban areas such as Mecklenburg and Wake County.

And look, I think that rings a real alarm bell for Democrats 'cause if we wanna be competitive in statewide races and we'll be talking about judicial races, Democrats have to do something about getting turned out up.

- AB, what stood out to you about this race?

- Actually, I think it was most interesting that Budd was the only Trump endorsed candidate that won on election day in North Carolina.

Additionally, the amount of money, the fundraising difference between the two, Cheri Beasley and her campaign raised about two and a half times more than Budd did.

There was a lot of conversation early on about how IE Money didn't show up for her.

More IE Money came in for Ted Budd.

But really what we have to remember is IE Money doesn't go as far as campaign money, and so campaign money, she was able to get more for it.

So it's a better bang for your buck.

Those are the two really main things that stood out to me from this election.

- And let's have a follow up on that because you mentioned that the IE Money doesn't go as far and explain for us why that is.

It's because you can be charged a higher rate for that, exactly.

- Yes.

Yeah, inside campaign funds are charged at a different rate, at a lower rate than pack or independent expenditure money, which is why we're typically gonna have to see way more IE Impact Money show up in these elections to have the same kind of impact that it would on a campaign.

- Sure, and Budd got a lot more independent outside of the state money, Budd got the 60 million-ish for independent expenditure, Cheri Beasley got around 22 million.

So you saw a lot of that coming in for Budd that Beasley wasn't getting, even though internally, in the state, she had higher fundraising rates.

- Joe, does this make this the case that if you're looking at comparing the two candidates now, you really shouldn't just look at what the two candidates themselves raise, you really have to compare apples to apples by putting what they raise themselves, plus what's being spent for them in IE.

- Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think the outside money can make a significant difference if there is some significantly greater sum being spent as it was in the case here.

The challenge too is of course independent expenditure money, you can't coordinate with the campaign.

So issues like message and theme and those sorts of things, sometimes it doesn't have quite the same impact.

I think we saw the value for Ted Budd in the Republican primary where he had a significant amount of outside support come in and that made a real difference for him because at the end of the day, even though as Anna Bevin mentions, you pay a higher rate, the name recognition that you get, particularly in a primary from outside spending like that is really helpful because then the voters know your name.

- All right, let's go ahead and shift gears now, a very interesting discussion, but let's turn now to the US House of Representatives where we have now 14 seats, gained an extra seat because of the last census.

And if you had looked at a map that the Republicans had drawn for the congressional races before there were lawsuits, there was a lot of thought that perhaps Republicans could win 10 of the seats and Democrats four, as it turned out with a court imposed map, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, an even split.

Joe Stewart, what did you think really stood out from this?

- Well, of the 14 districts, the one that was considered to be the most competitive.

The 13th District, which includes a portion of Wake County, Harnett, Johnston, and Wayne Counties, an interesting match up there.

Wiley Nickel, a State Senator.

And as the senator mentioned before we started taping the show, I hadn't really thought about this, but across our congressional delegation that we now have five state senators that will be in our congressional delegation.

As you pointed out, 10% of the State Senate is now serving in our delegation.

But the 13th district, which was considered to be most competitive, proved to be not as much as we would've thought.

Looking at Bo Hines, a candidate, the Republican who perhaps a little flawed came from outside of the district.

That knock was he's not from here kind of thing.

He did not do as well in some of the key parts of that district as Ted Budd did in the US Senate race.

And that maybe was the difference.

But looking across the state, none of the other results were really surprising.

It was more or less what we knew from the partisan ratings of those districts, what voter dispositions would blend in terms of who they're likely to support, Democrat or Republican.

But we go to Congress with a relatively strong delegation now.

The thing we're not thinking about because it's an election, we've got some really strong incumbent Republican members of our delegation, Richard Hudson and David Rouzer, Virginia Foxx, Patrick McHenry, that will be in significant leadership positions and committee chair positions should the Republicans take control of the US House, which seems pretty likely at this point.

- Senator Jay Chaudhuri, there were three races that some people were looking at as possible, really hotly contested races that could go one way or the other.

The Democrats won all of those.

So if you weren't thrilled with what happened in some other elections, Democrats had to be pretty happy about what happened with these congressional races.

- Yeah, look, I think as a general rate, as a general observation, what materialized an election night for the US house races is the fact that the red wave didn't really materialize.

I think there was concerns on the Democratic side that you might see some of the other members actually lose.

Senator Don Davis running in the eastern part of the state, and even Kathy Manning at some point, I think there was concern about whether she would lose.

And I think as Joe mentioned, Wiley Nickel.

But at the end of the day, I think because the red wave didn't materialize, we have an even seven seven split as you said.

I think one of the interesting takeaways is with Wiley Nickel, one that Joe talked about, most outside analysts thought he would lose that race.

And I think in hindsight, if you take it apart, I think it's attributed to two reasons.

One is I think Bo Hines was viewed as a carpet bagger I think by a lot of Republicans in that district.

And secondly, I think Wiley Nickel probably rode the coattails on Sydney Batch who was in a very competitive southern Wake County seat.

- Very interesting.

Anna Beavon, what really stood out to you about these US house races?

- Yeah, I was looking at NC District 1 and then NC District 13.

Those were the two that we've touched on a little bit.

But I'm from Eastern North Carolina and so one was especially interesting as that was what we discussed a lot around the dinner table.

But I was really struck by one, the bounce house ad from Wiley Nickel.

I think that was one of the best ads that was played this cycle and it really set the tone for his campaign moving forward.

He's a family man, he just wants to be normal and help people come together.

Whether that was real or not, that's the message he was telling and I think he did it pretty well.

Additionally, Don Davis really played an authentic card, which is something that we'll see as we get to some of the General Assembly races.

But there's something very interesting about these, all of these elections that we're talking about is there's a strain and a string that I think exists with voters really caring about the authenticity of candidates in a way that we haven't before, and really wanting to see good people represent us, which is why we saw jumping around a lot all the way down the ballot.

- Donna, we've got about 30, 45 seconds for your thoughts.

- Well, I think it's important to note one, I agree.

I think in 13, the one we're all looking at, Bo Hines was probably not the one that could carry that race because Republicans would've had an eight six split had he been able to get that.

The other thing is is that it's important to note that these particular maps are going to be redrawn probably in the next congressional district.

So I think I've heard-- - In fact, they've said, the judges said it was only for this cycle.

- Yeah, exactly.

They're only for this cycle.

It's a Etch A Sketch kind of situation.

And we may see these get rearranged.

That said, probably people like Don Davis would likely survive.

G.K. Butterfield held that seat for many, many years, rarely lost by less than 70%.

So there will be some things left, but this map will be redrawn likely.

- And it will be redrawn by the General Assembly, so let's move to legislative races now.

We saw that going into this, Republicans control both chambers of the General Assembly.

They needed to gain two seats in the State Senate to get a veto proof super majority, three seats in the State House for the same thing.

They did get a net gain of two in the Senate, got a net gain of two on the house, so one vote shy of a super majority in the State House.

The only person at this table who will be affected directly by these election results is our state senator.

Your thoughts on these elections?

- I mean, look, I think the election ultimately in both chambers was about whether Democrats could prevent a super majority so they could protect Governor Cooper's veto.

And as you mentioned, the bad news of the State Senate side is that the Senate Democrats fell one vote shy.

Now, they're 20 Senate Democrats, 30 Republicans, enough to override Governor Cooper's veto.

The good news is the House Republicans did not reach the magic number of 72, so they fell one vote shy in order to override Governor Cooper's veto.

And so Governor Cooper now, by the thinness of margins, is able to protect his veto.

I think if there's one takeaway from this race, it's that Republicans have to try to make inroads into suburban counties, places such as northern and southern Wake, which were hotly contested races.

And if there's one takeaway from Democrats, it's they've gotta make inroads into suburban rural counties in order to compete in these very competitive Senate races and deciding who's gonna take control of each chamber.

- We're really talking about elections, but since we have you here, what sort of impact is it gonna have on the way the legislature does its business, not having super majorities versus having them?

- Look, I mean, I think it's a great question given that you have it in one chamber, not the other.

My sense is you may have a takeaway where you may take votes on social issues that are controversial, but they're not gonna override the governor's veto.

But on the other hand, you're gonna see Democrats probably come together on budget and economic development issues.

It may be more of the same and it may be more of the same that helps contribute to our great business climate 'cause I think the bipartisanship that we've had in the last two years have actually worked.

- Anna Beavon, your thoughts about the legislative races?

- Yeah, I was mostly paying attention to the races that the governor got involved in.

He got involved in five Senate races and one House race.

And that was an unprecedented move.

We've seen that talked about through this whole cycle.

The governor got involved in two primaries to have two Democrat incumbents defeated.

And then we saw ads run by the governor.

- Toward the end of the cycle, I think they were a little to late, actually.

There were a mixed bag of results.

But most interestingly, he started in Wilmington with those ads and I think there's a strategy beyond that goes to that, where Wilmington's the smallest media market, the least expensive media market, and you can rally test the value and the impact of those ads there.

And then that's- - Yeah, very, very interesting stuff.

Donna, your thoughts about legislative races?

- Well, I mean, first, I can't imagine what the pressure's gonna be on that Democrat caucus.

Everybody's gotta show up for every vote, [colleagues laughing] and, there's gonna be 'cause you know, one vote shy of overriding a veto's a big deal.

So there's gonna be a tremendous amount of pressure both from the governor and from the majority party.

I was watching some of those races that moved from Republican to tossup in the last maps, and Republicans took all of the ones that became tossups in these maps and even took some of the ones that leaned Democrat.

So those races really showed that even though Republicans did not have a majority walking into the map, they walked away with it.

Or a super majority.

And it's important to note that as they start to talk about January and getting back into session, some of the issues they were already talking about whether it's Medicaid expansion or taxes or whatever, they've decided, look, we need to go talk to some of these new members that are coming in and see where they stand.

- Joe, your thoughts?

- Yeah, I hate to be the one to say this but you know, the day after the 2022 election is the first day of the 2024 election.

[colleagues laughing] - And shocker, shocker.

- And significant to that is the fact that the Republican majorities in the general assembly have an eye towards 2024 where it will be a slightly different political landscape.

We'll have a presidential contest on the ballot but no US Senate race.

And given the way the governors race is shaping up, we may have three down-ballot vacancies in the council of state.

So a robust election even though there's no US Senate race for that particular election cycle.

So Republicans in their what I would say, practically have a super majority.

Even being one vote shy in the House, the ability to find a Democrat who might be willing to go with a veto or override given the subject matter, or the fact that the state's pretty flush with cash makes it possible for perhaps some really worthy project in a district to receive some funding in exchange for a Democrat's willingness to go along with a Republican override on the House side.

But I think the Republicans are gonna wanna focus on building a good program going into 2024, so even with the practical super majority, it's probably a focus, at least in large part, on things that really make a difference so that they can raise money on.

- Yeah, very interesting stuff.

Let's move on now to the next set of elections that we're gonna be talking about, judicial races.

We knew there were two important seats on the North Carolina Supreme Court that were up for election.

In both cases, the Republicans won with Trey Allen unseating the incumbent, Sam J Ervin, IV and Richard Dietz beating fellow appeals court Judge Lucy Inman, Republicans also sweeping the four appeals court races.

What stood out to you, Anna Betton?

- One, this was the most important race, the general, or excuse me, the Supreme Court races.

Either one was massively important for a shift in political ideology on the courts.

It's gonna change how the general assembly works moving forward, but I think what I was most struck by was how virtually identical the percentages were.

They were like two-tenths of a point off for both races.

- And the appeals court races were close, too.

With Donna Stroud a little bit higher than everyone else, but otherwise-- - Yes.

But I think her bump was due, too.

She had a really messy primary and so I think her name recognition was a little higher due to that process.

But Lucy Inman has been praised throughout this election cycle for running a really good campaign, very strategic, very practiced.

And all of the work that she did, she got exactly the same as Inman, I mean, as Ervin, and I think there's something to that.

I'm not really quite sure, but I think party affiliations really mattered more than anything else on these courts.

- Donna?

- Absolutely, I completely agree.

But I think the biggest question is is from here, the general assembly has also said that this is a critical race for them 'cause it may change, may adjust how they are approaching legislation.

Because they will no longer, in theory, have to go defend the constitutionality every time somebody doesn't like their bill or a group doesn't like their piece of legislation.

Instead, there will be, they will get deference that it's constitutional and less argued otherwise, rather than everything being legislated through the court.

So I think that's one big, important part about it, but you're right, these very, very close percentages indicate that maybe we underestimated the North Carolina voter.

They were paying attention.

They knew what was going on and you can see it when we go all the way down to school boards and county commissioner, and all that.

North Carolinians are well-informed in many of these races.

And in this case, they really swept all of those statewide judicial races.

- Joe?

- There was much talked about this being a red wave election.

First midterm of a president typically goes against the party in control of the White House and there was some expectation.

You can insert whatever appropriate adjective before the word red wave now.

All the analysts are saying it was either just a ankle-lapper versus a tsunami.

[colleagues laughing] Whatever analogy you wanna use.

- Red mist was one of my favorite calls.

[colleagues laughing] - But I think to some extent there was a red wave where it mattered, and in the judicial races, I think it mattered.

I think voters in North Carolina were looking at the partisan identity of these judicial candidates and said this matters to us.

And many times we talk about the political affiliations of judges, but there is judicial temperament.

I mean, some part of their philosophy about the way the Constitution applies, it does follow in a continuum in many ways, like political ideology does.

And to some extent, you could say partisan identity is a proxy for judicial temperament as far as that goes.

But I think in the judicial races, people were interested in seeing Republicans elected into those positions.

Whether or not they felt like that mattered for some other reason, the ability to not have cases brought before them as the Democratic majority's Supreme Court had that overturned legislative decisions, that maybe not the nuance that voters understood.

But in this particular election, being a Republican judge made a difference.

- Senator, I'm guessing this is one of the major disappointments for North Carolina Democrats on the night.

- Yeah, no, look, absolutely.

And I think Joe's right to characterize it as a red wave for judicial races.

But my theory on this is different than Donna's because I think, one, I think the judicial races may be the most pure reflection of partisanship in our counties because I think as AB has pointed out, which I think is fascinating is you can have a candidate like Lucy Inman who's raised north of $2.5 million and then other judicial candidates who've raised nothing and they end up with the exactly the same margin of difference, which should... Yeah, so I think that's point number one.

And point number two, - Is, I mean this really kind of completes a suite that the Republican started before 2020.

I mean we have to remind ourselves that Democrats had control of the court six to one and now it's reversed to five, two going into next year.

- Very interesting stuff.

We are now going to shift gears.

We've been talking about the major races on the ballots in North Carolina, but we wanted to take some time to talk about some other elections that might have attracted your attention.

Things that we might consider to be under reported or if you want to mention people who you think are particularly up or down after the latest election cycle.

Let's start with Donna.

- Absolutely.

So I was really watching through this process the school boards.

So we all know after the government shut downs of public schools, it really ignited an entire generation of parents who maybe didn't pay attention before.

And they saw now that very local races in school board county commission, things like that, that those impacted their families directly, put their kids behind in school.

So school boards is something I was really watching.

There was a swell coming.

New Hanover County had an interesting situation.

New Hanover County had a Republican sweep of school board members.

They're now five to two Republican.

Two Democrat incumbents lost their races.

They really are seeing a wave for Wilmington.

- I see what you did there.

[group laughing] - But I think it's something that we are going to be seeing more of.

White County had a few more Republicans elected to the school board, Mecklenburg County did too.

So those races I think are critically important because they're closest to the family.

- Joe, what else should we know about this election?

- Well, I don't know if I mentioned this, but the 2024 election cycle started right after election day.

Did I mention that previously?

I'm interested beyond the borders of North Carolina how the presidential contest of 2024 is going to shape up as a result of this particular election.

President Trump has announced he's going to say something November 15th about what his intentions are.

President Biden has now said sometime after the first of the year.

It's not lost on me that Tim Scott, Republican from South Carolina, in his announcement of his success in running for reelection in the Senate, intimated that perhaps he'd be interested in running for president.

Certainly Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, just won overwhelmingly known to be a candidate for president.

But we may start to see some other Democrats floating their names out as well.

Folks that have done particularly well in this particular election cycle, based on whenever it is we set up our primary for 2024 in North Carolina, we could become a destination for a lot of these candidates looking to win a prized jewel like North Carolina in a contested presidential primary if it should come to pass that neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump are the actual nominees.

- Senator, what else should we know about this election?

- Well, is it 2024 election starting because I have thoughts on that too.

Look, not on presidential, but gubernatorial race I think the gubernatorial race starts this week and I think we're going to probably witness one of the most interesting, expensive, and potentially combative race in our state history.

And look, I think if you're a Republican, Ted Budd aside and you look at what just happened with Trump endorsed candidates like Kerry Lake and Doug Mastriano, you have to ask whether makes sense for Republicans to nominate someone like Mark Robinson who's much more combative or someone like treasurer Dale Falwell who's been focused on governing.

And if you're a democrat, as I mentioned you've really got to ask what we can do to drive turnout because we have not had success.

Certainly when it comes to Cal Cunningham, Cheri Beasley and judicial races.

I think whoever the nominee has to really focus on making sure we drive turnout going into 2024.

- Thanks.

AB?

- I really think the unaffiliated voter which we all love to talk about the unaffiliated voter but I think we learned a little bit more about them this year.

They are definitely pickier than we're giving them credit for.

They're much more nuanced in the like the Bud Wiley nickel voter.

Like that's a real thing.

I think that the overall unaffiliated, they're showing up for early voting in a lot of these districts it was about a third, a third, a third.

And they're very passionate.

They're not undecided about anything.

They know exactly what they want and what they think in this prized jewel concept of North Carolina I feel like we're going to become the new Iowa where everyone is going to have to meet the candidate to be able to vote for the candidate.

And so I think how we talk to and about unaffiliated voters is changing rapidly.

- You can't overstate the split ticket voter, especially if you look at Georgia where Camp won by a huge margin but you also have Warnock slightly ahead.

You're absolutely right.

- Very interesting election, very interesting discussion.

And I think our panel has covered it very well during the course of this program.

I want to on behalf of this panel especially thank all of our service members as we have this show that's airing for the first time on Veterans Day.

So I want to thank the panelists for joining us on this special post-election edition of Front Row.

And we want to thank you for watching.

Please join us again next week.

- Major funding for Front Row with Marc Rotterman 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 Nicholas B and Lucy Mayo Boddie Foundation A.E Finley Foundation, NC Realtors, Rifenberg Construction, Stefan Gleason.

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

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