- [Announcer] A new lawsuit aims to address felons and voting.

State auditor Beth Woods steps down one year early.

And North Carolina Congressional leaders want answers on plans to import the GenX chemical into Fayetteville.

This is "State Lines."

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

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell, Dawn Vaughan of the "News & Observer," Michael McElroy of "Cardinal & Pine," and "North State Journal"'s Matt Mercer in seat number four, his least favorite seat on this big old round table.

It's good to see you folks.

- Good to be here.

- Yeah.

- A lot's going on, yet not a lot's going on, a lot of lawsuits.

We have three or four topics that I've written down for the week that could be top story.

So we'll jump in on one, talk about a new federal lawsuit, aims to establish that people who are still on felony probation who still cannot vote cannot face new charges for registering to vote illegally.

Plaintiffs say prosecutors should need to prove the would-be voter knew they were breaking the law by registering to vote.

Ex-felons do not receive voting rights until they've completed post-prison release probation.

The Board of Elections is also facing a slew of mid-February 2024 deadlines to implement other state election laws that are coming into effect.

Colin, even they're asking for relief.

So which part of all these court proceedings with election laws do you wanna start that, felons?

- Yeah, I guess we start with felons.

I mean, that's another confusing thing.

It's changed back and forth because of court rulings whether in fact somebody who is on probation, has finished their active prison sentence, is able to vote.

So understandably within this population, there's probably a lot of confusion as to, "Can I legally vote?"

and a fair number of people who probably are registering and thinking that they're okay based on what was the case some month or years ago.

- Let's go back to fifth grade.

What is the law?

Do you understand it yourself?

- I think so.

- I know I'm confused.

- Yeah, I mean, I think in North Carolina, it's that as long as you are still serving an active sentence, including probation, parole, et cetera, you're not able to vote.

And other states do it other ways.

Other states, as soon as you're out of prison, you can vote.

- Well, Dawn, what do you make of all these lawsuits?

I mean, the bill easily passed, veto overrides.

It's supposed to come into effect.

If you're just sitting around your kitchen table or listening to this show this weekend, what are you supposed to make of all the lawsuits surrounding state elections laws?

- I mean, it happens all the time, I guess.

It's a evergreen issue in North Carolina and other places.

The burden is kind of on, it's on the local board of elections, state board of elections to get the word out.

Obviously, local media, state media, gets the word out.

Different advocacy groups, if they are extra happy about it or extra unhappy about it, they can, you know, talk and promote this and just get the information out to voters.

It seems like every other election, there's some sort of minor adjustment change on what the law is.

- Mike, let's go back to the felons and voting.

Is there legitimate confusion out there?

Or is this an advocacy group who's doing their thing by advocating on behalf of felons who want their voting rights restored?

- Well, I mean, there's a lot obviously need to say about this, but the confusion that Colin was talking about is very real.

And it's because a trial judge ruled the previous law unconstitutional.

And then the state Supreme Court in April, I believe, overturned that ruling or ignored that ruling.

And so the confusion is real.

In fact, the State Board of Elections was already moving and issuing registrations and talking to registration drives before that court overturned the thing.

So they've had to stop and go back and stop and go back.

And so the information that was being put out is contradictory because the reality changed because of the ruling.

So yeah, there's a lot of confusion.

There could be a good faith effort to vote thinking they could vote, and then suddenly it's against the law.

But the one thing I want to point out is that one of the reasons the state trial judge ruled that the previous law was unconstitutional was because fees were part of the thing.

You could not vote until you also paid all associated fees, even if your probation was over but you hadn't yet paid.

So that's a financial now barrier to voting.

And I think that's an important thing.

I mean, the people who are trying to vote aren't necessarily doing it because they're evil people wanting to corrupt a system.

They're doing it because they were told that it was their right to do so again.

So yeah, some grace in trying to figure out how they prevent them from going back to jail over something they didn't realize was wrong, I think that's the least anyone can do.

- Matt, that's one small piece of it.

Felons, are they a huge voting block out there, or people who previously had felonies on their record, and they served their sentence but maybe still under probation?

How big is this?

- Yeah, it's not an insignificant block.

I think it varies kind of by state where you have that.

I think going back to what's been talking about some of those registration drives and things, or some advocacy groups and the state board kind of got out over their skis before they knew the lawsuit and kind of the back and forth of that was done.

And so that in part played a big part in creating some of the confusion.

And I think in addition to that, the legislature still had some things to clean up on that, which I think they tried to do.

So that's kind of where we are.

You know, you can argue, okay, there wasn't nefarious intent.

You know, there are groups out there that I think their goal, I think, is to push some of these things as far as they can to see if they get stopped, and I think that's what happened in this instance.

- Colin, this this upcoming primary, is it gonna be smooth?

There's other laws that take effect, and I understand the State Board of Elections still wants some guidance on what to do ahead of February 15th, much less March.

- Yeah, I mean you've got voter ID that, you know, we have sort of had a test run with municipal elections this year, so a lot of people may be not yet aware that that is now the law of the land.

So we had some issues with that.

I know even just in dealing with the municipal elections, there was some confusion over provisional ballots.

People who came without their ID tried to vote a provisional ballot.

Does that count?

Under what circumstances?

There's just a lot of minutiae that kind of needs to get worked out.

And a lot of times you don't necessarily even know the minutia out there until there's these hypotheticals of, okay, here's this guy with these circumstances.

Can he vote?

- Yeah.

- So I actually did an experiment with this during my municipal election.

I had an old ID from my previous address, and I took it to the place where I went to vote on election day and said, I told him, "Hey, I think I've got the... You know, is my ID gonna be valid because it was one from my previous address, which was actually in another county."

And they actually understood the rules.

It was only for your photo ID.

It didn't matter what the address was.

So I think that the local board workers are doing the best they can in understanding as these things change year to year.

- I've heard the word grace shown before a lot of people, voters and polling workers alike coming up.

Good luck to us all, you know?

State officials say they'll need more time to implement legalized sports betting throughout North Carolina.

So the betting law takes effect on January 8th, 2024, but the state lottery commission, Matt, has until June 15th to get all these betting parlors and operations up and running.

So the law takes effect, but sports betting can't be legalized until the parlors have their applications approved and lottery officials establish the rules.

There was some hope that we would be able to legally bet on the upcoming college football playoffs and Super Bowl, Matt, instead, we'll be down at the corner bar with our bookie we've been booking with for 30 years.

Lotteries under the gun too.

Lots of new rules, new games launching.

What's the lay of the land?

- Yeah, I think some legislators probably would've liked that revenue coming in sooner than later with the college football playoffs.

But I think what you're seeing right now is there's some intense lobbying going on behind the scenes with the members.

They're doing this through PR, through pitches that we get about, you know, well the rules need to be, you know, this, this, and this.

I think one of the ones that's really been coming out is the daily fantasy sports rules.

You know, they had kind of got the kibosh on that and so I think, you know, they've got the proposed set.

You know, I think the finalized when there's public comments that are gonna keep going, I think the next hearing is November 20th.

Don't quote me on that, 'cause a lot of this is still kinda up in the air, but, you know, the rules are coming in, but because they're literally having to establish it from the ground up, and I think this is kind of a similar process from what was done with the state lottery, back in the mid 2000s as far as, you know, defining what each of these terms are, who can do those.

But yeah, I think it's definitely gonna be closer to June than January before they have it all finalized and ready.

- I don't know if anyone really thought it would be January.

I mean, when it came out, it was like, - State government, - It could be January, but by June.

And I thought to, you know, there's no way it's gonna be January and it's not.

But I mean that, you know, you can be optimistic about stuff, but there's bureaucracy, there's paperwork, there's a lot of things that the lottery commission has to do before you get to that point.

- Ah, well, bureaucracy, state government.

Mike, what do you make of the sports betting bill?

It's gonna be out there, the law coming in and we got parlors.

It's gonna be fancy stuff, millions of dollars.

And in June we'll be able to bet.

- Well, I'm so excited for everyone.

I think the thing that, and I hate to pivot because no one likes a pivoter, but that all this take your time to do this complicated thing that's given to this of gaming, which actually makes sense to me.

Take the time to get it right.

But a lot of this take the time to get it right isn't employed through legislation and a lot of these other huge shifts and the abortion comes right to mind.

I mean, after the vote, it was whatever, I forget the exact date, it was like a month or whatever from the vote, until it went into effect.

And that's a pretty complicated system to have to rearrange as well.

And so that, it's weird to give it to something like gaming, which a lot of people aren't gonna be affected by and not to do it for things like abortion and other complicated things are just as complicated.

That seems odd to me.

- Colin, lots of people who halfway follow state politics.

You know, how many of us out here really dialing in on Raleigh?

They passed a law.

Why doesn't the law have all the rules in it to tell people what they can expect from their sports betting operations?

- Well, a lot of it they wanna sort of kick down to sort of the experts.

I mean the lottery commission in the state is sort of the experts on gaming.

And so there's a lot of things that the lawmakers in drafting the law don't necessarily consider.

So it's not unusual for a lot of what they passed in terms of environmental regulations and other stuff to get sort of directed to some state agency that knows the details, come up with the specific rules.

And then there's also cases where the legislature comes back, sees those rules and says, let's overturn those rules, we don't like them.

So that's also a possibility here.

- Dawn, in this panel, they've said people will be lobbying the rules makers, not the lawmakers.

So the lottery commission is under pressure per mat.

Is is that how it works with some of this regulatory craftspersonship?

- I think most of it is just like as the bill language is coming together and it went through so many different versions over the past years until they had consensus on it.

But I mean, generally it's a good thing to let people who actually know what they're doing to, you know, make decisions on what are these in the weeded things versus lawmakers who sure, all the lawmakers on the show or are watching are like, we're the experts.

But you know, not in everything, you know, you'd like to think that, but if this is what it takes for the government, the lottery commission is the government to get this together, then that's fine.

And I agree that, you know, a lot of legislation will suddenly go into law within a couple months or or less of when it's passed and then they find out later, oh wait, we should have done this.

Or maybe we should have asked more people.

So this, you know, it was implemented more smoothly.

- And a lot of those things, I'm sorry to interrupt, but a lot of those things experts were warning about the possibility of, and then if they had listened to them, maybe they could have avoided those pitfalls.

- Matt, how independent would the lottery commission be, or this group that applies the sports betting rules for the private sector?

Are they independent, will there be political pressure on them, corporate pressure?

- Yeah, they face the same ethics rules that other boards do where they can't have a direct impact there.

But I think like most things, you follow the money, there's a lot of money on the line.

If you look at every state that's implemented sports betting, you know, you're talking about hundreds of millions, you know, billions of dollars.

And so companies want to use that to their benefit.

And so I think that's where you see if they're doing their best to shape the rules, which is, you know, the system we live in until, you know, legislators are writing line by lines, those specific things, which I'm not sure you want them to do that or not.

- All right, North Carolina's auditor, Beth Wood, is stepping down in mid-December, saying she will not be a distraction for her office for what would be her final year as our state auditor.

She first announced she'd not seek reelection, then a Wake County grand jury indicted her on misdemeanor charges for allegedly misusing her state vehicle by driving it for personal business.

Governor Roy Cooper can appoint a replacement.

For the open seat in the 2024 election, there are only Republicans running for now, Dawn.

So Democrats did not see this coming and now we scramble for a primary challenge, right, for the Republican.

- There is one Democrat, Louis Toledo, I think, he's run before.

Former assistant auditor.

So we'll see if it ends up being him or someone else that comes up at the, the Beth Woods saga has really been, I think we're coming up on the one year anniversary of when it initially her scandal started, not related to the grand jury indictment, but the reason that they started looking into her was the hit and run that she pled to last December in downtown Raleigh.

And she at the time, was gonna run for reelection.

Definitely wasn't gonna resign, kept saying that, apologize, had that court date.

Then this came up now with the use of her state vehicle when she was driving her state vehicle with the incident in Raleigh last December.

And this has looked like finally what is gonna take her to take the definitive action of one, the first time where she said, I'm not running again.

And she said that in front of a committee of lawmakers.

And then pretty soon after, that she is gonna leave.

Next month and I think she just realizes that, you know, she couldn't wait it out and expect to be able to do this the following year.

Plus, if Democrats want to maintain the auditor seat, which is statewide, elected position, then they should probably line someone up to it.

You know, there's several Republicans that are already planning on vying for the seat and, you know, filing hasn't even started yet.

So, there could be multiple Democrats that get in.

- Colin, you're innocent until you're proven guilty in this case for Ms. Wood, but politically, Beth Woods very popular on a bipartisan basis.

Even Republicans have kind things to say.

- Yeah, I mean, she's sort of staked her reputation on being very fair, very thorough, very aggressive, and going after sort of improper behavior and use of finances in state government.

That's garnered respect on both sides of the aisle.

I think that's part of why this scandal hit her so badly because it sort of created this sort of hypocritical look of like, well, she's going after it in, you know, these various state agencies, but she's breaking the rules on her own.

And I think that was what eventually got to the point where she may have looked at the political winds and thought, you know, I'm not gonna survive this.

There's already I think, five or six Republican candidates lined up to run for this office.

I think looking at the hit-and-run incident and thinking, they see an opportunity there to flip that to the GOP.

- Mike, where do you see this race going?

Is there an establishment Democrat out there that the party, what do you call it, the king and queen makers, as they say, will they pick a candidate or will they let Mr. Toledo run and let anyone else join him in that race for the Democratic nomination?

- Well, it seems to me that they would, to prolong the scandal would not be good.

So, the quickest route is probably the most efficient route politically, but it's also, it's political for the people who know what the auditor does.

So, most people who are out there going about their days not even thinking about the big election yet, probably aren't thinking about the auditor.

So, I do think that there is some time to get a candidate to get before the voters.

But I have not heard anything specific about it, but we'll see.

- The auditor's race in general, it's a down-ballot race, but the office itself, it does a lot of work, a lot of investigations and reports.

Do average North Carolinians pay attention to the auditor's work on a day-to-day basis?

- I think the average person, they will maybe see something, you know, kind of as it comes up.

And I think that's where Beth Wood had really staked her reputation as, you know, she's willing to go after everybody, you know, for what she sees as, you know, something there.

You know, we regularly get, you know, her audits that come out and report on those, but in doing that you also make a lot of enemies.

And so, there was no one there to save her once she ran into trouble herself.

I think from a council of state perspective in 2024, this is another office that since 2016, I think the governor's the only race that's been an open seat that a Democrat has won.

You know, Republicans took the superintendent, labor commissioner, you know, I think going on down the line, treasurer.

So now, I would put a Republican as the favorite in this one in '24.

- It could be if Governor Cooper appoints somebody once Wood steps down and that person gains enough momentum, so they're the incumbent when the general comes, then I think that would be a factor.

But it's gonna depend on who that person is.

And then most people don't know that there is a state auditor, that the state auditor is elected.

But everyone in state government knows who the state auditor is.

And she had, you know, support from Republicans and Democrats even when all the scandal came out because of what seemingly was the good job that she did that they were aware of.

- I'll shift to another race.

The attorney general's race in North Carolina.

Particularly the Democratic Party is, well, not shaken up, but certainly more interesting as Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry will seek the Democratic nomination for attorney general.

The district attorney was first elected in 2018, then easily reelected in 2022.

She is from Richmond County, a graduate of Princeton and Duke universities.

Attorney Deberry has publicly said, she brought a sense of equity and fairness to her DA's office.

And if she's elected attorney general would not seek the death penalty, and more importantly on this one, Colin, a contrast with Jeff Jackson and other candidates seeking that seat.

- Yeah, I mean, she's gonna come in from the law enforcement perspective, whereas Jeff Jackson's career's been more, I mean, he served some time as a prosecutor, but he's largely known for his service in the state senate and now in Congress.

Sort of the interesting angle to this is I think, sort of the diversity piece of this.

She's African American, Jeff Jackson is white, and there's a question about how much diversity we're gonna see on the overall final Democratic party ticket.

And I think there's been an effort to recruit some more diverse candidates to run to try to see if they can avoid a situation where the top of the ticket for Democrats is all white.

- She's the only woman running for AG that I'm aware of, and there's no woman running for governor either this time.

- Yeah, it's a fascinating test of where the Democratic electorate it is.

You've got these establishment, you know, white guys, you know, Josh Stein and Jeff Jackson, now they've got Mike Morgan and this lady now running against them.

But they've got all the quote unquote, "establishment support."

So it's gonna be an interesting test of where the electorate is versus where the party leadership is.

- Mike, are the parties deciding, or in this case the Democratic party deciding, who runs and who can't run?

I mean, I get it looks like a certain group of people demographically, but is it an open race practically, so anybody can run?

Legitimately run and have a shot at winning?

- Well, I think she's got a shot at winning the primary for sure.

I mean, I think that she has announced her candidacy is proof that anyone can run.

And I think it's gonna be super interesting primary.

But to me, whoever wins the Democratic primary, it's going to be a stark contrast with presumably Dan Bishop for attorney general.

And that is going to be the big test.

It's going to be such a night-and-day difference and the voters are going to have a very big choice to make in that one.

- They'll probably be as much money going into that or close to it than the governor's race.

I think those two are like, the biggest races this year.

- No question.

- How different do you think the district attorney is?

'Cause obviously, she's gone for cash bail reform, done some things in Durham, is on the ground in Durham versus Jeff Jackson, who has a great following, very popular with the Democratic base, has a social media following and is a Congress person, Colin?

- I mean, I think this is gonna be sort of a choice for Democrats between more of a centrist candidate in Jeff Jackson and someone who's a little bit more to the left in terms of politics.

So, I think that's probably how things will sort of divide up.

The question is with the financial aspect of this, can Deberry raise anywhere close to as much money as a sitting congressman with a giant TikTok presence can raise in terms of the campaign finance?

- Does money talk in this race, Matt?

- I think money will talk and I would say it's a question of left and more left in this primary with Jeff Jackson.

You know, he spent a little bit of time there, but he's really made his name as trying to get this social media presence, raises a lot of money and I think actually on the policy on the ground is what the left wants with the Durham DA and so that's gonna be very interesting to see how that plays out.

- All right, Congressman David Rouzer, Richard Hudson, the congressman, Senator Thom Tillis are asking the Environmental Protection Agency about some plans to import the chemical GenX to a Fayetteville facility, owned by the company Chemours.

The letter is written to EPA administrator, Michael Regan, who is from North Carolina as well.

It concedes federal officials do not owe state leaders notification of any decision to allow the imports of, "Non-hazardous chemicals," but water supplies in southeastern North Carolina, especially the Cape Fear River, feature measurable levels of GenX due to that factory dumping chemicals into the Cape Fear River.

Mike.

- I didn't do it.

[group laughing] - It's non-hazardous.

It's been in the water for decades.

They're gonna bring more of it.

Why not trust the import?

The feds can allow, it's legal, and it can be disposed of or used or whatever Chemours does with it.

- Well, non-hazardous is a classification, but GenX, the chemical, not the generation, and PFAS, they are absolutely hazardous.

There's no question they're hazardous, they're just not designated as hazardous.

And I think this is a super interesting issue actually because it is bipartisan kind of wondering what happened here.

Governor Cooper also sent a letter to the EPA, said, "Don't, what are you doing?

Stop this."

Most of the other actions the EPA has taken on PFAS and GenX specifically, are different than the decision that they made to allow it in and it's 4 million pounds of this thing.

So I think it's really important, what happened is the political thing everyone's trying to figure out.

The EPA did say, "All right, let's pause it then, let's stop and we'll take another look."

But the really important thing is to define what PFAS is and what GenX is.

These are forever chemicals.

They're in everything.

99% of the people in the country have some level in their blood, only a little bit.

There's no safe amount of it and the Cape Fear River is teeming with it.

DuPont, before it became Chemours, or before it opened Chemours, just dumped it into the river.

There's 7,000 wells.

There's 3 million people who have high levels of this.

The cancer rates around these communities in the Fayetteville and the thing are much higher, right?

So, and GenX is supposed to be, they said that GenX is not as bad as other PFAS, but a lot of studies have certainly shown that it's very bad in rats.

And rats have a very similar endocrine system to humans.

I read last night.

- You worked, you worked it in.

- Matt, this - Wasn't for the rats.

- This chemical's been around decades.

People have been drinking it for decades, living and dying for decades.

[sighing] Should residents freak out about the idea of a chemical coming in here that's been here?

- I would say the first thing that flashed in my head was hearing about this deal, President Ronald Reagan's famous quote, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

I don't think bringing 4 million pounds of this is helping anyone in North Carolina, but you know, this chemical has been around a long time.

You know, I think a lot of people have seen that.

And I think for such a long time there wasn't kind of the testing and of what does it actually mean?

You know, what does this actually do to your body?

And I think, you know, as that kind of evolves and catches up, you know, obviously it's not good.

You know, the question is, is it bad too?

I think, that's still one, it probably so, but you know, as more research it's done on it, you know, I don't think you want any more coming in than what's already here.

- As a journalist, Colin, how do you handle this issue where you're supposed to be balanced?

And there's both sides of the story, but there's a factory that's been, that has in the past, just dumped this chemical in the water whether we know it's safe or not.

- Yeah, I mean, that's the issue is there's not a whole lot of data on this.

The regulations are still trying to catch up in terms of like, how do you test the materials and what's the acceptable level of this in a water supply.

I mean, it's hard to make sense of, and it's certainly hard to turn into like plain English for normal people to understand because, you know, you start talking about, you know, 1,4-Dioxane and all these sort of technical terms, like most people glaze over, even if they are a little bit worried about what on earth's in my drinking water am I putting in my body.

- Now I'm thinking about rats now.

And the I, this doesn't seem to be a Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH scenario where the rats are super smart or anything like that.

So yeah, obviously it's worth the, you know, potential alarming.

- Where does this go?

Does this not come in or does it come in Mike?

Final 30 seconds.

- Well, Senator.

- Does this chemical import, I should say.

- Senator Tillis said that he didn't think ultimately that they would reverse the thing.

But I don't, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, I think there's, I think there's more consensus now than there was about just how dangerous these things are.

- And people are awake and they're paying attention.

- Yeah.

And everyone knows, and that's why almost everybody said what is going on, on this one?

- Colin, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Matt.

And thank you for watching us this week.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

We'll read every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I appreciate you watching, and I'll see you next time.

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