- [Kelly] A federal lawsuit aims to stop the new North Carolina Senate District Maps from Taking effect.

And the Israeli-Hamas conflict is now making its mark on local and state politics.

This is "State Lines".

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[gentle rousing music] ♪ - Welcome to "State Lines", everyone.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for having us into your home.

Joining me today, Political Analyst, Joe Stewart, and Anna Beavon Gravely to his right, the John Locke Foundation's Mitch Kokai in seat three, and a good friend of PBS North Carolina, Political Analyst and tennis guru, Steve Rao.

How about that, Steve?

welcome back to the show.

- It's a pleasure to be here.

Pickleball as well now.

- Pickleball, yeah.

I've never played pickleball, but they say it's the hot thing in the suburbs.

- It's addicting.

- It's been around for a while though.

- Has it?

- Oh, yeah.

- [exhales deeply] They're gonna build this huge park, I think in Raleigh or Cary somewhere, It's gonna have a lot of pickleball.

- And it's without running.

[chuckles] - I'll take it.

Well, let's talk some politics.

A new federal lawsuits out alleging that new North Carolina Senate District Maps are unconstitutional because they dilute minority voting strength in Eastern North Carolina.

State Senate Democratic leader, Dan Blue, says voters in eight majority Black counties are now going to be split into four Senate districts.

Senator Blue's calling this cracking on steroids, Mitch.

The plaintiffs want those Senate Maps, which are coming into effect in a week or so, blocked from taking effect, which could and would delay candidate filing which opens on December 4th.

Complicated little read there.

First of all, what is cracking on steroids?

That sounds like a political term.

Help us understand that.

- Yeah, basically when you have concerns about racial gerrymandering in drawing of Election Maps, you have this idea that you can either crack the Black vote by putting it in multiple districts so that it has less of an influence.

You can also stick too many Black voters together so that you reduce their influence in other parts of the state.

The problem that this suit could face is the fact that the way the General Assembly went about drawing this map and its State House Map was it followed criteria that had been set out by previous court rulings.

One of which was you can't split counties, and you have to stick counties together if they don't have enough votes for a district on their own.

What they end up in Northeastern North Carolina with is a bunch of small counties stuck together that are gonna have two districts.

And once that decision was made, there are really only a couple of ways to group those counties together.

The General Assembly chose one of the two ways to do it.

Neither of the ways that's an option would lead to a majority Black district, which is what this lawsuit is calling for.

So, if a federal judge, or the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees with the plaintiffs, they're basically going to have to throw out what they have previously said about the drawing of the Election Maps.

The general assembly went about the districts as they have been told to do by previous court rulings, and that's what they're gonna rely on in this suit.

- Steve, these are the Senate Maps that are under question, not the House or the Congressional Maps, at least not yet.

What does this do to candidates out there?

'Cause at the very core of this issue, running for state senate is a local race, and candidates may not know what's going to happen if this lawsuit resulted in an injunction stopping Senate Maps from taking effect.

- Well, you are already seeing, Kelly, these announcements going out.

You know, for example, Senator Grafstein moving a district 'cause she doesn't wanna run against Senator Chaudhuri for a new district, and other people house seats changing.

So if they throw out the maps, you know, all bets are off, they're gonna have to wait, you know.

And so I think it's gonna affect people's plans, right?

You know, whether they're running for state senate, NC House.

I think at the end of the day, I knew this was gonna happen.

I mean, it's in their playbook, right.

The only way they're gonna stop it is saying it violated the Voting Rights Act.

I still think that, you know, there's no state avenues, you know, the Supreme Court Republican majority is gonna uphold maps.

Going to the US Supreme Court wouldn't even work because they basically said it's gonna be deferred back to the States.

So this is really their only avenue.

I still think it's gonna be a challenge to win.

I don't know if Mitch agrees, but it'll be a challenge for them to win this federal suit because the General Assembly, even though they're saying didn't go through the Voting Rights Act analysis, did it through the criteria they were given.

But lots of local races to watch.

- Yeah, no, one of the key things here is that we're talking about a racial gerrymandering case, which is about the only thing that's open.

The courts at both the state level and the federal level have now thrown out any partisan gerrymandering claims.

So you have to, if you're gonna challenge the map, challenge it on racial gerrymandering, which is what is happening here, which is still open at the federal level.

But the challenge is that one of the things that the plaintiffs are relying on is this notion that if you have a large enough group of African-American voters in one place, in one spot, who could influence the election of a particular member, then you should draw a district in that way.

What the general assembly is going to argue is that's not what the most recent court cases have said.

They've said, "If there's no evidence presented of racially polarized voting, you shouldn't take race into account at all."

We didn't take race into account at all.

We ended up with districts based on the criteria we had to use, and they're gonna rely on that.

- And Senator Ralph Hise said that multiple times, that they were not pulling race into any of the data or any of the map drawing.

- How does that work?

It is possible, I guess.

Is it using computers?

Because we are humans and we draw maps, and we may think we're being fair if we're making any kind of family, personal, professional judgment, but we do have our own internal biases.

Is it reasonable for plaintiffs to ask the judges to review, to stop a district from taking effect?

- I think it's reasonable to ask for anything.

Whether or not they're gonna get it is really what's in question.

And I think Mitch and Steve have laid out really great points as to why this is just gonna be an uphill battle for them.

- Joe, it seems like every decision now is gonna end up in court.

So, if Democrats took over this state, I guess we see the playbook Republicans would use to try to unwind legislation and decisions made by Democrats.

How does this work?

Can this move quickly enough that voters aren't inconvenienced by another federal court case?

Looking into, what everyone says, a legitimate question.

- Yeah, I remember State Representative David Lewis, who was involved in redistricting last decade.

- Made the announcement in 2017 that finally all of the federal lawsuits regarding the district maps that had been drawn in 2011 had been concluded seven years after they'd originally been proposed.

We probably will see litigation of one form or another about these district maps throughout the rest of this particular decade undoubtedly.

I'm not entirely sure that there's not a bigger issue here.

To some extent, do we need to draw these maps in a different way?

There are proposals to come up with independent commissions or other methods to do this.

Some part of the challenge is the way the state is growing, reapportionment really is having to realign the Senate and house maps to reflect the growth in the state.

And this is a part of North Carolina that is not experiencing growth.

And so some of these historical communities, the voting patterns are such that perhaps this is a fallback to a bygone era in North Carolina.

But people of color are starting to perform in slightly different ways in terms of voting performance.

Donald Trump saw some growth in the percentage of voters of African-American and Hispanic backgrounds that supported his candidacy in 2020.

So maybe in the not too distant future, these sorts of issues will not be as poignant in a modern North Carolina.

- The main district that we're looking at that is drawing the fire is the state senate district too, which does look kind of bizarre.

But then when you look into it and say, wait a minute, there are a bunch of counties there that don't have many people, you have to stick some of them together.

This is one of the few ways to do it.

And even though it looks bizarre, it does fit with the criteria.

- And I think one thing that's interesting is that we are talking about Northeastern North Carolina and they are declining in population.

And most of what we're seeing with change and most of the district challenges in the past have been around counties of growth.

And so I think this is a different side of the same coin.

- And I've always been a proponent for independent redistricting commission.

I mean, I think at the end of the day, the voters should decide who they vote for, not the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.

This has been done in other states.

We have data, we have machine and artificial intelligence.

All this analysis can draw fair maps that can stay consistent.

So we're not constantly changing maps and pulling lawsuits and things like that.

'Cause it is frustrating for a voter to see maps change.

Not knowing who your congressional representative is, not knowing who your legislative representative is.

In Morrisville, our state senator will change again.

- People don't know who their state senator representative is now.

And barely half of the people know who the governor is, it seems, or Lieutenant governor.

So I mean.

- Or how to pronounce his name.

- That's been a new thing.

- We learned that recently.

- Could we enter an era where with say Wake County, let's use them as an example, it's a high growth county where you could see a little sliver of the Eastern Wake County and then a huge swath of rural North Carolina in order to meet some of these balance issues that have been articulated.

- Well, the smartest thing we could do to fix this problem is to reconfigure the county maps because they don't really reflect the way the population is.

Mitch has the idea that we would take it from a hundred down to 50 and one of them would be called Mitch County.

But the, the truth is it may be time to consider something like increasing the number of legislative districts that we have.

It might make it easier to provide greater representation concentration if instead of 120 house and 50 Senate seats, there were a greater number in the general assembly.

I know that sounds.

- We need more, right?

- Well to some extent it might be time to consider that just given the growth dynamic of North Carolina.

- Gonna call some general assembly remodeling.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- They have lots of closets and things to put legislators into.

Well, state Republicans want sitting state Democratic Senator Lisa Grafstein to resign.

The leaders say that she's announced her move to a brand new senate district to run in the 2024 primary.

Redistricting saw Senator Stein drawn into a district with current Senate, democratic Whip J Chaudhuri.

All indications are Joe, this was a race she really wanted to avoid.

So her new district is considered competitive and is an open seat.

Open seat means no income, but she's not the only candidate switching districts to run.

Bo Hines is shifting towards the triad after running against Wiley Nickel more in the triangle.

What do you make of candidates just either getting drawn out or not being successful in the district they're in, deciding they're just gonna move to another district.

And here I am and I'm going to run.

- I say that it's not really election season until two candidates get into a fist fight about yard signs.

And one of the things that complicates that is after redrawing the maps, there are always these disputes about residency.

It does occur from time to time that there's a question relative to a candidate's real legitimate residency.

And that's come up several times outside of the maps being reconfigured.

I think in this regard, it's a matter of law.

The constitution states you have to be a resident of the district that you represent, if you're in the general assembly.

And so this will play out in the way that any other legal matter might play out.

To some extent, this is an unfortunate byproduct of redistricting.

People do lose the district that they had just as a result of the fact that it's reapportionment.

The way you have to draw the lines reflects the growth in the state.

And that may mean where you physically live is no longer in the district you once represented.

And I certainly understand and appreciate Senator Grafstein's desire to continue a career in public service, but the constitution is pretty clear.

You have to be a resident of the district.

We'll see how this plays out.

I know the Republican party's issued a call for her to resign and she said she's not gonna do that.

But at the end of the day, this is in effect sort of usual politics in some regard.

Just questioning whether someone's actually a resident of the district they're running for - Annabel.

- Yeah, the thing that comes to my mind is how much will voters take that from an authentic perspective?

I think in the case of Bo Hines, we've seen him move around multiple times to run for multiple different, or declare that he is gonna run for multiple different offices.

And I think it does really bring into challenge a connectedness to the district.

'Cause obviously you're gonna run to represent the district.

So you want to know it well.

Voters want you to know the district and they wanna feel like you're actually running to represent them.

Not running to have a seat or to have power.

Mitch build upon that two candidates, new districts, they're one's running for house and the Republican one is running in the Democratic primary for a new Senate seat, but they just moved there.

Do voters care anymore who represents them in their district?

Or is it more retail than that?

We've watched enough cable news that we know where you stand philosophically, and that's good enough for us as voters.

- I think it depends.

It's on a case by case basis.

There are the opportunities I think with you have when you have someone like Bo Hines, who I think was seen by a number of people in that 13th district where he ran last time.

And in the various other districts where he was considering running last time, was seen as a bit of a carpet bagger.

This is a guy who wants to be in Congress, he's not really sure exactly where he wants to be.

He's just gonna go where he thinks he's go going to win.

And that rubbed some people, even within the Republican party, the wrong way, that hey, you're not a guy who's actually been part of our organization here, done anything, serve in a local level.

And so I think that hurt him when he ran against Wiley Nickel.

Who had been a state senator.

Obviously, republicans weren't fans of him, but democrats did know him, did know him as a legislator.

In the case of Senator Grafstein, she has been in the legislature.

She has had some ideas on particular issues.

My guess is, the folks who were going to vote for a democratic candidate in that district will be amenable to voting for her.

It's not a case of her coming from some other county or somewhere else, and you having to say, "Who the heck is this person?

What does she stand for?"

So it really depends on a case-by-case basis.

And another example along that line, Mark Walker, who's trying to run for Congress again, it's not exactly his old sixth district, but I think a lot of people will look at it as, "Okay, we remember this guy from being from the Triad.

We know what he stands for, he was a conservative member."

If they're willing to vote for conservatives, they'll probably be inclined to vote for him.

- Going back to Bo Hines in your comments though, republican voters in that district 2022, they supported Bo Hines.

Republicans made him their nominee.

- They did and that was largely the Trump effect.

His entire campaign was basically, "I'm Trump's guy."

And Trump endorsed him and there were other candidates in that primary who had really close ties to the district, who just could not get over the hump that he was the Trump guy.

- There was also a lot of money from Club for Growth that came in from Bo Hines.

- A lot of money coming in.

- Yeah.

- And I think my perspective is that, you know, I think it is important to live in the district, to have some perspective of the issues your constituents are facing, but Senator Grafstein has certain legislature, does have the experience, so I can understand her moving, but it also deprives other people a chance to go in.

So one person that I thought would've been a great candidate for the Senate is Matt Calabria, former chair of the Wake County Commission, largest county in the state, led Wake County through the COVID Pandemic.

And obviously he's decided to not run, but this was a great opportunity for a Commissioner Calabria who's serving out his term on the commission.

So I think it kind of takes people off the bench that might've been able to go to legislature.

Now, once again, Grafstein, unless she's asked to not run or legally is prevented to do so.

And with Congressman Nickel, he was getting off to a good start in Congress.

He was serving on financial appropriations, member of the problem-solving caucus, working with republicans to get things done, and also, won in a competitive seat.

And now he's got nowhere to go.

All eyes are watching.

What will Wiley Nickel do next?

Will he run for a congressional seat?

- Why wouldn't democrats in that district challenge Senator Grafstein?

There is a quasi-incumbent effect there, but why wouldn't this Mr. Calabria, why not run against her and give democratic primary voters a choice?

That's what it's all about, right?

- I can't speak for Commissioner Calabria.

He's a very, very smart man, but it's always hard to run against an incumbent, a woman.

She is supported by the LGBTQ community.

These are all tough things in a primary.

But I think you have to weigh experience in the fact of that.

And so he's still got time to make a decision.

[laughs] Filing is next week.

But we'll see.

- Maybe next week.

- Maybe next week.

Maybe not.

Maybe not.

- Well, the Israeli-Hamas war is provoking local political activism and demands that are now being made on some of our local leaders.

For instance, there's a few cases.

The North Carolina Democratic Party recently declined to officially recognize the North Carolina Jewish Caucus.

Protestors have joined and filled the Raleigh City council meetings to demand that the city council make a declaration in this war.

During the legislative session, some House Democrats left the house chamber without voting on a resolution in support of Israel.

Protestors have blocked roads and highways and streets in both Raleigh and Durham and elsewhere in Bevin.

International war, Middle East intrigue, guess what?

It's not here in war, but it's here in debate.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think, initially, it started out with the divide between republicans and democrats and their stance on Hamas and Israel and Palestine.

And as time has passed, we've really started to see a fracture the Democrat Party with the latest vote to not add the Jewish Caucus.

And so you had 16 vote for, 17 against, and 16 abstain.

And so you had major leadership within the Democrat Party choosing to not to have a voice in this or to not state their opinion.

And I think that is gonna really be problematic moving forward, - Mitch?

- Yeah, I think it's a very interesting sign of what lies ahead for the Democratic Party.

Republicans have generally been in support of Israel, and there is a substantial portion of the Democratic Party that is also in support of Israel.

But there is a very vocal part of the Democratic Party that says, "No, this is an occupying force.

It's the Gazan, the Palestinians in Gaza who have been the victims of Israel for years and years, and you should be standing up for them."

And that has caused quite a bit of divide.

I think it's very telling that 16 members of the Democratic Party leadership didn't even want to take a stance.

Basically their stance is, "No, but we don't wanna say no," because if any of them had voted "yes," then the Jewish Caucus would've been officially aligned with the Democratic Party.

I think this is something that definitely could have legs into 2024, because it is causing sharp, heated divides within the Democratic Party.

- If you're a republican, seeing this happen to the Democratic Party, what would you do strategically?

Just let it unfold.

And what about these abstentions, not making a stand either way, is that what democratic voters expect of their party leadership?

- Well, this is a political hot potato.

I mean, the crux of the matter is that what's driving this is many of the people opposing Israel or asking for a ceasefire are those that argue that it was innocent Palestinians dying because of all the massive bombings.

But most of them say that they do not agree with the horrific attack of October 7th.

But to answer your question, first, as a republican strategist, it plays into the playbook of winning the presidency because, if you look at Michigan, for example, Joe Biden, President Biden won by 150,000 votes.

There's 200,000 Muslim voters in Michigan.

You turn the Muslim vote in your favor going against Israel, you could win the presidency back, and that's already what they're trying to do.

In terms of democrats not coming out and saying or abstaining, they're caught between a rock and a hard place.

I mean, if they say, "I'm standing with Israel," I attended the vigil with Attorney General Sindh, Congressman Nickel, Congresswoman Ross, and other leaders, Mayor of Raleigh, Mary-Ann Baldwin, and we all have spoken to Israel.

But now, if we speak in favor of Israel, it could lead to other negative consequences.

- And see, for people that don't know, you're speaking, as you said, as a Republican.

You're not a Republican.

- No, I'm a moderate democrat.

But bipartisan, you know, city counselor.

But I mean, I'm just stating it out there that it's now what I call a "political hot potato."

And unfortunately, I don't want to ever presume that people are gonna do things for political reasons but, when a a city council brings a resolution, there's 400 people at the city council meeting, you have to ask yourselves, what would the city of Raleigh do to address this international conflict?

So it's hitting local and national politics, and it's going to get let the games begin.

- You asked about what should the Republican strategists do?

I would recommend to them don't do anything.

I mean, they can only cause problems for themselves if they get involved in this democratic inter-party fight.

- So, tactically, what's the point in going and not interrupting, but crowding a city council meeting and telling them they need to make a stand on an issue that's 8,000 miles away and is more in the domain of the federal government and the military.

How do we digest that if we're a run of the mill person that said, "Hey, what's happening down at Town Hall?"

- Well, I think this is an issue that does curry a lot of passions among people.

And looking at the national polling, as we said earlier, Republicans have traditionally said, we should support Israel over its enemies.

Democrats increasingly saying the country should not get involved, should not support either.

But if you look at the cohort just of younger Americans, you see it increasingly reflective of the position that identified Democrats have taken not wanting to take a role in this conflict on either side.

I think there's a lot of pressure, and in part because we see the Congress being asked to appropriate money that would go to the aid of Israel.

So it becomes, in effect, a taxpayer issue.

I think people feel some desire to weigh in and have their local governmental officials recognize what the country's being asked to do is not only support Israel in this conflict, but for our country, for our tax dollars to go to help fund the war effort on behalf of Israel.

And I think that makes people far more passionate.

- So as a debate topic, people can go to town hall and expect the town hall reps to represent them at the state, the congressional level.

And that's part of our process going through is how we can digest that.

Josh Stein is a Jewish gentleman running for the Democratic nomination, and he is by far in the lead, I guess, according to recent polls over Mike Morgan.

I don't, we can't speak for him.

Steve, I'll go to you as a guy who's running a Democratic races, and it is an awkward question.

What does he do?

What does he say?

- How do you balance a campaign against authority?

- Well, I'm friends with Josh Stein, both when he was a state senator and Attorney General.

And I've been thinking that in the back of my mind.

I mean, he is Jewish, a proud member of the Jewish faith, been a good attorney general.

I guess he's just gonna have to talk about Israel and how it's important that we come to a peaceful resolution to the conflict and go back to the drawing board, which is a two-state solution.

Right?

I mean, the problem is that this is a conflict that's been going on since 1947, even before that World War I, where the British took over Palestine.

And it's all about trying to find ways for these both sides to work, land for peace, that's worked in the past, but it's a tug of war.

So my political advice to him as a analyst or consultant is just, basically stand by Israel, but at the same time say that you pray for those innocent civilians on both sides of the conflict who are dying.

He is running for governor of North Carolina, not the United States Senate.

So hopefully he can be able to answer these questions.

- We've got two and a half minutes left.

I wanna touch on the Medicaid expansion that's coming on board around December 1st, 600,000 North Carolinians.

If you haven't qualified for traditional health insurance or not to Medicaid, you might be covered.

This week, the state has taken one step saying it's increasing reimbursement rates that it will pay doctors to improve mental health and drug abuse treatment services.

It's the first rate increase in 11 years, Steve.

Medical providers apparently have dropped or reluctantly offered these services in the past because a doctor can lose money by seeing a Medicaid patient.

So here we are, Medicaid expansion is here.

We have 90 seconds left on this show, and I'll let you end with an easy one and a bipartisan issue if you count the votes in the general assembly.

- Well, I want to give our governor and the general assembly all the credit for getting this done.

And the bottom line is one out of every five Americans suffer from mental health, but half of 'em can't pay for their services.

So the good news about Medicaid expansion, which is actually the largest pair of mental health services, is that now they can get the services they need through the Medicaid expansion.

And it's just gonna be easier.

I mean, up until the Affordable Care Act, the only way you could get mental health service from Medicaid was if you were pregnant, elderly or disability.

But now it's based on income.

You're 130% at the poverty level.

You can get mental health care for Medicaid.

And I think it's something that we need.

There's been depression after COVID.

Many youth and adults, a lot of gun violence, which I think is a result of mental illness.

I can't think of a better place to begin.

And I think it's a great way for us to end the show that congratulations to North Carolina working to get Medicaid expansion done.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

- 15 seconds.

- Some part of this is you have to increase the reimbursements to make sure there's a capacity that providers are willing to offer these services.

One of the things we're gonna see in expansion is we may actually not have enough people on the healthcare providing side of things to provide the services.

All of these new beneficiaries will receive something, the general assembly may have to come back and address.

- And I'll have to.

- Supply is always a big problem in healthcare.

- We need to hire doctors.

Money makes doctors come in and wanna be Medicaid providers.

- Doctors, nurses, all practicing to the top of their skill level.

- So money talks on this case and what Medicaid is here and we'll see how it plays out as it starts expanding.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone here, thank you for being on the show.

Steve, Anna, Bevin, Joe, Mitch, and thank you for watching.

We're grateful for you that you join us every week.

If you have an email, send us your thoughts and opinions, statelines@pbsnc.org.

We'll read them, I promise you.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.

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