- [Narrator 1] The State House and Senate approved new districts for the entire legislature and US Congress, and the state sues a social media giant.

This is "State Lines".

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

Good to see you.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, we have a great panel right beside me here, Editor-in-Chief of the Carolina Journal, Donna King, Senator Mary Wills Bode of Granville and Wake Counties, to her right, Senator Benton Sawrey holding down representation from Johnston County for this show, and WUNC radio's Colin Campbell, host and analyst, and good friend of PBS North Carolina.

Good to see you, Colin.

- Good to be here.

- Are you ready to be the first one to analyze the first story on "State Lines"?

- Oh, I'm so excited.

Redistricting is the Superbowl of political year.

- Pick the grades you wanna explain all of this to us.

We know the State House and the Senate have approved new legislative and US House districts.

It came after April, 2023.

Supreme Court ruling did allow for redistricting, so Republicans in fact redistricted.

The new districts are expected to be in effect for the 2024 primary and general election.

And barring court enforce changes will serve all elections through the year 2030.

Republicans kept the map drawing to themselves and released them through the committee process.

The redistricting process cannot be vetoed by Governor Cooper.

That's the layout.

I hope I got it factually accurate.

Colin, now give us the eighth grade version if all the way up through 12th grade, if you'd like.

This is more complicated than people assume.

- Yeah, so sort of to give you the background, we're redrawing maps here in 2023, which is not how it's supposed to work.

It's supposed to happen once a decade, but all these things get litigated and go through the courts.

And a result, we had court ordered maps in last year's election.

Now Republicans got to go back to the drawing board, try them again this time around.

And big picture, what we're looking at as far as changes, we currently have a congressional delegation, seven Republicans, seven Democrats pretty even split under the maps drawn by a court appointed special master expert.

Now we're looking at 10 Republican seats, maybe 11, and then 3 to 4 for Democrats, really only one tossup in that in the Northeast where Congressman Don Davis is up for reelection on the legislative maps, maybe not quite as drastic a change because republicans already hold super majorities in both.

But they may have a more safe path to keep those super majorities than they would have under the last maps.

- And we'll deep dive into the maps themselves just a bit more.

But Senator Sawrey, Republicans could do it.

They did do it.

And they drew themselves what appeared to be strong majorities in the House, the Senate, and for US Congress.

Your take on that.

- I've heard the concept about, or I think the comment was made that we drew these maps in secret or some type of obscure process.

And I disagree with that.

These maps were drawn in an open and transparent way.

We drew them after a series of hearings around the state.

We drew them through the committee process.

We had a committee hearing where public comment was taken.

We accepted amendments on both the Senate maps and the congressional maps.

In fact, two Democrat amendments to change Guilford County districts and Durham County districts.

We heard concerns about the marine bases in the Eastern North County, combine those in the one.

And I think it's important for the viewers to know that North Carolina has one of the strongest anti gerrymandering provisions in the nation already built into our process with the Stevenson decision from about two decades ago, where we have to use county clusters to draw State House and State Senate maps.

And I'll make a comment that even the plaintiff's own experts in the prior redistricting litigation found that the most likely result would've been a 9-5 map based on the geography of North Carolina.

This is a 10-3-1 map based on some partisan data that I've seen produced by others.

Theoretically, depending on the year and the election, it could be a 7-7, or an 8-4 map, or an 8-5, or 8-6 map, or something of that nature.

The voters will decide that.

It's not the partisan gerrymander that people want to claim that it is.

- Senator Bode, this segment is about the process of redistricting.

And I heard floor debate in the house saying it wasn't open, Democrats received maps when everyone else received maps, but Senator Sawrey has his point.

What is yours?

- Sure.

Our democracy was founded on at the time this radical idea that every vote counts the same, which intrinsic in that is this idea of fairness.

And so if you believe that the citizens of North Carolina are entitled to a fair election, you cannot also believe that it is okay to draw electoral districts for partisan advantage for one party at the expense of the other party.

It's like saying you believe that the world is flat, but you also believe that the world is round.

These two things are logically inconsistent.

And so what concerns me as a voter, as a North Carolinian, as a citizen of the United States, is that these electoral districts are so artificially engineered for partisan advantage that our feedback mechanism to hold power accountable has been short circuited.

That puts our democracy in a very vulnerable position.

I think this is a big red flag for democracy.

And I think whether you be Democrat or whether you be Republican, you should be sounding the alarm bells.

- Donna, I remember 13, 15 years ago, Representative Paul Stan, one of the most conservative members of the House said the same thing Mary Wills Bode was saying just now.

- Smart man.

- What is it about the history?

Is it repeating itself or are we truly at uncharted waters with how we're re-districting?

- We've seen this happen before when Democrats are in charge.

They had maps that were very similar.

I think it's important to note, it's a very important point he makes, In the end, this is not about the lines or voting history.

This is about what the voters decide.

Republicans won in 2010.

They won a majority on a Democrat gerrymandered map.

This really is in the hands of the voters.

So in the end, it's going to matter that your candidates are good, that they have good ideas, that they can convince the voters that their policy will work to make North Carolina a better place, and then get them to turn out.

That's the biggest problem that I think we're seeing, and particularly in the last few elections, that the turnout mechanism is perhaps a little bit stilted.

People wanna get out and they need to be hearing from candidates and not relying on social media videos.

They need to meet them, they need to get out there, and they need to convince the voter that their ideas will work and that changes it.

- Your group always deep dives on these issues.

- Sure it does.

- Do regular voters, Doug and Diane Tarheel, do they care about redistricting when it happens, or will they pay attention to it in 2024 when their candidate either blows out the opponent or loses in a landslide?

- Sure.

I mean, I think in the end I am always shocked at how little people care or know in terms of who's running, name recognition of particular candidates, particularly redistricting.

I think that there's probably 10,000 people in the entire state that really even understand this process and what it means.

But we also find that as we move forward, we've gotten maps that look red and blue, and light blue and all these other things.

In the end, this is about the primary requirement is that we try not to split counties to the extent that we can.

Meck and Wake now have been split in several different ones that lean more blue.

Those urban areas are gonna, of course, be more blue, so people will know and understand and care based on what's happening in their community, not what's happening at the legislature.

- Colin, let's shift over and focus on the US House districts.

14 of them could be 10-3.

Do the math.

11-3, 10-4, and it'll be GOP majority.

Are we guaranteed to see Republicans represent more heavily North Carolina than Democrats?

Is that pretty much a given?

- Pretty much a guarantee.

I mean, you'd have to have an utterly massive blue wave to get some of these districts to flip.

So really, I mean, the one we're gonna be watching, Northeastern North Carolina, Congressman Don Davis, he won a narrow victory last time.

It'll be even tougher the way the district's drawn now.

He certainly could still win and keep four seats for Democrats.

But other than that, and we're so focused on looking at the primaries for a lot of these races, because that's ultimately probably gonna decide who's representing us in Congress and who wins a Republican or a Democratic primary.

- If you're a Democrat, which democratic representatives are in trouble?

I've got some listed here for later in the show, but who stands to lose no matter how hard or how well they run?

- Well, you're already seeing some movement based on those maps.

So Congressman Jeff Jackson, former state senator, has announced that he's gonna run for Attorney General instead because his district is becoming so Republican that he doesn't think he can win reelection.

Similar for Congressman Wiley Nickel in the triangle, and Kathy Manning in the triad, all their districts, they don't really have an option to run in a way where they've got a strong chance.

So I think you may see them drop out, run for something else as they look more at the maps.

- Senator sorry, there was input on how to draw those congressional maps and those three Democrats in particular have been very vocal.

Nichols raising money to sue the, I can't use the word on public TV, we're a children's network, sue the bees, and Jeff Jackson's done TikTok.

So they're being loud about this and they're using it.

Your take on drawing those three out and not maybe others.

- I don't know that there was anything specific to any of these members.

I believe that the maps just fell the way that they did.

I think that Congressman Jackson specifically has a robust social media presence, I believe, just to say the least.

I think Congressman Bishop has already, you know, taken advantage of that and welcome the Chinese social media star of the Attorney General's race.

Congressman Nichol, I think if, if probably you had a conversation with him at any point during his tenure in Congress, he would acknowledge that he was representing a district that had a tendency to lean more Republican and might be at risk in any redistricting process at all.

But no, they're fundraising.

They're making noise.

They're doing what they can to advance their, their agenda and their party's perspective on this.

- So everybody, your take on, on potentially losing those seats, I mean, you could lose up to four Democrats outta the US house.

Do you hope New York redistricts to its democratic flavor and offsets that, or what's the calculus?

- I think the important thing to remember with congressional districts and what governs the redraw of congressional districts is the federal Constitution, the US Constitution.

And there are two main guidelines, right?

One man, one vote, which requires that every single congressional district have exactly equal population, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protects minority voters from racial gerrymandering, among other things.

And what I will say is that the Voting Rights Act was made four times such as these, when the thirst for power becomes so unquenchable that traditional safeguards that perhaps have become weakened or weaponized, the Voting Rights Act will step in and be a backstop.

And what we have seen from the federal courts, especially this year, in Alabama and in this week in Georgia, is that they have stepped in and said, you say you're doing partisan gerrymandering, but actually this is racial gerrymandering, and it's wrong, and you need to go back to the drawing board.

And so I think that is really important to note that these claims and these concerns will go to the federal court system.

They will not go to the state court system.

And I am very confident that justice will prevail.

- So just just to address that, I think it's important for the viewers to understand that recent court decisions that the Four Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the circuit that North Carolinas has found that North Carolina does not have a racially polarized voting, which for purposes, the Voting Rights Act means that we do not have to consider and we should not consider race for the purpose of drawing these districts.

The committee chairs that drew these districts were very clear throughout the process that racial data was not used at all under any circumstance for the purpose of drawing these maps.

- And so I will just say to that point, I certainly respect your opinion, and I understand what you're saying, but the truth of the matter is that the data shows that 9 out of 10 African Americans are registered Democrats or lean Democratic.

So it is very difficult to disentangle race and partisanship.

And we saw that in the Georgia Court cases when the defense from the state was, you cannot presume race when partisanship is an equally plausible explanation.

And the court said very unequivocally, yes we can, and yes, we will.

- Well, I think the comment to that is that it's a, I disagree with your premise that race automatically equals partisanship.

We're on the precipice right now of having the first African-American nominee to run for governor of North Carolina, and it's on the Republican ticket.

You were seeing in- - We have in the Democratic ticket as well.

- We are seeing an increase in the number of African-Americans who are voting Republicans as well, in districts, just for example, Republican Danny Britt won a district by 17 points in North Carolina last election cycle.

That's a 51% Democrat registered district as well.

Voters care about the individual.

And it's not as simple as saying race equates to partisanship at all.

I think that's an insult to the local voters, candidly.

- Well, you know, the good news is that we'll know.

I think we can rest assured that this will be litigated and it will be litigated in the federal court system.

And so, you know, we'll know yes or no, what the result is.

- Donna, with this in mind, if you look at the Democratic delegation to the House, African American incumbents are given the advantage and everyone that's being drawn out seems to be Caucasian.

Is that by chance, in your opinion?

Is that the way it goes?

Is it the makeup of the demographics?

- You're talking about the congressional race now?

- In congressional races because I mean, I don't like doing that but you have to do that because you can see what's coming.

It's a federal lawsuit based on racial gerrymandering.

- Right, well, I mean, some of this, and North Carolina's not alone, obviously we've talked about this for other states, there has been a huge effort over the last decade, maybe a little more, to really go after maps in every state.

There's a national organization that was started by Eric Holder when he left the Obama administration called the National Redistricting Committee.

They made a real commitment on behalf of Democrats to make sure that they went into every state and sued over maps.

I mean, there is a litigious industry about maps.

North Carolina is not alone in that way.

That said, what we ended up with in 2022, the seven-seven map, that says, "Well, since we're purple "and because North Carolina is half and half and whatever, "we need a seven-seven map."

That's what the senate's for.

The senate are statewide elections.

The individual has seats in the north, in Congress, in the House of Representatives, means you're really talking about districts.

And as long as you can keep counties whole, keep communities together, that's I think the goal of this redistricting.

But I do think that the lawsuits are fairly inevitable.

We saw that in these hearings and all of the comments were very carefully crafted to either draw comments out of the members or to get something on the record.

So this part of it was inevitable.

- Colin, do you expect, in the lawsuit, note will be given to Representative Davis and Representative Adams and those that are written, drawn into democratic-leaning districts, as if a racial gerrymandering component arises in the federal courts?

- Yeah, and that seems to be where things are headed with the federal level.

I mean, the fact is that it's gonna have to be, to be successful likely, will need to be a federal court challenge on that basis.

The last round of redistricting, we saw a state court challenge on the basis of partisan gerrymandering being against the state constitution with the new Republican Supreme Court majority.

That's unlikely to carry any favor this time around.

So I think we're gonna look at that.

And what it's really gonna come down to, particularly for Don Davis's congressional district, did they take enough of the African American voters out of that district to where you're unlikely to have an African American representative for counties in the state that have been historically majority Black and will no longer have someone who looks like them in Congress?

- You know, what is very interesting is redistricting has already changed the dynamic of the attorney general's race, at the very least.

You've already mentioned that Jeff Jackson, the current US representative, believes he cannot win.

So he's not seeking reelection in his new congressional district.

He's now running for state attorney general in the Democratic primary.

Representative Jackson released a video there.

He's boxing in it, doing all sorts of things.

Colin, he has a really nice, robust social media presence, whether you wanna make fun of it or whether you wanna support it.

Jeff Jackson for attorney general and Dan Bishop on the other side.

What are we getting in that race, potentially if they can both win their primary?

- Yeah, you know, it's two sitting members of Congress running for attorney general.

I don't think we've ever seen that dynamic.

So these are two guys who now have a national spotlight.

Dan Bishop has been pretty prominent in the wing of the Republican party in Congress that's in some ways helped to oust Kevin McCarthy.

So that's gonna be an interesting thing that will help him perhaps get through a Republican primary.

Jeff Jackson has this massive social media following all across the country.

So there's gonna be a ton of money raised in that because they can raise money from all across the country.

And these guys, genuinely they don't like each other.

I mean, you have two senators from a different party sitting here who get along.

Those two have never had any love lost between them.

So this is gonna be a vicious race.

- Senator, sorry, how do you expect this race to unfold?

Jeff Jackson's presence brings a retail level of politics.

People do like the guy.

They like at least what he appears to be on TikTok.

And there's Dan Bishop, who's I would venture to say a bit quieter, a different type of demeanor.

It's a contrast of styles, not just in policy.

- So this is going to be the race for me to watch in 2024.

I think for a lot of the reasons that Colin talked about with just the personal dynamics, I think this is obviously, you know, a stepping stone perhaps to something bigger from just attorney general.

And you have two people that are very, very passionate about this race.

You know, I was talking on the way over here, excuse me, before the show, we talked about the TikTok aspect.

You know, people that are not your traditional voters and don't pay attention to politics see his TikToks.

And it's gonna be fascinating to see that dynamic with social media there.

But Congressman Bishop is a powerhouse of a candidate.

He can fundraise.

He's a brilliant legal mind.

He is a strong advocate.

And I really think that we're gonna see Attorney General Bishop when the dust settles.

- Senator Bode, talk about Jeff Jackson as a candidate running across North Carolina.

Do Democrats vibe with him or is he more of a suburban-urban type of candidate?

- So I think in 2024 in North Carolina, you know, the voters are gonna have a very clear choice.

And the attorney general's race is no exception.

The candidate profiles in this race are interesting for many of the reasons mentioned.

I do think that Congressman Bishop appeals much more to the Republican base, whereas Congressman Jeff Jackson really appeals to a wider electorate.

And in North Carolina, if you're gonna win statewide, you have to win over suburban women.

And I'll have to disagree with my colleague here.

I feel that Congressman Jeff Jackson is better positioned to win over those suburban women than Congressman Bishop in this race.

- Donna, Jeff Jackson called the redistricting process corrupt and if you elect him, he's gonna go after the corrupt.

It sounds, I mean, it's a bit sour grapes I would think, a little bit.

Is that what we want in an attorney general, someone who's promising what they're going to do, whether or not anything's there to take action upon as attorney general?

- You make a really good point.

So one of the intrinsic roles, the key roles of the attorney general, is to defend the laws of the land, the laws that are passed by the North Carolina General Assembly.

So in his very first video, he comes out with this boxing imagery, talking about corruption in the maps and talking about fighting corruption.

He's saying in his very first video that he may not be willing to do one of the core points and the core duties of this job, that his core responsibility, to defend the laws passed by the North Carolina General Assembly, may be the corruption.

He alludes that that's the corruption that he wants to fight.

Now, I don't know that the rank-and-file voter really understands that or knows what that means but it's a huge red flag, I think to a lot of those in it.

But in the end, you're right, style is a big point.

Style points for TikTok and whatever, that's a big deal.

The question is, is are they gonna be able to take this and show that it's not just style, it's substance.

I think that's one thing that Dan Bishop, when he goes out and talks to donors, he talks to other policy makers and that kind of thing, that he's sort of proven he's got that substance.

But the the point about wanting to immediately start fighting the legislature and you've just announced that you're even gonna run, might be a red flag.

- Donna, right back at you.

Redistricting's changed the race for Mark Walker.

He was running for governor, not getting much traction, at least according to the polls.

He acknowledged that in his switch to the sixth congressional district.

- Sure.

- He has been actively campaigning in that Republican primary for quite a while.

Now he's gone.

What does it do to the governor's race?

What does it do to the sixth district race in the House, which is what Greensboro Triad is?

- It is.

Greensboro Tri.

No, one thing is, is that Mark Walker already represented that area.

This is his old seat when he was in Congress.

He then had a failed primary bid for Senate in North Carolina in 2022, and then he was trying for governor.

I don't think it's gonna change the governor's race that much.

Truthfully, I don't feel like he had the traction he was looking for.

Admittedly, he's been spending a lot of time in Washington DC.

He feels like he really has those connections.

He says he's been asked to really consider this seat.

It is his seat.

He's got tremendous name recognition.

He's gonna have a primary challenger in Kristen Castelli, who ran and lost to Kathy Manning last go-round.

So I think he's probably very well positioned to take this and, you know, certainly with the map, but then also because he's from there.

He knows that it's his old seat.

- Very quickly.

Senator Mary Willis Bode, Walker moves to the US House.

Kathy Manning on the outside looking in, just as Mark Walker was a few years ago.

- Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I think in this race we see the closer we get to the election cycle, we see kind of folks shifting gears or looking at other opportunities.

The race is, you know, evolving and tightening up.

I would say this is probably a win for treasurer Dale Falwell, who was also in the race.

I would imagine he's gonna capture a lot of the electorate that was maybe thinking that Representative Walker was their guy.

So, you know, I would not discount Treasurer Falwell.

He's an incredible candidate, and so just like everyone else, we'll wait and see how it plays out.

- Senator Sawrey, you wanna talk about Mark Walker?

You wanna talk about Facebook being sued by the state of North Carolina?

Which hat do you wanna wear?

Because I got one more topic left.

We have three minutes to get to it.

We can go to Facebook.

[laughter] Well, North Carolina's joining 41 other states and the District of Columbia, they're suing Instagram parent company Meta for its platform's alleged effects on children.

They say it's addictive.

Senator Sawrey, they say it's bad for mental health and they are suing because of endless scrolling and all the things we do when we spend hours laying in the bed when we should be asleep.

We enjoy it.

Is this a free speech play, or is there a real regulatory problem?

I think there's an argument on both sides with it.

There are charts that show just an impact on society.

You know, the socialization, how children are getting out playing, how many friends they have, when they're getting their driver's licenses, mental health issues.

And there's an inflection point that seems to occur about the time that these social media platforms really expanded these children.

I think you've seen other states, I believe Utah, maybe Governor Cox has signed some legislation into law that actually talked about the age and permissive use of some of these social media platforms.

You know, it's a complicated issue, but I do think that there's some societal problems that we should probably address and this certainly seems to have come about at the same time.

- Senator Bode, sounds bipartisan.

Josh Stein's pushing this one.

We have at least one Republican senator goes, Hey, let's take a look.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think we're all concerned about our kids, right?

And this is really a case of first impression.

We have children growing up in this era of social media access and you know, it's our responsibility to meet the moment and address those issues when we see so clearly, the devastating effects that it can have on children, teenagers, and their mental health.

As well as adults as you mentioned.

And I think there really is a role for us to step up and help and make sure our kids stay safe.

- About one minute, Colin.

You know, we're told in the media, go digital or die and now digital's out there and politicians want to sue the major platform that distributes so much content out there.

That content's good, bad, and ugly.

- Yeah, I mean that's the challenge is there's little policing.

The misinformation and the good information, and it's hard even as a media organization to try to get out the good information, because a lot of these platforms are designed to play with your emotions.

Things that make you angry are more likely to get traction than, Hey here's a balanced news story about something important.

It's a challenge to deal with in today's information economy.

- Sure.

- Editor, last word to you, 30 seconds.

- Oh, I mean, I think one of the things we really can't discount is only about 44% of parents say they even know what their kids are watching.

Even fewer say that they control how much time they have.

In my house, they can have social media on their laptops, they can't have it on their phones.

Some of this really comes down to taking control of what's happening in your house before it gets to the point where they're driving around and they have a phone in their hand.

- All right, there you go.

Thank you so much panelists, for this show.

It was a great show, a complicated topic.

I appreciate you as always being on.

Thank you for watching.

If you have a thought or an opinion about "State Lines" or what we've discussed, email us statelines@pbsc.org.

We'll read every email, share a few of them.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you so much for watching.

Have a great weekend.

We'll see you next time.

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