- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up, student test scores dropped dramatically.

North Carolina Democrats seek bipartisan gun laws.

And Ted Bud takes the lead in the US Senate race.

Next.

- [Announcer] 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 pbsc.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Donna King with Carolina Journal, Democratic State Senator Sarah Crawford, Colin Campbell, Editor of the North Carolina Tribute, and Nelson Dollar, former senior policy advisor of the North Carolina Speaker House.

Nelson, why don't we begin with the results of the nation's report card?

- Yes, Marc.

Last week, the US Department of Education released the nation's report card on student performance.

And for the first time ever, every measure of math and reading performance by the nation's fourth and eighth graders is down.

The learning loss due to COVID, the COVID lockdowns, has erased as much as 20 to 30 years worth of gains made in student achievement over that period of time.

The performance gaps for at risk groups, which had been closing in recent years, have widened, in some cases by as much as 30% in this report.

Learning loss among North Carolina's one million students of course tracked the national averages.

And I think three lessons have really emerged from this report card.

One is remote learning was a failure, particularly for younger students.

- Too draconian, you think?

Shutting the schools down?

- Very much so.

And that leads to the second lesson, which were countries and some private schools here as well, that put the children back in school quickly have fared much better in terms of their performance.

Countries like Finland and some of the other Nordic countries did that.

And we just have the studies for that.

And the third lesson is that it will, and everyone agrees with this, unfortunately, it's going to take years for many students to recover from this learning loss.

- Donna, how is North Carolina dealing with, you've talked to Secretary Truitt on this?

- We have and certainly and I also have children in the school system in North Carolina.

So what we're really seeing is that North Carolina is very similar to South Carolina and, really, in the nation, 35%, just 35% of kids are passing the minimum requirements in math and reading and actually 32% in reading, 35% in math.

So it is really alarming.

And I think what we're seeing is a couple of things.

One, only 15% of the money that was allocated for schools post-COVID to try and help these kids catch up, only 15% of it's been spent nationwide.

So really the efforts to try and help them catch up really isn't, the money isn't going into those things.

And I think one problem that we've got is that only a slice of the American population and particularly in North Carolina have children at any given time.

So I think that there is an overwhelming sense that, all right, we're gonna do better with the next group of kids, we're gonna do better with the next ones.

And the ones who are right now trying to graduate, trying to get into college, they're the ones that are really gonna suffer long term.

- Sarah, has a general assembly weighed in on this?

- Yeah, the general assembly has weighed in a lot on schools shutting down.

We had several bills-- - What about these kids catching up, do we need longer weeks?

- You know, with the kids catching up, what we really have to do is make sure that we're putting the investments where they need to go in public education.

And let's be clear, I appreciate these other countries that got kids back to school quicker, had less learning loss.

But the Trump White House really put us in a bad situation.

They didn't follow the advice of the global pandemic situation.

They lied about the COVID-19 situation.

And what was handed to us was a bad hand of cards and a deck that was already stacked against us.

And we've been screaming that we needed public education funding for years.

- Red states, though, that stayed open had better results, didn't they?

And by the way, private schools, Catholic schools did better.

- Yeah, and it a little bit challenging to drill down into the exact details because things that went badly across the board.

'Cause everybody shut down at one point, for the most part.

And this data in particular doesn't drill down specifically the school districts.

So here in North Carolina, it's very hard to compare because there's not numbers for, say, Wake County versus a red county that opened three months earlier than the rest.

So we'll probably need some more data to really drill into the specifics of exactly how different places fared.

But I think the study shows if you shut down at all, even for a smaller percentage of time, the test scores are still down.

- Okay, I want to change gears, come to you, Sarah.

Talk about bipartisan gun laws that Senator Dan Blue is pitching the general assembly to Republicans on.

- Yeah, absolutely.

This is in the wake of the horrific mass shooting that we had in Raleigh a couple of weeks ago, just a little over two weeks ago today.

And I was proud to join that press conference with Senator Blue to call on bipartisan gun laws-- - He was passionate.

- He was absolutely passionate.

Senator Blue is a Hedingham resident, where this tragedy occurred and there have been no fewer than about a dozen pieces of gun legislation for around safe storage laws, red flag laws, that Democrats have been calling on for bipartisan support.

We shouldn't be in the position where we fear doing everyday things like going to the grocery store, going out of our house, going on a run, walking our dogs for fear of getting shot.

We've got laws around or we've got legislation on red flag laws, gun storage laws, background checks.

In fact we had, there was-- - We don't have red flag flaws, though-- - No, we don't.

We have legislation.

- It's proposed.

- It's been proposed.

And, in fact, there was a great bill that then house member Bobby Hanig supported that sponsored on storage laws that didn't even get a hearing in the Senate.

So I'm hopeful that we can get something done.

There have been some good conversations.

But, look, we're not calling on a ban on guns.

I'm a gun owner, I'm a concealed carry permit holder, I'm a former competitive shooter.

A lot of my colleagues in the Democratic party are gun owners.

And we're not trying to take guns away from law abiding citizens.

- Nelson, is there room for common ground?

- I think there is room for common ground, but so for example, if the Democrats want to-- - What about red flag laws, specifically?

- Well, I think that you have to work with the majority.

You know, when we saw in the aftermath of Parkland that the Florida Republican legislature worked on a bipartisan basis, and they passed a red flag law there, which allows courts to remove guns from someone who's deemed a danger to themselves or others.

And there are also a number of states, or I think around 10 states this year that have passed laws banning ghost guns.

So we've seen some action where, and a ghost gun is where you buy all the parts separately, you put it together, and it's very difficult to trace that.

So there, I think there are some areas that could move forward.

But Democrats are also, if they want cooperation with Republicans, they're gonna have to agree to vote on some things like budgets, if they want more mental health spending, and they're gonna have to support some of the other school safety initiatives that Republicans have done tremendous work on the last 10 years.

- Donna, weigh in here.

- Yeah, I think it is interesting, and this press conference certainly made some news this week also.

One of the things that did pop up in the news is one of the families of the victims of the Raleigh shooting came out and went to the media and said, look, you know, we're insulted.

We feel like that this has turned into a political play by Democrats, by Governor Cooper.

- [Marc] We're used as props is what they said.

- They were really angry.

They were angry that they felt like their loved one who was killed in that shooting was not an advocate of gun control.

And they felt like that they were used by Governor Cooper and Mayor Baldwin of Raleigh to push a political agenda two weeks ahead of the election.

Now that said, I think that we are seeing a major mental health crisis, particularly among teens and college students.

There have been five suicides in a local North Carolina University just this year.

- Right.

- I think that that is really being overlooked and the willingness of these professors and advisors to pick up the phone and answer it, help these kids reclaim the time that they lost during shutdowns.

- Is the American public, you think, Colin, becoming immune to these mass shootings?

Is this the new normal?

- You know, I hate to say it, but it seems like we sort of lose our attention on these things within a couple weeks after they happen.

And there's another one, and we talk about it for a couple days.

- Right.

- And then there's another one.

You know, I think there will be a discussion at the legislature and whether the common ground comes on something like safe storage or red flag laws, or it involves more funding for mental health.

Senator Ballou was proposing more funding for school psychologists, something that we're a little bit short on here in North Carolina.

So there'll be some efforts, but whether it moves the needle or really stops this from happening, you know, hard to say.

- Donna, I wanna move on, talk to you about several new polls have come out in statewide races in North Carolina this week.

- Yeah.

- Particularly Civitas, your groups.

- Yeah.

Yes.

The Civitas poll came out this week, but there's also been, now two others.

Three big polls came out this week.

- Marist.

- Marist, that puts Republican senate candidate Ted Budd ahead of former Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who's the Democrats' nominee for US Senate.

So remember this race has been very, very tight, neck and neck, for quite some time now.

And now it looks like Budd is pulling away, depending on which poll you read, between four, you know, four or five percentage points.

And I think what you're really seeing is, there's a couple of things.

One, I think more people are willing to take polls, willing to pick up the phone, willing to respond to these pollsters.

And that's one thing.

But I also think that message of inflation and $11 jars of peanut butter and high gas prices, and all of these things are affecting people's daily decisions, and that means they're thinking about it daily.

They're thinking about inflation.

They're thinking about energy costs.

They're thinking about some of the policies that have ended up really driving the decisions that they can make for their family.

And I think it doesn't, probably doesn't help, the school shutdowns.

And we're seeing all of these kids falling behind when it was really the Democrats that were pushing, and the NCAE pushing to keep kids out of school.

- Let me ask you this.

Are kitchen table issues driving this election, do you think, Colin?

- Yeah, I mean, I look at, you know, the poll that we're talking about here, they ask folks what's top of mind?

38% said inflation, only 15% said abortion, which of course is a big issue in a lot of the democratic campaigns.

So I think that's coming down to a lot of it.

Another stat that stuck out to me, 83.9% said due to the higher cost of groceries, they're changing their spending habits.

So not just annoyed that they're spending more at the grocery store, but actually changing what they're buying, where they're shopping.

- Let me ask you, how high are the stakes Nelson, in these Supreme Court races?

We didn't mention that.

- Oh, they're the absolute highest.

So for example.

- They don't get much street credit.

- They don't.

- Or much press.

- But even if the General Assembly Republicans receive super majorities, what's really going to matter is who controls the state Supreme Court.

You've seen a very, under Beasley's former leadership there and the current Democrat majority on the State Supreme Court, they are being very aggressive in their interpretation of the state's constitution.

They're taking a far more liberal approach to their interpretation of the state's constitution than we've ever seen in the history of North Carolina.

And so I think that the stakes for those Supreme Court races, unfortunately, are far higher than they probably even should be.

- Sarah, what struck you about this poll?

- Here's what struck me about this poll.

I think it's a great sign that among Beasley supporters, there's a greater percentage of them that are more committed to her than Budd's are committed to her.

And look, the Republicans have spent a ton of money in a race that probably a year ago, they didn't expect to have to do, which is all because of the great race that Cheri Beasley is running.

- Where are the independents on this?

The independent women, Donna?

- Well actually, we're seeing more of them break for Republicans in some of these polls.

But I think speaking to the money, of course, you know, the Beasley campaign has outraised and outspent four to one.

Same in the North Carolina Supreme Court, Democrats have outraised and outspent four to one, and yet, you know, Budd and the Republican challengers are really moving forward in the poll, which really says that when you look at national Democrats and national Republicans, they're not investing as much in the Beasley campaign.

They're focused on even things that they thought were sure things in Oregon and Washington.

- Republicans have spread the field, I believe.

- Yeah, I think so.

I think that's some of it.

But what it also means is that it's not really as much about how much those campaigns are raising and spending.

It's really what people are seeing every day when they go check out at the grocery store.

- What are we seeing in early voting, my friend?

- Well, we're certainly seeing, the history of early voting in the last several cycles is more and more people are voting early.

It isn't necessarily that the total turnout will be higher.

It's just they're voting early.

And the trends are very consistent.

Democrats, you know, wanting to vote early, they build up big numbers.

Republicans show up on election day.

And one of the keys is, - Quickly.

- fly in the ointment for Budd, is distrust in the election process.

The Marist polls showed - Great point.

- that 32% of Republican voters say they lack confidence in the election process.

Only 8% of Democrats.

That could be a concern for Republicans 'cause they need to have confidence that they turn out and their vote will matter.

- Okay, I want to change topics here and talk to you about the governor had a, Colin, had an executive order this week on EV sales and truck sales.

- Yeah, so the executive order, it sort of starts the process of moving towards what's known as an Advanced Clean Truck Rule, which would require manufacturers to have a certain percentage of what they sell be electric, both on trucks and on buses.

So the sort of heavy duty vehicles that produce a lot of the pollution we see, and this is something the governor can't do unilaterally.

So what he's asking his agencies to do is to come up with a proposed set of rules that would go through the Environmental Management Commission and get adopted that way.

Of course, the caveat of that is he told us, the reporters, that that's probably not gonna get done until 2026.

By that point, he's not the governor.

There's the potential that the legislature could jump in here and prevent that from happening, or even the Rules Review Commission, which is dominated by Republican appointees will have to weigh in on that process.

So it's certainly not a done deal, but it's definitely sort of a messaging point to show that the state is moving in a direction of trying to get more electric vehicles, particularly buses and trucks on the road.

- Donna, six states have this, but is he virtue signaling to the folks on the green issue side?

- Oh I think so.

Particularly from what Colin said.

You know, it's, you know, it's a press conference right now.

It's not much more than that.

But there's two things that potentially, one, we're back to talking about prices at the grocery store.

Do we really wanna put, you know, another onerous regulation that's very costly because it's really only gonna benefit those large companies who can afford to buy a new vehicle.

Not the small trucking companies that, you know, that would, we would price them outta the market.

Two, there is, you know, some analysis right now that it could violate a state law that requires state regulations on environment to not be more stringent than federal.

So that would be another challenge that would be coming up.

But you're right, that is a core demographic of of the governor's base and he was speaking to them.

- Sarah?

- Look, government moves really slowly.

That is no surprise.

And I think the governor here is taking steps to move the ball on this.

Is it gonna cost money?

- He's being consistent.

- He's being consistent.

Is it gonna cost money?

Sure.

Are we also sitting on billions of dollars in surplus money and rainy day fund that we could use for key infrastructure investments?

Absolutely.

The point is, we've gotta start somewhere and with the climate numbers that came out this week, we better get moving so we can be on this earth a lot longer.

- Nelson, your take.

- It's all very inspirational in the Merry Old Land of Oz but it's not reality.

I mean, there's nothing in the order that talks about the regulatory changes that you need to substantially increase lithium mining for all those batteries you gotta have.

In Europe, they're gonna have to increase lithium mining 35 fold to meet their EV targets.

And here's the dirty secret.

Electric vehicles are not zero emissions unless you don't count the charging, how those charging stations are actually powered.

The best short term solution for heavy trucks would be B100, using a 100% biodiesel standard, heavy trucks would actually admit 80% less fossil carbon than a heavy duty electric truck using today's carbon average in the US electric grid.

- Colin wrap this up in about 40 seconds, my friend, put it in context.

Is this something that that voters, top of mind with voters right now?

- I don't think it is for sort of the independent electorate.

I do think there's a subset of Democrats who really care strongly about climate change issues and this I think will perhaps motivate them to be more enthusiastic at the polls.

But as far as independents, probably not so much.

- Okay.

Donna, I want to go to the most under-reported story of the week, please.

- Yes, Yes.

So new numbers out from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that North Carolina is still not at our labor participation rate that we were before the pandemic.

And I think that's important to note because I think the difference between unemployment and labor participation is significant.

You know, unemployment is people who are collecting unemployment looking for a job.

Labor participation is really talks about, removes those people who have just dropped out of the workforce, which is what we're finding.

Right now, we have about 60,000 North Carolinians who never went back to work after the pandemic shutdowns.

And I think that's significant as we move forward and make some really serious fiscal plans for this state.

- Well, when you look at restaurants and a lot of other industries, they can't find workers.

Correct?

- Absolutely.

That's exactly what we're seeing.

And and you can say that there's all different kinds of factors that are playing a role in this.

Some of it is that they went home and they felt like they needed to homeschool so they decided not to go back.

They took a early retirement, but in many cases, you know, a lot of folks were just, you know, socking away or spending some of those, you know, the rescue-- - Government checks.

- Government rescue money that was coming in and now they're looking back going, okay, it's stopping.

What do I do now?

And they just haven't come back to work.

- Sarah under-reported, please.

- Under-reported a pew had an article out this week citing a recent report from UNC.

- Pew Poll.

- Pew Charitable.

- [Host] Right.

Okay.

- So the lack of transportation is hindering community college students.

Only about 57% of community colleges have transit stops and many of our rural campuses do not at all.

And you know, I have a a personal story on this.

I did some work several years ago with James Front Community College in the middle of Duplin County separated by a highway and a swamp.

And there was a student there that I was working with who was having to walk seven miles a day to and from school because the bus system in Duplin County only ran twice to that campus once in the morning, once in the evening, which is great if you're a community college student who needs to be at the community college all day, not great if you've got kids in a job that you're trying to juggle.

So a lot of these community colleges are turning to public private partnerships, philanthropy.

There are states that are investing dollars to help some of these transit issues, but it really points to much bigger issues about the non-academic barriers to success that students have.

Students are facing things, okay, not just like transportation, but food, housing insecurity, and a lot of other things that are hindering them.

- Great catch under reported my friend.

- So when you get your ballots this year, you'll probably notice some US Senate has a line for write-in candidate and you don't have that on a lot of the other races.

- [Host] I wrote my name in.

- Yeah, exactly, right?

But it won't count because the only official write-in candidate, and the reason we have that little line, is Michelle Lewis who got 500 signatures on a petition to be a formally recognized write-in candidate in North Carolina.

And where this matters potentially is if you have a really really close race between Beasley and Bud, Lewis's platform is one that sort of leans left.

It would probably appeal to liberals who for whatever reason don't want to go with the main party candidates and if she got, you know, a few hundred votes that could - It have to be awful tight though, wouldn't it?

- But, but the last time there was a write-in candidate on the ballot 2014 they got 600 votes Beasley lost by around 400 votes in her Supreme Court race a few years ago.

So it's, it can happen, it's highly unlikely but you never know.

- Nelson?

- But is the Green Party candidate also on the--?

- The green party is there too, and no constitution party for the, you know, dissident Republicans.

- Two surveys out last week raise serious questions about trust in the mainstream media.

According to the New York Times Sienna poll, voters who believe that America, American democracy is currently under threat, 59% of those identify the mainstream media as a major threat to democracy for folks that believe that.

- I thought that was very interesting that the New York Times came out with that.

- Yes, it is, and it backs up a survey by Gallop that show only 34% of Americans trust the media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.

And for the first time, more Americans are now saying that they have no trust in the news media, a plurality of Americans.

So more and more American institutions are being viewed as partisan, and that applies to all institutions and that perception applies, again, to the mainstream media as well.

- Okay, let's go to the Lightning Round now.

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

- First, there is a Libertarian candidate on the ballot.

So there's four candidates on the Senate ballot.

So I'm gonna say up, Cheri Beasley.

She's got a Hail Mary ad out right now with former President Barack Obama.

So they're in the short rows, but again this is coming out...

It's late in the cycle.

Down, Meta, fined more than $24 million for campaign finance disclosure violations.

So one of the requirements, everybody in media knows about it, if you're running campaign ads, you have to make available who paid for it, where it went, who was it for, all those things, and they were not doing that through the last cycle, saying it was a violation of free speech.

- That's pocket change to Zuckerberg though.

- Yeah, it was a bad argument.

- Up and down, please.

- First, let me say I love when Donna says Cheri Beasley is up, so let's just capture that.

[laughter] Up for me is people with disabilities have more doors to employment.

Tight labor market, more flexible work options, including remote, employers are more willing to make accommodations 'cause they can't find people means people with disabilities are finding more flexible, higher paying jobs at higher rates.

Down are big tech profits.

Third quarter reports are out.

It shows that things are continuing to slow down for the tech industry, obviously indicative of the broader economy.

But let's not feel too bad for them.

Microsoft and Google both made more than $30 billion in profits.

- Colin, who's up and who's done this week?

- Up this week, State Senator Wiley Nickel, who's the Democrat running for Congress in the Triangle area.

The only poll I've seen from the Locke Foundation came out this week and has him up by a single percentage point.

Might be one of the closest races in the state and it's getting attention from national groups that are spending money on it, plus Rolling Stone, NPR, a lot of places, so that'll definitely be one to watch.

- That's a game changer if he wins.

- Potentially so, yeah.

And down this week on the flip side of the coin for Democrats, State Supreme Court candidates are down pretty significantly in the polls.

Could be sort of a challenge for them to come back in the final weeks.

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

- Who's up, Texas, the top state for renewable energy.

And why, because unlike California, Texas has an all-of-the-above, market-driven energy policy and they pursue renewable projects that are actually economically viable.

They're the number one state for wind power because, guess what, West Texas is windy.

So who's down?

- Let me just ask you this before you get to down.

Natural gas, how big a problem is fuel oil gonna be in the Northeast this winter?

- Fuel oil is going to be a major issue in the Northeast.

The ability to afford your fuel oil up there, people trying to fill up their 500-gallon tanks and having to spend $1,000 or $2,000 more to heat in the winter, it's gonna be a major issue for them.

- Down?

- Down, consumer confidence fell in October, led by a very sharp drop in the present situation index and consumer expectation indexes for the future, future income business and employment, was down and remains near an eight-year low.

- Donna, headline next week.

- Okay, so next week, we're talking about trust in the media and Meta getting fined.

Well, next week is Elon Musk's first full week at the wheel over at Twitter.

I think we're gonna see a lot of changes.

Whether you like him or not, he's certainly increased transparency on that platform.

- He just fired the whole leadership of Twitter.

- Yeah, I think next week's big and all about Elon Musk.

- [Marc] Headline next week quickly?

- With one week until the election, polls show that voters are most enthusiastic about reclaiming their televisions.

- That's why I watch Netflix.

Headline next week?

- Early voting numbers continue to exceed the levels from the 2018 midterms.

- Do you think this is gonna be the most turnout we've had in quite some time?

- It may be.

Certainly for a midterm, maybe not for a presidential year.

- Headline next week?

- The Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates as a recession looms.

- Okay, we've gotta roll.

Great job, panel.

That's it for us.

Hope to see you next week on Front Row.

Have a great weekend.

[dramatic music] ♪ - [Announcer] 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, Finlay Foundation, NC Realtors, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason.

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

[dramatic music] ♪