- [Narrator] Western North Carolina ponders a long recovery that could complicate the election and define the next governor's term.

New East Carolina University polling is released, and the insurance companies and the insurance commissioner face off over premium hikes.

This is "State Lines."

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[bright uplifting music] - Welcome to "State Lines," I'm Kelly McCullen.

We have a great panel today, political consultant, Brad Crone, right to my right, Joe Stewart, good friend of public media in North Carolina, PBS, North Carolina.

Good to see you, Joe.

- Good to see you, Kelly.

- [Kelly] Brooke Medina, John Locke Foundation joins us.

You're ready?

- I'm ready.

- And happy birthday.

- Thank you.

- Travis Fain back on the set, political analyst.

So we have a nice mixture of new perspectives, Joe, but it's a tough week for us here at North Carolina.

Recovery from Hurricane Helene will certainly be a state priority for the foreseeable future.

This week, state leaders, even the president, were on the ground here in the Tar Heel State.

As I've written this script to read to you, over 200 people have died because of this storm.

Some counties are now in a recovery phase, not a rescue phase.

Over a quarter million North Carolinians remain without power.

Asheville still has no functioning water system.

And as recovery slowly rolls out, we have a huge election about one month out.

- We know that the devastation brought by Hurricane Helene is beyond belief.

Communities were wiped off the map.

Dozens of lives lost, hundreds of roads remain damaged or impassable.

Communication has been difficult due to cell phone and power outages.

Many people were waiting for days trying to get in touch with the loved ones, and thankfully, many of them have, but some of them are still waiting.

- Alright, there you heard from the governor.

This show talks about politics.

We're gonna pray, send our prayers and recovery efforts, and PBS North Carolina is working with emergency management, so we're covering bases across this.

This show has to be focused, Brad, we're gonna talk about the election.

Take this conversation where you will, tens of thousands if not more people in North Carolina displaced.

How do you find them?

How do you poll them?

How do you get them to vote in 2024 if this is the election of all elections?

- It's a big question mark at this point in time, and we really don't know what the impact of voter turnout west of I-77 and I-75 are going to be in Western North Carolina.

Some have predicted it could be around 50%.

Usually, it's 68 to 70, 72% in a presidential election in the Western North Carolina counties.

We'll see significant droppage because of that.

But here's the deal, we will have an election starting October 17th, the elections will be fair, they will be free, and they will be safe.

And the North Carolina Board of Elections and the county boards are working diligently, day and night, to make sure that process goes through.

- Joe, we have an audience that's growing on YouTube, so there are people who like North Carolina politics or former North Carolinians who tune in from outside our state.

Explain Brad's line of demarcation with these interstates.

Where do they run?

Very briefly, and then give us your analysis of getting out there in the field, trying to keep people enthused about an election when they have to clean up, they have to dry out, they have to care for their loved ones.

- Yeah, this will be a considerable challenge, and not just the relative difficulty of finding people, but the facilities that we would typically count on to be locations where people could go to vote in person and early will be harder and harder to find, because facilities that are Able to be accessed and are usable will be needed for the recovery effort.

I think this is a considerable challenge and the additional complicator, coupling with what Brad said, is the perception that the people in this part of the state will have about the governmental response and recovery effort, and that will become a factor in how they decide to vote, whether or not they feel it's been adequate and sufficient for their need.

- We're talking about the interstate that runs from Greensboro down through Charlotte, South Carolina.

That way you're talking west of there if you're looking at a North Carolina map.

Is that right gentlemen?

- That's correct, yeah.

- Brooke, where does it go with these last 35, or however many days we have?

I haven't checked.

Does it even matter now in Western North Carolina or will people in that month collect themselves, catch their breath, start cleaning up, and then will they start getting back to business in terms of eyeing this Trump/Harris, Stein/Robinson race?

- Well, I think it's important to remember that a lot of what colors our perception of the elections has to do with where we're standing, but where they're standing right now are flood zones, or you know, flooded areas.

There's devastation and so making sure that first off, that they're able to recover from this traumatic experience, is going to be top priority for those that are there.

Certainly the election officials there are working hard to make sure that they can vote as easily as possible and that everything is communicated.

But honestly, if you put yourself in their position, you're not really focused so much on the election as much as you are just rebuilding your life.

And that I think is where candidates need to speak to.

They need to speak to this and recognize this isn't about political talking points for these folks.

These folks have gone through devastation and are laying loved ones to rest and so it's just, it's tragic, and so making sure political candidates read the room, I think is going to be essential.

- Travis, we've provided press videography services for the state of North Carolina.

We've been in there.

The helicopter had Josh Stein on.

Who's the sitting Attorney general and some other candidate.

Roy Cooper, the governor, he has to be there.

We've seen Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson working in his role as lieutenant Governor on the civilian rescue side, which has caused some controversy, I guess, with him calling out federal officials.

Don't want to get into that here.

What do you think of the state officials who have been out there?

What does their presence do, in your opinion, to the local scene and local efforts?

Does it buck spirits up?

- It might buck spirits up, but I think it also shows, hey, you know, the higher ups are paying attention to this.

If you're working in this sort of field, you know, it's important.

You know it's important to help people who are just devastated, but if you turn around and there's the governor, you know, it's a bit of a reminder too.

So I think it just kind of helps tell people we all think this is important from the top to the bottom.

- I'm going to take some liberties with this segment and extend it.

Brad, how much should people expect from their state versus expect from their federal government and cleanup?

- Well, the good news is this is that states sitting on a huge pile of cash in the rainy day fund and you've got to credit the Republican legislature on setting aside that money.

And we have a critical need at this point in time.

So unlike past situations we've seen, the state has cash available to match federal dollars to get to those folks.

They've got, the legislature's gonna have to come back to town.

They're gonna have to work with the governor, with the Council of State, and get things moving to help get cash on the ground quick.

- Joe, how does that work?

If the state threw in a few billion dollars, do the feds multiply that or is it something we go to Congress for using our delegation to go to DC?

- Yeah, these sorts of catastrophic events, it's all of the above.

I mean, we will go to anywhere that we can get funding.

To some extent, the state has to be judicious, because the emergency declarations that trigger federal response in part are an indication that the state's acknowledging it has insufficient resources to be able to provide for all of the expenses associated with response and recovery.

We have to remember the state has responsibility for the maintenance of state roads, and so that's an expense, all of the replacement and repair.

Of roadwork infrastructure in the West, there's a particular phenomena, your house may be here and the road is here, and between the two, is a culvert, and you have a bridge.

You don't consider that to be a public piece of infrastructure, but you would sure like the Federal or State government to pay for its replacement 'cause it's not covered by your insurance policy.

There are a lot of challenges that are gonna be faced in the West, not the least of which is, we've already seen preliminarily, a very small percentage of residential property owners in the West had flood insurance, and most of the devastation was caused by flood, and so there will be some significant number of people that have no way to repair or replace their home.

- I've thought about that, Brooke, you wouldn't think you would flood out in the mountains, if you're the coast, you must have it.

What about the private sector efforts at, not rescue, but in support?

There's some online chatter, people are upset that the State Government or National Guard, or some such entity as they're accused, are not letting people just come in and give food and supplies.

I don't know if that's true or not, it's a whole thing going on out there in debate, that's politicized by the way, but however, as the free market group, what is the role of the private sector now, to partner with the public sector in security to make sure people recover, stay safe, get back on their feet?

- I think the role of the private sector is essential, it's critical.

In some cases, the private sector, such as Samaritan's Purse, Baptists on Mission, they were there before even the federal government was able to arrive there, and so I think mobilizing them, encouraging that involvement is essential.

When it comes to the overlap between the private and public arenas, I think what's really important is communication.

That's certainly something that we know is essential in any crisis, but what has really handicapped the recovery to date, has been the lack of ability to communicate because of all of the infrastructure, the communications infrastructure that was impacted.

But I do think that the public sector should be welcoming the private sector's involvement in this because we have seen videos of folks that are actually conducting their own rescues, that were there earlier with their private helicopters, being able to rescue folks.

And at the end of the day, that's the priority, that's what matters, so we hope to see even more private sector involvement and public sector folks welcoming it.

- Travis, in about 15 weeks we'll have a new governor and we'll have a new Legislature sworn in and starting a long session.

Will the political tone in Raleigh allow for much discussion of anything other than storm recovery?

And is our next Governor locked in to being a storm recovery governor for the first term?

- It is gonna take a long time, and I mean, I certainly hope so.

I think that's gonna be priority number one, right?

And then there's gonna be a lot of priorities below that because being governor is a broad, broad job, but it's going to take so much time.

The number of roads that are just destroyed, I can't even guess at a number at what that cost is gonna be, I imagine we're gonna have to move enough construction workers out there to work on just roads, that it will change the demographics of Western North Carolina.

I imagine we're going to have to build a village of trailers for them to live in, or rent out entire hotels, somewhere near the area.

I just, the breadth of the destruction, unless you've paid very, very close attention is probably beyond what you are imagining at home if you're not there, And I mean that's what people are living through, so it's gonna have to be the focus.

Federal money is gonna have to be huge.

There's something called pre-authorization, we have not done that at a Congressional level for these sorts of funds, the housing funds that eventually will be used to help people rebuild.

And so it takes months for them to write the rules, even after Congress authorizes emergency funding.

That's something I would really recommend Congress take a hard look at, Senator Thom Tillis has talked about this a good bit.

That process needs to be sped up.

- Right, there are two really critical areas, one, dovetailing off of that, Travis, is you're correct, there's gotta be some mechanism of funds set up in place to help those families who have been displaced, they've lost their homes, and they still owe 10 years on their mortgage.

So how do you address that household, and they need help.

They're going to need financial help because of the losses they've incurred.

Then the second big discussion at a statewide level we've gotta have is having a state flood plan insurance program that is coordinated between the council of state and the legislature and offered as a market solution so that folks can go and engage in that process.

- One of the factors that will undoubtedly matter a lot to the next governor and perhaps the next couple of governors is that recovery in the aftermath of a natural disaster is largely intended to restore the economy.

Well, the economy of Western North Carolina is principally about travel and tourism.

That's dramatically impacted.

We've seen population growth in the western counties that's been principally people retiring to that part of the state.

That may be impacted.

So to get back to where we need to be so that the western part of North Carolina is self sufficient economically may literally take a decade or more.

- Yeah, I hope we'll see, as things calm down out there, people go into Western North Carolina, not for themselves, but for Western North Carolina.

It's not your vacation, it's to go there and to spend some money.

- Brooke, do the Republicans take heat in the legislative session if they wanna spend a few billion dollars out of that rainy day fund?

It's one thing to save it, it's another thing to ask Republican conservatives to spend it.

- I think where the heat is going to come from, if it does come, it won't be in actually spending the money.

I think it'll have to do with the allocation of the funds, and that's always what we see when it comes to politics.

Who's getting what money, what are the priorities, what infrastructure matters the most?

We have seen this tendency to politicize everything.

This should be something that doesn't get politicized, but inevitably will, sadly.

And so that's what I anticipate will be really at the center of any sort of heat is going to be how the funds are allocated.

- Joe, we're talking about getting federal funds in here.

Which is easier, getting the funds and convincing politicians to give you what you truly need versus enough to make a headline, or once you get it, responsibly deploying it across all those counties?

- Yeah, what's historically been the biggest challenge, as Brooke alluded to, it's not convenient or easy to try to figure out what's actually happened in a way that makes sense to apply the money that's available through the federal government.

It has a tendency to be slow and bureaucratic in terms of how it's deployed.

People's needs are immediate and their sense of the recovery is urgent, and it is very difficult for federal programs to move with a kind of swiftness that makes people feel confident that they're actually getting the resources and having them applied in a way that's meaningful in their lives.

- Well, we'll be working on it here at PBS North Carolina in all kinds of ways behind the scenes.

I know you folks are working on it as well, so we'll keep them in our prayers and minds and move on with State Lines, because there's a whole other state here, here to support Western North Carolina, and that part of the state can be polled, it can be tracked.

It is looking forward to an election, and it will be life is normal in a few weeks.

East Carolina has released its latest poll.

It came this week.

I should tell you, the poll was taken September 23rd through 26, 1005 likely voters were polled, 3% margin of error.

This one's interesting, Brad.

Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris, 49-47.

I think it was something like 48-47 the last time the ECU poll came out.

And the Democratic and Republican race for governor, Josh Stein has a 17-point lead now in the ECU poll over Mark Robinson, and has 50% support with 13% of the electorate undecided.

President Biden right now is carrying a 39% approval rating in North Carolina.

Interesting, because he was here on Thursday.

Governor Roy Cooper sitting at 51%, and to your point, Brad, 78% of North Carolinians say no matter what, we believe this election is going to be free and fair and not running afoul of any alleged or real interference.

I'll let you take these polls.

You get them every Thursday morning.

We know they change every day.

This one's for fun.

17-point lead for Josh Stein.

Should we just quit talking about the governor's race or will it pivot?

Off of the floods of Hurricane Helene and Mr. Robinson and Stein's efforts?

- No, at this point in the campaign, I think you could write a poll on Charmin and get better use out of it.

That's sort of where we're at with all the polling information out there.

Here's the bottom line, it's gonna be close and it's going to depend on who turns out to vote, and both sides have major machines working in the state right now to turn out their vote.

On the governor's race, that's gonna collapse.

That race will be a four-point or five-point race, remembering that one point in North Carolina is 55,000 votes.

So I think Stein wins, and he will probably win around 200,000 votes, so 4%, 4.5%.

But a 17-point lead is something that's probably make believe at this point in time.

He's ahead.

I don't argue with you on that.

I just doubt the margins.

- So a four to five-point win when it shows 17 and you see the media trends in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, will people argue that Josh Stein then under-performs, or is it always gonna be a four or five-point race, regardless of the polls?

- No, I think they'll argue that the Republicans came home and even though they may not necessarily like Mark Robinson personally or Donald Trump personally, they're gonna go in there and vote that Republican ballot.

- Joe, look out west, you had an event with a big time Republican campaign leader and you had a Democrat.

The Democrat focused on the big blue actual Buncombe County area and the Republican looked at all the counties that are red around it.

Does Helene change the trajectory of any of these races?

I know potentially yes, but will it?

- It's gotta absolutely change the turnout.

I mean, there will be some people that are simply not able to participate in the election as a result of what's happened in western North Carolina.

The question is, is it a significant enough number of people to affect the outcomes?

We know western North Carolina has a tendency to be a little bit more Republican in its performance.

The City of Asheville is sort of a blue dot among a red portion of the state.

As we alluded to before, I think some part of voter attitudes across the state will be influenced by the perceptions around how well we are responding to the needs in western North Carolina.

Both the federal government and the state government will be measured in some ways.

The interesting part, of course, will be, as Brad knows, that the turnout of who is actually inspired to show up and either vote in early voting in person or on Election Day.

We've seen a dramatic increase over the last several cycles of people that participate in early voting, and so, quite frankly, once that concludes, we probably will have a pretty good idea how the state's gonna go, 'cause such a significant portion of the voters will have elected.

But the thing Brooke said before we got started, we were talking about polling.

It's absolutely right, a poll's just a snapshot of a particular time.

Brad's right, the race is gonna consolidate a little bit.

Right now people are angry and a little frustrated at what they're hearing about Mark Robinson, and that's probably what those polling numbers reflect more than anything.

- But Brooke, Mr. Robinson's out there, meeting with emergency management officials in his role.

They're certainly welcoming him to those camps and areas where he can see what's going on, the same with Josh Stein, the same with Roy Cooper.

Now President Biden came out to Raleigh and did a few media events.

Does everyone look good right now?

Is everyone looking authoritative and in leadership or is it just photos?

- Well, I don't know.

I'm not there.

Y'know, sometimes we can, if we're in this world, it's easy to look at this in a more cynical, through a cynical lens, but my hope is that those aren't just photos.

But I do think that the media in North Carolina, to include Carolina Journal, but also other media outlets, have done their best to try to make sure that the reporting that they're doing is accurate, as well as holding these politicians accountable for "is this just a photo op or are you actually voting to make sure that relief funds go to these areas?"

That means showing up for these votes, and so I think that.

You know, the inclination is to accuse him of just having photo ops, but we'll see, I'd say.

In a few weeks, the proof is gonna be in the pudding.

- In this case, Travis, media will and can influence how people perceive their leaders.

And I've seen online people calling out national media.

"Why aren't you focusing on Hurricane Helene?"

And then here comes all the state media, going, "No, we've been here for 100 years.

Why are you so worried about CNN and Fox?"

How have the media done?

Do you think their coverage of it, just showing the floods and the devastation, how does that affect viewer sentiment?

Voter sentiment, I should say.

- The media I've consumed, I feel like, has kept me very well-informed from here in the Raleigh area of what's going on out West.

You know, I don't really watch 24-hour cable news.

I don't watch the network newscasts very much.

I rely on the internet, I rely on newspapers.

I rely on local media, which is what I would recommend, but people don't really take my recommendations.

[Joe laughs] - And the problem they got out there right now, in Swannanoa and Canton, for example.

I saw Zeb Smathers on TV yesterday.

They still don't have cell service, and so they're not able to watch on their phones, and the media consumption's local radio.

- You know, one of the interesting footnotes to this is Elon Musk made possible the use of Starlink, these low-altitude satellites that make wifi available, and will eventually all across the planet.

And because it's in the sky, the fact that the power lines and everything are knocked down don't impact it.

It'd be interesting to see how things are covered in the future when there isn't the possibility to eclipse people's ability to connect to the internet and share information.

- But I wanna say this, too, it's important that the media keep the public servants accountable.

You know, NBC News questioned the governor on Monday at the airport in Asheville, and he kinda bristled about the fact that they'd been slow in the process to respond.

And I told Joe earlier in the week, you know, "If Jim Hunt was governor, Jim Hunt would've gone down to Fort Bragg and Lejeune, and gotten 200 massive trucks and loaded 'em up and led the convoy."

And it's just his personal style of how he leads and how he governs.

So you have to look at that, too, on how the government officials and the bureaucrats are executing what they need to do to help those folks.

- Do you fear that the media may back off of this story once it gets a little old and viewers start wanting to move on to other things, especially outside of North Carolina?

We will be embracing this story for the foreseeable future.

- You'll get what you pay attention to.

And if viewers, if readers pay attention to a story, they're gonna get more of that.

I can promise you that because, for the first time, you know, 15, 20 years ago when the internet started being a big thing in the media, we could tell what you wanted.

And, unfortunately, we gave it to you.

I would argue you didn't want the right things all the time.

I think you make a great point about accountability being a really important job of what the media does going forward.

As the legislature goes into session, I think next Wednesday, gonna have a lot of eyes on that, as it should be.

As Congress decides on disaster legislation, a lot of eyes on that, as it should be.

And then it'll be a little bit slower as that is all implemented.

There are not as many people in the world of journalism that do that work, that dig into how it's going, but they all have phones and they all have email addresses.

And I would just encourage people in Western North Carolina, see something, say something.

Just don't assume that the media knows something and that they're ignoring it.

Call people's attention to it.

And I promise you, you won't get heard every time, but you will get heard eventually.

- You know, I'm talking to a reporter on Twitter and she says, "Hey, I'm only on Starlink a few hours, gotta shut this generator down, but we do have internet when the generator's running."

So now it's a tactical deployment, cell service and online service.

Starlink, whether you like Elon or not, [Joe laughs] he's got people connected.

Last topic.

It's a challenging week for our North Carolina public school leaders.

Brooke.

A new report showing 23 districts low-performing, with 736 individual schools being low performers.

These grades reflect both student testing scores and student improvement year over year.

26% of Black and Hispanic students are proficient in math.

30% proficient in reading.

Other states, Brooke, have similar grades, but their grading system results in fewer schools being publicly labeled as low performers.

Now let's layer on in that same meeting where people heard that, leaders heard that, they heard the western school districts are devastated.

And they don't really know what to do right now, back to online learning or just wait it out.

So what should we take of school performance and do schools get a break for several months while we sort out this issue?

- Yeah, well, certainly we need to kind of silo that off, the western part of the state.

And the first priority is just making sure recovery is conducted.

And so I think that talking about the typical topics that we cover when it comes to school grades is going to be set aside for the time being till we can actually just get kids back in school.

But I do think we should feel very uncomfortable about those scores and those grades that were coming out with that report card.

That's not okay.

And so it shows that there are significant failures, particularly among minority children, and we're not preparing them properly.

And so we can compare ourselves to other states all we want, but are North Carolinians comfortable with the academic success of these students?

Are they prepared?

And the studies are showing they're not.

- Joe, how do we handle this in public policy?

With your experience working in cabinets, do we divide and conquer this challenge?

- Boy, I tell you, I'm thinking about the future, the near-term future.

We definitely have a new governor next year, and we definitely have a first-term superintendent of public instruction.

We very likely have a Republican majority of the general assembly, maybe super majorities both chambers, maybe not.

And so how public policy is framed around education issues will be, in all likelihood, an incredibly hot potato, would be my thoughts.

But we've got to do something to make sure that the quality of public education in this state is as good as it possibly can be.

- Last word, Brad.

30 seconds.

Will politicians look backward and blame Republicans for votes this summer as they look ahead and need funding for these issues?

- No, I don't think so.

And I don't think it's fair to make it a partisan issue.

Clearly our public schools are struggling, and that is failing our children, that is failing our state for future generations.

- Excellent last word, Brad.

Thank you, Joe, Brooke.

Travis, welcome to "State Lines."

We'll have you on time and time again.

And most importantly, folks, thank you for watching "State lines."

You're making us a popular show on public media and on YouTube.

Email your opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I'll read them.

See you next time.

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