- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row," the State Supreme Court takes up voter ID and redistricting.

After a major storm, should North Carolina rethink how we rebuild at the coast and voters pivot to the GOP on key issues.

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 at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation Democratic State Senator, Graig Meyer.

Colin Campbell, Editor of the North Carolina Tribune and Radio Talk Show Host, Nick Craig.

Mitch, why do we begin with the latest from the State Supreme Court?

- The Supreme Court dealt with a couple of very important election-related issues on back-to-back days this week.

They took a rare trip outside of Raleigh and headed two hours east to the historic 1767 Chowan County Courthouse in Edenton.

And on Monday they dealt with the issue of the 2018 voter ID law, that has been struck down.

And then the next day they dealt with the election maps for State Senate and Congress that are still under controversy.

We have a set of maps that we're using for this year's election.

We also have a provision against voter ID.

So nothing that the Supreme Court was talking about this week, has anything to do with this year's election.

And in fact that's one of the reasons why there's already been four/three party line votes in both of these cases, because the Republicans on the Supreme Court, they make up the three, said to their democratic colleagues "Why are we even taking up these cases at this time?

"All it could do is cause voter confusion during this cycle, "because nothing that we decide is going to have any impact "on the next election."

But of course the Democratic justices said, "These are important issues.

"These are issues that we need to resolve "as quickly as possible."

There's also a political piece to this, because there are two seats on the state Supreme Court that are up for election this year.

Both of them are held by Democrats.

If Republicans win either of the seats the partisan majority flips from Democrat to Republican.

So there are a lot of political observers who say in both cases, voter ID and redistricting, the plaintiffs in the case, the ones who don't like what Republicans are doing, would like to see a ruling from the Supreme Court before it potentially flips from Democratic hands to Republican.

- Graig, what's the complaint about showing an ID when you vote?

Is it racially biased?

- I think voter ID has been shown to have bias against people who have less access to getting ID et cetera - [Mark] Against minorities?

- Sure, to to people of color, to low income people, to older people who might not have an ID, 'cause they're not driving anymore, et cetera.

And it is just an extra step in the way of your right to being able to cast your vote.

And I think in both of these cases, we already have rulings on these.

These hearings were about fairly technical pieces of what's going on in these laws.

The bigger picture question is whether the voter ID amendment is going to be struck down altogether.

A case - Great quote.

- that had a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year and is going back for one more hearing at the trial court.

- Nick, 34 states do have voter ID don't they?

- Yeah, well Georgia just passed, back in 2019, similar laws to what North Carolina has.

And I pulled this number out.

In the 2020 primary that just happened a few months ago.

1.9 million Georgia voters voted in the gubernatorial race.

That's up from 1.2 million in 2018, before that voter ID law came forward.

So the idea that it's necessarily suppressing voters I don't think the numbers are there to indicate that.

- Let me ask you, Colin how high are the stakes on redistricting and will they redistrict again after this next election?

- Well they definitely have to go back to- - [Mark] Draw new maps?

- redraw the congressionals, because the congressional maps we're running under this year are for this particular election only.

There's a big legal question, however, "Do they have the ability "to redraw the legislative districts again?"

House Speaker Tim Moore has told me, he thinks that they can, which if they have a majority or super majority, they're gonna try again to craft some more Republican-friendly districts than what they got out the court lawsuits this year.

But I've also heard legal interpretations that they don't think that these lines can get drawn again, between now and the next census in 2030.

- Mitch, wrap this up in about 40 seconds, my friend.

- One of the more interesting things about this voter ID case and I think it's something that Chief Justice Paul Newby brought out during the the oral argument, is the fact that the way our voter ID is written, no one actually has to have an ID to cast a ballot.

You can use the driver's license, which most people will or passport or a number of other IDs, but if you don't have an ID, you can sign a form saying that you faced a reasonable impediment.

And as the Chief Justice said to one of the lawyers who's against voter ID, "Wait a minute, isn't everyone still able to vote?

"How could this discriminate against anyone?"

- Okay, I wanna change gears.

Talk to you Nick.

NPR had a very interesting story about how we should rethink how we build after a storm at the North Carolina Coast.

- Yeah, well obviously I'm sure this came to light after the devastation that Ian caused across the western half of Florida over the last couple of weeks.

And this unfortunately comes up when these big storms happen.

So looking at Florida for a second, then we'll get to North Carolina, after hurricane Andrew hit the Miami area back in the nineties, they redid their building code almost exclusively.

So we saw a lot more structures do well during Hurricane Ian, but the question is, do we build in areas that are prone to hurricanes or not?

And looking at North Carolina, it's a tough thing to say.

East of 95, you've got that whole economy that is essentially built off of tourism based on the beach.

And beaches in North Carolina are owned by the state.

There's no private beaches and it's a huge economic driver.

The question is, the taxpayers are on the hook to do some of this rebuilding through FEMA aid and other things.

So it's a tough question, Mark.

Do you rebuild in areas that are prone to potential natural disasters?

- That's a great question.

Mitch, should the taxpayers be on the hook for beach re-nourishment?

- That's the big question.

I mean, I think one of the issues that would solve this very easily is if all of this were left up to the private owners of the property that's damaged.

People would be able to assess, "Does it make sense for us to continue to have this property "and to have new buildings on it, "if there's a likelihood "that it's gonna be struck down by hurricanes?"

Right now, basically if a building is demolished, you go back to the taxpayers, you go back to FEMA or to the State Department and say, "Okay, gimme my money "so I can rebuild exactly what I had before."

But if taxpayers are going to be on the hook.

There needs to be some serious discussion about how much of what we have at the coast would get rebuilt and how much of it do we just say, this can't happen again.

- Greg, are we overbuilt at the coast?

Are we developing too much?

- We're absolutely overbuilt on the coast, particularly on barrier islands that always have a tendency to shift and where we put money into re-nourishment rather than being realistic about you can't have a semi-permanent structure on a beach that shifts every time a storm comes through and literally every time a tide comes through we can build plenty of areas and plenty of housing close to the coast.

But when you're right up against water that's always receding, I'm with Mitch.

It's, that should be on you if you decide to build your house there, not the taxpayer.

- Colin, is insurances becoming problematic?

- You know, I think the rates are probably going up in the coastal areas and the challenge for the regulators in this state is to sort of balance the needs of massive insurance payouts that you get at the coast with the premiums that those of us who live inland pay, the premiums that those of us who maybe even live in a coastal area but live in a more less damaged prone coastal area are going to have to pay.

Are they gonna be subsidizing the people who chose to build in a place that they probably shouldn't have built?

- Jump back in here.

- I live about six miles from the beach and I have to pay those higher premiums too, I don't have waterfront property.

Beach Reid Urchman is a tough topic and if you're on the coast, you know, the economy according to a 2015 Duke study, 2.1 billion worth of the state's GDP came from what they called ocean counties, east of I-95, right on the ocean.

What are those economies gonna do if you don't have the beaches, the tourism that drive these towns?

Do you just cut off everything east of I-95?

That doesn't seem long term sustainable.

- Mitch, final thoughts, about 40 seconds.

- And I think that's probably the reason why this has not been decided.

This is the type of thing where you have the competing interests against each other, there is the interest in having that coastal economy that we all know of but also trying to protect the taxpayers from having to rebuild every time there's a storm.

If you look at the coast and the way those storms go, North Carolina is always going to be prone to being hit by hurricanes and it's something that we do need to resolve.

- Okay, I wanna talk about the midterms, I wanna talk politics, I wanna talk to you, my friend, Colin, about several new polls that have come out that have been problematic for President Biden.

- Yeah, you know, there's that sort of narrative at the national level over the summer that Democrats were seeing their numbers improve perhaps result of Roe v. Wade being overturned and several other factors, there's some polling out in the last week that may indicate the trend is now going the other direction.

Monmouth asked voters who they, which party they prefer to see- - That's an independent poll.

- Yeah, have control of Congress.

And back in August, the GOP was down seven points in that poll with more people saying they wanted Democrats in control of Congress, republicans are now up three points in that poll, Biden's approval rating has been sinking a bit, Quinnipiac, had him at 42% approval just three weeks ago, now he's down to 38%.

He's also got 38% approval in the the Monmouth poll.

A lot of big issues that voters are rating as their top issues are issues that Biden and Democrats don't necessarily get the best approval ratings on things like inflation, crime, elections, jobs and immigration, were some of the top ones in the Monmouth poll - Those are the top four, correct?

- Yeah.

Democrats did well on they're handling of COVID, Biden's handling of student loan debts but those were further down the list of priorities for voters, looking more at the state level- - Has abortion gone down as a top tier issue?

- It's not showing up in the top tier as much as it was.

I mean, I think for certain voters it's still a top issue but if you're looking at the overall electorate, it's not necessarily ranking in the top five in most of the polls that we're seeing.

When you look at the North Carolina level specifically, High Point University had a new poll out this week gauging some of the top issues here in this state, and those include school safety, education, inflation, jobs, healthcare and crime.

It's kind of a mixed bag of which party does better on each of those, republicans polled better for their potential handling of inflation and crime.

Democrats did better on healthcare and education.

So it's, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out and what issues are top of mind when we get to November.

- Greg, let me just ask you, you think people are engaged in this election right now?

- I think that and with all of this polling, particularly in the North Carolina polling, we just don't know because in North Carolina, the polling just tells you everything's close.

As Colin just laid out, there's areas where people want Democrats, areas where people want Republicans and the real question isn't which way is the electorate leaning, is who shows up to votes, which gets to your question, Mark.

- Intensity.

- Are people enthusiastic or not?

And so even if they- - Are they down on both parties?

- I think people are down on both parties right now and the question is what is gonna get people to come and so even if abortion isn't in the top five issues, if it's a big enough issue among the Democratic base to turn Democrats out, then Democrats get an advantage from that.

- You know, Mitch, what struck me about the Monument poll or maybe it was the Quinnipiac poll, was that over 50% don't think the Biden administration is competent.

- Yeah.

That is something that's bad news for President Biden and of course the Democratic Party, we know that the historical trend is that the first midterm for a new presidential administration tends to be bad for the President's party.

So that's one of the reasons why earlier this year, people were talking about a big red wave.

And then of course as things change during the course of the year and that Dobbs ruling that overturn Roe v. Wade, things seemed to shift a bit back toward the Democrats.

Now we seem to be seeing some signs that things are shifting back toward the Republicans, but it really will depend on what happens in the final weeks as people are actually casting their ballots.

And I think we're going to see in some races, very close races, we all in looking at legislative races and congressional races have to remember, these are all new districts because of redistricting.

So you can only look partly at history to determine what's gonna happen.

I think it's all very much up in the air.

- Well how problematic do you think, Nick, are rising gas prices for Democrats?

- They're incredibly problematic.

I talked to somebody this week and she, single mother and she said, I'm gonna try to get to the polls on election day, but it's gonna depend if my kids have sports and things like that.

So to, going back to the point of will people come out and get engaged, I think if gas is close to $4 a gallon in the state of North Carolina, that might make individuals more likely to show up to vote, Mark, I think these big important issues that are infecting day to day lives and those are gonna push people to vote.

- I see Beasley wants, and I think you wrote about it in the Tribune, she'd like more national support, wouldn't she?

- Yeah, absolutely, you know she's been not getting nearly as many million dollars in ads pushing her candidacy as Republican Ted Budd has.

In fact, the difference is something like 35 million spent on Budd to about 8 million on Beasley.

So they're pushing the national democratic, you know, money folks to really put more money here.

But there's a tendency to redirect that money to Senate races in other states where Democrats are playing defense.

So that's sort of the tension that Dems are facing at the national levels, where to put that.

- Okay guys, I wanna move on and talk about the.

- "Observer" article about inmate suicides.

They're on the rise in North Carolina.

- Yeah.

So this is a story that I think is not a partisan story at all.

But it should be of concern to everybody.

In this year, in North Carolina's prisons, we have had more inmate suicides than in previous years.

And so why is that happening?

There's been a little speculation.

One thing is that you're coming outta COVID, which is incredibly difficult on the prisons.

And you've just got people in a rough space in prisons, just like some people have been in a rough space coming outta COVID, outside of prisons.

Number two, we've got a vacancy rate for Corrections Officers in our prisons that in some places, gets close to 40 percent.

And so you just don't have as much supervision - - We have problem with recruitment, correct?

- It's hard to recruit those people.

It's hard to keep those people.

Those are tough jobs.

The rate of pay for those jobs are low.

And then the third thing that I think gets cited, is a lot of these suicides have happened when people are in solitary confinement.

And our prisons have actually done a really good job over the last few years of cracking down on drugs in the prisons.

And I wonder, as a social worker, what's happening here, and the link between people who are having addiction problems, but don't have access to addiction treatment.

They're in solitary confinement.

That's a pretty bad combination that can lead to really bad results for - - Colin, your thoughts.

- Yeah.

So I think that's the big challenge for our prison system, is how do you staff those, put the resources in to make sure that inmates have what they need.

There's a new Cabinet-level agency that's gonna roll out next year, separate from the Department of Public Safety.

So that'll put a little bit more attention from the governor's administration on trying to solve some of these problems.

There's an announcement in the last couple weeks that there are gonna be some signing bonuses for Correctional Officers.

Some referral bonuses, the sort of things, the private sector - They're doing that in the Army, too.

- Yeah, the private sector.

A lot of government agencies are doing that.

They tend to be slower than the private sector to get that stuff out the door.

But certainly, I think that's almost an essential, in order to fill a lot of those positions.

Otherwise, that vacancy rate is just gonna go up, and you're gonna see more problems.

- Mitch, what's been happening to the General Assembly in this regard?

- Well, the General Assembly has been looking at issues like this.

But one of the problems for folks dealing with the issues of corrections and prisons, is that this is not something that people pay as much attention to as education.

- It's under the radar.

- It's a little bit under the radar, and to some extent people say, "Well, heck, these are prisoners.

Why should we care about them as much as we care about our kids, and what's happening with tax rates?"

But it is an important thing.

I mean, most of the folks who are in the prison system are eventually going to get out of the prison system.

And if they enter with mental health problems that get worse because they're in solitary confinement, that's not gonna be good news for us.

The fact that we do have, as Colin mentioned, a new department that's gonna be focusing specifically - - Is that a good thing?

- On adult correction, probably - - Those are more bureaucracy.

- Well, it probably is.

This was one of the outcomes of something that happened years ago, where we had several different correction or law-enforcement related entities.

Stuck 'em together in one department, and then eventually, people decided, "No, they all shouldn't have been in one department.

Let's separate them again."

Because for years and years, we had a Department of Correction.

Now we'll have this new Department of Adult Correction that will focus specifically on the issues of these prisoners.

That's probably - - Seems like less bureaucracy.

Like you're separating out the department so there's less bureaucracy and it's the same budget, so it's not like it's a bunch more.

- Put this in context my friend.

- Well, I think the context is, would your business be able to operate with losing 40 percent of its staff?

Of course not.

You can't operate at full capacity.

And I think that's what this comes down to, is a staffing issue.

And it's not only suicide rates.

The rate of fights that end in homicides, or murders has skyrocketed in North Carolina over the last couple of years as well.

All of that I think comes down to staffing.

Pay and morale for the correction facilities.

There's a lot of work to be done there.

- Okay.

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

- We have some good news, and some bad news about reading scores among students in North Carolina's public schools.

The numbers were up last year.

If you look at proficiency, it was 63 percent in the first grade, 57 percent in the second grade, 47 percent in the third.

Bad news is that it kind of goes down from grade to grade.

But all of those numbers are up from the previous year, when they were in the thirties and the forties.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that these numbers are still lower than they were in 2019, before the pandemic.

The Director of the Department of Public Instructions Office of Early Learning says the students missed out on developing important skills when so much of class was taking place without in-person instruction.

So we are still seeing the impacts of COVID-19.

And my guess is, we're gonna be seeing 'em for a while to come.

- Greg, we had a lot of conversation in the last few years about chemicals in our water.

From coal ash to GenX, and PFAS.

Places where industrial chemicals are getting spilled in the water - - We've talked about it a lot here.

- A lot.

The Department of Environmental Quality issued a new permit for the Chemours facility in Fayetteville, that had been the one that had polluted the Cape Fear River.

And it is the tightest, most strict chemical permitting that has ever been done in the state of North Carolina.

So that's a new standard for the entire country.

You can continue to make chemicals, but you gotta keep our water clean.

- Colin.

- So another "where do they live" political drama in one of the congressional races this week.

State senator Jeff Jackson, who's a Democrat running for Congress down in the Charlotte area, is accusing his Republican opponent, Pat Harrigan, of not actually living in the district, and then voting in the city of Charlotte in the apartment where he doesn't intend to live permanently.

So that'll be an interesting debate.

Of course, the weird thing about that in North Carolina.

You don't have to live in a congressional district to run.

- Right, do people really care about that, Colin?

- That's the question.

Is this just another sort of distraction?

- I mean, what I used to hear in the business, people would have Walter Jones didn't live in the district first time he ran.

- Yeah.

So this is more of an issue about did he fraudulently vote where he wasn't supposed to?

And so we'll see where that plays out.

We seem to get these once a month and it's very rare that they're successful challenges.

But it does add some additional flavor to the debate, for sure.

- Nick.

- As we approach the midterm-elections here in North Carolina, State Senator Michael Lee, who's the seventh district senator down in New Hanover County.

He's actually filed a defamation lawsuit against his opponent, Marcia Morgan.

We know political ads can get dirty, but this is specifically calling out his full-time job.

As many legislators, he has another job on the side.

And he lobbies for developers in front of city councils, for zoning and things of that nature.

The ad running against him claims he used his position as a state senator to get zoning for his clients.

He's suing Marcia Morgan in that, and he says it's defaming not only him, but his business partners and his whole company.

- We're starting to see more of that now.

People calling other people on the carpet, like Attorney General Stein's 2020 campaign was called on a carpet on network - - Yeah, absolutely!

And I think it brings forward an interesting question of how far can you push the line in political advertising before you're actually affecting somebody?

Their livelihood and their business, potentially.

- This Chemours thing's a big deal, isn't it?

- It's a huge deal.

I mean, water quality is something that when you do poll it, people all care about their water quality.

And so setting up a new regulatory framework for brand new chemicals that we really don't know what's in them, what impact they'll have, keeps people safe.

- You folks down in Wilmington talking a lot about that?

- Oh absolutely.

I mean, Gen X is one of those issues where no matter where you go, you can bring up Gen X and everybody wants to hear about it.

Unfortunately, the slow wheels of justice have taken forever to get to a portion where there's actually a resolution here.

- Okay, let's go to the lightning round.

Mitch, who's up and who's down this week?

- Who's up?

This is a bad who's up though.

It's the number of people who are having a hard time paying their energy bills.

According to some numbers from the US Census Bureau, 17% of people in North Carolina had at least one month where they couldn't afford to pay their energy bill.

27% of them gave up something else like food or medicine to pay for their energy bill and 16% kept their homes at some unsafe temperature because of the high cost of energy.

My down?

OPEC oil production, OPEC deciding to cut the production by 2 million barrels, which of course ties the Saudis even more to some of our enemies and will probably mean bad news for Democrats if we have higher prices at the pump just as people are going to the polls.

- Well, I see President Bidens reaching out to Venezuela, right?

- Yeah, he certainly has tried to step up production in other places, and that of course has led to some more criticism of him from some folks who say, "Why are you turning to the dictator in Venezuela to deal with this issue?"

- Greg?

- Who's up is Governor Cooper up on the airwaves and up in the polls.

He's really the most popular politician in North Carolina right now, polling in the mid fifties but he's on every single television ad you see for a Democratic legislative candidate, a role he'd not been really willing to play in previous elections 'cause he didn't want to tick off the Republican- - Branding, Branding.

- Yep.

- Okay.

- Who's down is those people texting us for donations.

If you watch this show, you probably get text for donations.

I'm through with them.

I'm sick of 'em.

I don't send 'em for my campaign.

I wish everybody would stop.

[panelists chuckling] - Colin?

- Who's up this week.

Speaking of the governor, the cost of keeping up and renovating, repairing the governor's mansion.

"North State Journal" had a story this week that said under Cooper's administration they spent two and a half million Dollars on repairs.

Haven't said exactly what's that for.

So we're still- - That the mansion?.

- Yeah, so we're trying to figure out, you know is he get a new roof or a new bathroom?

Hopefully we'll get more details on that.

- It's great [indistinct] - That's, yeah, absolutely.

[panelists chuckle] Down this week, State Senator Don Davis, who's running for a congressional seat up in Northeastern, North Carolina national democratic groups are starting to spend money on advertising promoting his campaign, which is an indication, a district that he seemed favored to win, might be more competitive than we might have initially thought, and Republicans might have a better shot there.

- What's your view on the most competitive congressional race in North Carolina?

- I think the most competitive is still the sort of southern end of the triangle with Democrat Wiley Nickel and Republican Bo Heinz, that seems to be the most toss up, but that Don Davis/Sandy Smith race is probably Number 2 in terms of a competitive- - We seen any numbers on Heinz' race?

- I haven't, there hasn't really been much polling on that.

At least that's been released publicly so it's kind of hard to tell - Nick?

- Who up, baseball is up.

Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run this season breaking the American League record and that ball is offered, [chuckles] somebody offered 2 million dollars, a private collector.

- I go back so far that I remember when Maris hit 61- - So he hit his 62nd and a private collector offered six, uh, $2 million for the baseball.

There's been a whole bunch of questions about the IRS implications for this, for the individual who caught the ball.

So that's who's up.

Who's down is the human race and mankind, as Tesla has unveiled their humanoid robot called Optimus.

During Elon Musk's press release for this the robot was dancing around on stage, picking up boxes.

I guess maybe we'll be all replaced one day.

- Mark, can I get one?

Yeah, as I say they can do the show, you and I can just do political talk.

- Headline next week, Mitch?

- This is an interesting one.

Andy Warhol, Prince and the US Supreme Court.

Next week, the US Supreme Court takes up an interesting case about when a piece of art becomes transformative and goes beyond the original that it was copied from.

So it'll be interesting to watch.

- Headline next week, my friend?

- As we get closer to the elections there's gonna be speculation about the next election and I think there's gonna be speculation about what's Thom Tillis doing?

Is he running for Governor?

But Colin's gonna quote me saying I think he's running for president.

- You think he could get the nomination in the Republican party?

- I think Thom Tillis is positioning himself to try to be one of the middle of the road Republicans - Iffy.

Okay, go ahead quickly.

- My headline next week, mailboxes across the state overflow with negative campaign mailers from a bunch of dark money groups.

- Headline next week- - I'll jump off that.

It's North Carolina voters start locking in one week before early voting starts.

- Okay, you guys, that's a great job, gents.

That's it for us.

Thanks for watching.

Hope to see you next week on "Front Row."

Have a great weekend.

[dramatic music] ♪ - [Voiceover] 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 at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪