- [Kelly] State health officials say Medicaid expansion is now delayed in North Carolina.

And does a sitting state Supreme Court Associate Justice have First Amendment protections to make comments about her court and her colleagues?

This is "State Lines."

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[upbeat music continues] ♪ - Hello again, everyone.

I'm Kelly McCullen, welcome to "State Lines."

Joining me on today's panel is NCFree's Anna Beavon Gravely, Senator Natalie Murdock of Chatham and Durham Counties, Senator Amy Galey of Alamance and Randolph Counties, and WUNC Reporter Colin Campbell there in chair four.

Hello everyone.

- Hello.

- Good morning.

- And we're here at the holiday.

Fall is here, fall is here.

- False fall.

- False fall.

- Well, until next week.

- Yeah.

- Until the weather broke.

- Yeah.

- Lets give it some credit.

- You know what's not here is a state budget.

Senators, no state budget.

And because of that, North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services says Medicaid expansion is now delayed.

House and Senate Republican leaders are signaling that they will have a budget deal in the next two weeks or so.

But that would leave health officials with three weeks to launch expanded Medicaid services by their own October 1st deadline.

DHHS Secretary Cody Kinsley announced the October 1st launch goal this summer, Anna Beavon.

And we can talk about the budget.

And every week we ask, where is it?

And then there's this, where Secretary Kinsley, he went out there, what, in July.

And we talked about would you do that to Republican leaders?

And guess what?

October 1st will be here, and there will not be Medicaid.

- Well, today is the deadline to be able to make that October 1st deadline for DHHS.

This has been telegraphed for a couple of weeks now, as soon as we heard from leadership that the budget was gonna be delayed again.

I think that this expansion of Medicaid and implementation of Medicaid expansion is, we're looking at a December 1st at the earliest, but more than likely, a 2024 start.

- [Kelly] All right, Senator Murdock, Democrats have gone over 10 years without Medicaid expansion.

What's an extra two to three months?

- Honestly, an extra two to three months is not okay.

I double checked with Secretary Kinsley.

And some 9,000 folks a month are losing their health insurance if we don't continue to move forward.

Over 18,000 have already been kicked off.

And we continue to lose out on millions of dollars each month that we don't expand Medicaid.

So folks are having to put off their medical procedures.

I've been in that position before, it's not fun.

And it's been long enough.

And I wish we could have just moved forward with Medicaid expansion separately from the budget, so that we would've already done this.

- Senator, why was it important for Republicans to keep Medicaid expansion tied to an approved and ratified state budget law?

- Because it's an appropriation.

And the appropriations go through the state budget.

And the state budget is the appropriation for the whole state, for everything.

And that's why it takes so long to put it together.

You know, it's billions of dollars that actually get appropriated down to the $25,000 level for certain grants and things.

And not just one, but a lot of 'em.

So there's checking, double checking, making sure that things are entered properly, as who's gonna get the money, and trying to make sure that there's not a lot of technical corrections later.

So I think that making sure that we have a budget that is well thought out comprehensively, and doesn't have mistakes in it, I think that's the responsible thing that has to be done.

- Why couldn't a budget be passed by June 30th, like in the quote old days?

And what is dragging it, not dragging it, but delaying it through say middle of September, what does that do in terms of the refinement process of a budget bill?

'Cause folks are waiting on this, a lot of money at play.

- Certainly, I think Senator Berger said back in maybe May that he hoped to have the budget finished by June 15th, so it would be done by June 30th.

I think that that was the aspiration of the Senate leadership, for sure.

And it just hasn't worked out for different reasons, which is unfortunate.

But it's good to have a goal even if you don't accomplish that goal and have something to work toward.

I think that my understanding is that when the Democrats were in charge, that the budget also took a long time, and wasn't generally done before June 30th either.

So I think it's less a nature of party function, and much more a nature that when you're writing a budget for a state and economy as big as North Carolinas', it's just a giant job.

- Well, Colin, Democrats had a huge hack back in those days.

They would stop the clock at 11:59 p.m. - Yeah.

- June 30th.

- Republiccans have not been able to figure out how to stop time, I guess, so.

- I mean, Democrats stopped time and passed a budget on June 30th every year, whether it was by Christmas or not.

However, comedy aside, it's not a laughing matter.

It's what, $28 billion at play here, lots of negotiations.

And if you're a Republican, I would think you would expect Republicans to be a little bit more in sync on writing a budget.

- Yeah, I mean that's the challenge.

And what's interesting about this stalemate is the big ticket items, the state employee raises, tax cuts, have largely been resolved.

They haven't announced what the resolution is.

But they've said those issues been resolved.

And apparently a lot of what's remaining to go is some of these little issues.

And I think that's where it gets tricky because you know, do you fund a sewer system in Lincoln County, or do you fund a new fire station in Union County?

And there's a lot of one-time money out there through the budget surplus, through federal funding that they've gotta figure out.

And that's why everyone's looking to sort of help out their district.

And so there's not necessarily a quick resolution to some of those issues.

- Is there any tone in the business community about what the expectations are for the state budget, in relation to the economic outlook for North Carolina?

- Yeah, actually, one thing you said, I'm gonna bypass what you just asked me and go back to what you said previously, about how we think that because we have Republicans in the majority, or super majority in the House and the Senate, that they're gonna be a lot of agreement.

It should be a lot easier for them to pull together a budget.

We've actually seen for many years that that's just not true.

There are a lot of differences when it comes to how much allocation goes to specific projects.

And that is largely what they're talking about right now.

They're down to a handful of issues, to really hammer out the differences between those big projects.

And so certainly for sure, the business community is paying attention to those larger projects, because many of them are impacted greatly by that allocation.

- All right, well next topic will be coming outta the North Carolina Supreme Court, where Associate Justice Anita Earls is fighting back against the State Ethics Board that is reviewing her public comments.

An ethics board is reviewing Justice Earl's public statement she's made about alleged racial bias in the courtroom.

- Justice Earls criticizes the courts for a lack of diversity, alleges implicit bias in her colleagues and has voiced opposition to the decommissioning of a task force that explored racial and gender inequities in the court system.

Justice Earls is arguing in court, she's protected by the First Amendment.

But the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission Spokesperson, Colin, from what I read, says, "The commission must investigate allegations of judicial misconduct."

If talking badly about your colleagues is misconduct and judicial misconduct, there's a lot of people in trouble.

- Yeah, I mean, of course, judges are elected, so inherently, a lot of them have, you know, sparred on the campaign trail in the past.

This comes down to a code of conduct issue for judges, they basically have this sort of vague requirement that they uphold public confidence and integrity of the court system.

And so, that's what this investigation centers on.

Now what is unusual about this is Justice Earls is taking what had previously been a very confidential process and deciding that she's very concerned about her free speech rights and wants to take that into a public forum, and in this case, a federal courtroom to try to block this investigation by the Judicial Standards Commission, there's a lot of partisanship involved in this too, the Judicial Standards Commission currently led by Republican Court of Appeals judges, there was already a fight over the leadership of the Judicial Standards Commission and the executive director was replaced about a dispute a year or so ago.

So there's a lot of partisanship in sort of how the court polices itself right now and that's what you're seeing here.

- And since you're the reporter on one of the stories covering this, just so I understand and people out there can understand this, she's making public comments, basically, is she complaining about the job, complaining about the workplace, the court operations, and as such, justices aren't supposed to say anything if they're unhappy, is that the?

- That's sort of the dispute is, how do you interpret that public confidence?

She's saying, "Look, I'm trying to address public confidence by addressing problems in the system that I think need to be fixed."

Whereas others are saying, you know, "You're making people view the courts as less than this, you know, unimpeachable, monolith that, you know, people hope that it is."

So that's what'll get, presumably, perhaps settled in this federal lawsuit.

- All right, Senator Murdock, I'll push this to you.

It's an interesting, it's certainly interesting to read this story, it sounds complicated and it sounds a little sticky if you will, a justice and First Amendment rights to say what she believes she should be saying publicly.

- Yes, well, I actually joined some other lawmakers in the General Assembly just this week, along with some civil rights activists and advocates, to say we do believe she has that First Amendment right, particularly, when she's citing reports that were generated from our own Solicitor General here in North Carolina.

So some of what she quoted and cited were reports that were actually paid for with taxpayer dollars, and particularly when it comes to lack of diversity, when you see, you know, when you don't have that reflection of all the diversity of our great state in the courts, particularly, when it comes to clerks, I think she has a right to sound that alarm.

And so, I'm supportive of what she's trying to do and she feels like this is her only recourse to try to shed more light on these issues.

- Was diversity a problem when the Democratic majority had control of the Supreme Court in 2022 and earlier?

- I will review the numbers, but it is my understanding that the numbers have gotten worse.

We are currently, or myself and some others, working with AOC to pull those specific numbers, but definitely, in the Solicitor General's report, even when it came to who argues in front of the court, and I also do have to highlight she is the only black woman on our state's Supreme Court.

And I believe that if that is her perspective and her view, again, she didn't say that any of her specific colleagues were guilty of anything, she's basically saying these are trends I'm seeing.

She also was concerned about the lack of implicit bias training, which she thinks that the judicial branch should still have access to implicit bias training.

- Senator Galey, this is classically set up for a Democrat versus Republican argument.

If you're not careful, you can fall into these camps.

But your take on it, this associate justice sees real problems, obviously isn't getting results, so she simply goes public in some key journals.

It's happened before in politics.

- I have a particular perspective since I'm an attorney and I'm an officer of the court and I'm aware of my professional rules of responsibility and what I'm supposed to say or not say about the court system.

Chief Justice, I mean, excuse me, Justice Earls has a particular position, a particular megaphone because she sits on the Supreme Court, and in my opinion, she's using that position to cast doubt on the very institution, which she's one of the leaders of.

I think that's why the Judicial Standards of Conduct prohibit that.

It leads to a perception that the court system overall is unfair.

If she has this private opinion, she is certainly entitled to them and certainly I think entitled to articulate those to advocates and to activists within her private realm.

But when she steps into the role of the person wearing the robe and makes statements that are clearly policy related, that is not appropriate.

Also, I think that if we're going to say, well, justices have their First Amendment rights, well, then, that would apply to Republicans too.

And I think that what she is saying, if it were found to be a valid argument then that opens up a huge Pandora's box for judges to start saying things that maybe they've been holding in for a long time.

Maybe Chief Justice Newby has a lot of opinions about the court and its operation from his perspective and the time that he's been on the court.

I don't think we've seen Chief's Justice Newby saying anything, reflecting on his time in the minority and his view, personal views, about the operation of the court.

And so, if we're going to open it up for Justice Earls, then the Republicans get their fair shot too, I don't think we want that.

As a Republican, as an officer of the court, I don't want that.

I want justices and judges to stay in their lane and be committed to justice for the people who are in their courtroom who approach them.

- Anna Beavon, we are electing justices on a partisan basis and judges, so politics is or are now in our court system, we'll stop for a grammar check there.

- Yeah.

- If someone has a legitimate gripe or a complaint and they go public with it, how do you separate the legitimacy of the complaint versus a partisan elected official not liking being a minority member on their court?

- Yeah, so I sort of view this from the lens of the judiciary is a completely different mode of operation.

Like it is wildly different than any other branch.

We saw that last summer with the Dobbs decision and the early leaking of the Dobbs decision and just how much that really created some unrest within the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court.

But when we moved to this particular circumstance, I do think that the complaints that she raised were already published.

Like, she was just adding her experience to them.

And so to add to your numbers, about 90% of the people who went before the court were white and 70% of them were men.

And so she's pulling out her experience from this report.

So it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Colin, she didn't make this statement ahead of this report.

This report was done a couple of months ago.

And it was a two-year report, over a course of two years.

And she's talking about clerks being 14 out of the 15 are white.

And so she's just bringing forth what she's experiencing.

And yes, there's gonna be some political element to it because as you said, she is elected.

But I do think it'll be interesting as this moves forward, she might find some allies on the right when it comes to free speech.

- Colin, as a story, most voters, North Carolinians, will follow the US Supreme Court, State Supreme Court.

Nice work on your part, but are you going to engage with 11 million North Carolinians about Supreme Court of North Carolina drama, politics?

- I think it's a hard sell even when they're on the ballot to convince the average North Carolina voter to pay attention to who the Supreme Court candidates are.

I do think this is sort of an interesting issue because a lot of times, when they don't speak out a lot, you're sort of limited to discussing specific cases and how they may have ruled.

This year, actually seeing Justice Earl's opinions.

Of course, most of these people, they're in eight-year terms, so it's gonna be a while before we see voters get to weigh in on how Chief Justice Newby, or Justice Earl has ruled on these cases and handled themselves in these sort of matters.

But generally speaking, yeah, I think it's a hard sell to get people to pay attention to the court system.

- Let's go up the state ballot to the gubernatorial race, where Governor Roy Cooper has now endorsed 2024 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein.

That came down this week.

Mr. Stein is our current attorney general and is the only Democrat in the 2024 Democratic primary.

They say Democratic State Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan who's leaving the court in September might be eyeing that Democratic Primary, Senator Murdock.

Mike Morgan coming off the bench, now he hasn't said anything.

- Yes, exactly.

[laughs] - Okay.

So Josh Stein's the most well-funded, he has no primary challenge, and the governor feel now's the time to endorse Mr. Stein.

This is all theory.

Why would he do that now?

- Well, myself included, the governor, along with 150 elected officials across the state, we have already endorsed Attorney General Josh Stein as governor.

He also was my boss many moons ago.

I served as his deputy communications director at the Department of Justice.

And I'm honestly not bothered by the timing.

The Attorney General has 22 years of history with Governor Cooper.

They are friends.

They, I believe, worked together at DOJ years ago as well.

You know, both were in the state senate.

So I think that he is making that endorsement, looking at Mark Robinson being the likely candidate in the general election.

And he's concerned about the future of North Carolina and believes that Josh Stein is the best person to uphold so many issues that will be on the ballot in 2024, from abortion rights to fully funding public education.

We talked about Medicaid expansion.

At one point the Lieutenant Governor said he hoped Medicaid expansion failed.

So I believe the governor feels that he has to speak up because there is so much at stake in 2024.

So I think that's why myself and so many others endorsed very early this cycle.

- Oh, very well said.

However, Mike Morgan as a Democratic Supreme Court Justice, what kind of candidate is he?

He's very well respected.

And this is in your family?

This is, these are Democrats.

I'm coming right back at you.

You can gimme all the pro Josh Stein you want, but Mike Morgan.

Well-tenured in North Carolina.

Law and order person.

Sounds a lot like Josh Stein.

- Yeah, well I would say, I mean, Justice Morgan is a friend, so I have no issue saying that, but Josh Stein has been campaigning for a very long time.

The first time the Attorney General reached out to me about him running for governor was November of last year.

So he has been working for a long time.

We know we have term limits.

We knew the governor couldn't run for reelection again.

It was no shock that the Attorney General was putting himself forward to run because I might add he's won twice in the last eight years, even with Donald Trump on the ballot.

And as you stated, we don't know exactly what Supreme Court Justice Morgan is gonna do quite yet, until he makes a formal announcement.

- Let's have fun, Senator Galey.

Mike Morgan enters the Democratic primary, so there could be someone there.

That is, I would say for most North Carolinians, I think Democrats would take a look at Justice Morgan very carefully, I would think.

Maybe I'm wrong, but.

- Polling shows that Josh Stein is underwater versus Mark Robinson at this point after, to Senator Murdock's point, his many, many, many years as an employee of the state and working in state government and living in Raleigh.

After his stellar education in the Northeast and getting two Ivy League degrees, Josh Stein is underwater to Mark Robinson who has an incredible life story coming up from severe poverty in a poor neighborhood in Greensboro, having a father who died and his mother had to go get a job.

He talks eloquently about all of that.

He, Mark Robinson connects with voters.

He connects with people in a way that I have not seen a candidate do in North Carolina.

- But Mike Morgan is a Supreme Court of justice.

Let's get, I wanna talk about Justice Morgan here.

- Thank you for helping me along there.

So I'm sure that I'm not the only person in the State of North Carolina who has noticed this.

And I feel confident that Justice Morgan would not have resigned his job if he is intending to embark on a journey to Blount Street without the encouragement of significant donors behind him, without this encouragement of a significant part of the Democratic Party behind him.

It shows me, the polling, plus the announcement shows me that there are deep fractures in certain parts of the Democratic Party that do not wanna see Mark Robinson become governor, and can see the appeal that he has to the mass people.

When you hear him talk, when you hear him tell his story, talk about his vision for North Carolina, it is very compelling.

- And I can see why the Democrats would be kinda grasping at this moment to find a candidate who can challenge that.

- Anna Beavon, you're gonna meet all these candidates sooner or later, you do a lot of campaign work, do a lot of great work.

This gets interesting now, a one person race, not as interesting as a two person race and probably not as much fun if you support Josh Stein.

And I can tell you these folks are speaking on behalf of their candidates very eloquently.

So you tell me, I hope you don't have a side in this debate, Mike Morgan as a possible candidate for the Democratic primary.

- Yeah, the Senator Galey made a really interesting point about the fracture that she sees.

And I think there's definitely something to that but I am just looking at the amount of money that Josh Stein has already raised.

He has 8.2 million cash on hand at this point and he's raised $11.2 million thus far.

To put that into context, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest in the entire election of 2020 raised $11.6 million.

And so, like, that's a lot of money that Josh Stein has already raised.

And so if he is going to come out and run and say, I'm gonna put my hat in the ring or name in the ring or whatever that cliche is that I'm gonna butcher, then he's gonna have to have a lot of significant money behind him quickly - Colin, the campaigns are heating up now as this rolls along.

Nothing may happen, something may happen with Justice Morgan.

Now does money talk?

Does money end this or do you think Justice Morgan, if he does run, sees a path to victory and what might that be?

- I mean, I think part of the reason you're probably hearing a lack of certainty on his part is before he wants to come out with a announcement, he's gotta line up some donors.

He's gotta understand that if he's gonna run, he's gotta have enough money behind him to sort of get in the ball game with Josh Stein which is why I actually think if Justice Morgan does run for another office, I think he's more likely to pick attorney general, there's currently no announced democratic candidate of note in that race.

Republican Congressman Dan Bishop is running, he's already raised a bunch of money, speaking of money.

And you know, if Morgan were to jump into that one, that gives some diversity to the Democrats slate of candidates at the top of the ballot.

But it also would be somebody who's pretty strong in fundraising against Dan Bishop.

- And I'll say that we, in previous shows, we've talked about campaign finance and how important early money is.

But we are talking about a lot of early money in all of these races so far and the need to have them and money doesn't guarantee you a winning slot, it does give you some opportunities to be able to tell your story better and before another candidate does.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, when you're trying to get out of a crowded primary, you really, really need a lot of money.

As someone who has worked on various statewide campaigns, you have to be on TV from Wilmington to Asheville and that is not cheap.

When it comes to radio, mail all of that.

And to the fractures of the Democratic party, I think the fact that currently Josh Stein is a front runner, I don't see a lot of fractures.

I think we're unified in wanting to beat Mark Robinson next November.

- I think if there weren't a fracture, then the governor would not have felt compelled to make his statement saying that he supports and endorses Josh Stein.

And we haven't seen, to my knowledge, a statement from Justice Morgan that he supports Josh Stein in running for governor.

I think that if there was not sort of the feeding of speculation, there's something substantive to feed on, then he would've put the end to it.

And I would also say that as far as resigning and then seeing if your donors come forward, no, no, no, no, that's not how it's gonna work.

You're gonna make sure that you've got some people of significant access to significant groups who are gonna support you before you give up that paycheck and very, very influential and powerful position.

- What happens to that Supreme Court seat when it's vacated?

- So the governor gets to appoint a replacement and knowing that Morgan was not gonna run for reelection, this will give the Democrats a little bit of an advantage to have somebody coming in there as an incumbent who can then run for that seat next year.

But as to who he appoints, we don't know yet.

- And one more quick piece, Justice Morgan would've aged out.

So had he run again, he would've aged out and he would not have been able to complete his term.

So do you have to add that as well.

- Do you think he would read the room like that?

Say 150 legislators and other Democratic leaders say, "Hey, Mr. Morgan, maybe attorney general, "I think you may win the prize at the end of this."

That sounds like a great race for attorney general.

- And also when it comes to fundraising, we've seen this before, there are times where you may jump into a race, see how your fundraising goes, it doesn't mean you're gonna file to actually run for that office.

- Senator Galey, what goes into it?

I think most sitting legislators think about running for statewide office, but in 30 seconds, what is the calculus that makes you think time to pull the trigger and go for it?

- Well, I haven't been in that position myself.

- [Kelly] Well, you can be.

- And I don't think it's gonna happen anytime in the next 12 months.

I'm happy in the Senate.

But I think that you would like to hear people approaching you from within your party, telling you, you would be great at that.

We will support you.

And you would say to them, "Can you bring some financial support with that?"

And they would say, "Yes."

- We're out of time.

Thank you, all of you for a great conversation.

I've learned a lot this show.

Thank you for watching folks.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll read every email, good, bad, and ugly.

I'm Kelly McCullen, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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