- President Trump campaigns for Michael Whatley.

We review the property tax cap amendment.

And the state health plan brings in multiple rural hospitals.

This is State Lines.

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♪ - Welcome back to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen, joining me today, some great friends here in the media.

Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observer joins us.

Hi, Dawn.

- Hello.

- Former North Carolina Attorney General and former Secretary of State Rufus Edmisten.

Mr.

Rufus, good to have you back.

- Good morning.

Glad to be with my friend, Henry the Hand.

- And we put him with safe company.

His first appearance, the president of IBX Media, Henry Hinton, all the way from eastern North Carolina, straight down 64.

Hello, sir.

How are you?

- Good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- And next to him, well, a little younger.

In the radio career, but a dynamite journalist, Colin Campbell of WUNC News.

How are you?

- Hey.

- Very short, very quick.

Well, got a lot to talk about.

Let's start with the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

It upheld a law transferring authority to appoint the state board of elections members away from Governor Josh Stein and to state auditor Dave Boliek.

It was a two-one decision that reverses a lower court ruling that rejected that transfer.

The majority says the change did not and does not violate the state constitution's separation of powers provision.

It said future separations of powers cases need to be analyzed individually.

But the elections board, not designed to reflect political preferences of the official making the appointments.

Ah, help me sort through this.

So it's a partisan process now, confirmed, but partisanship may not play as big a role or should not play a role in appointments to the elections board.

- There was partisanship before, I guess, depending on who was in the executive mansion and who got to appoint the majority.

What was striking to me about this, this has been almost two years since the legislature passed this, overrode a veto from former Governor Roy Cooper to take this power away from then incoming Governor Josh Stein, who's been in office for almost two years now.

And this may have been the loudest, the most significant as far as taking gubernatorial powers away that the Republican controlled legislature has done for the governor.

But there's been sort of a chip, chip, chip, I guess, since then, chipping away, including things in the budget this year of appointment power from the governor and moving it to somebody else.

So this has been a done deal.

State Auditor Dave Boliek has already had these appointments.

But now it's gone like that one extra step with Court of Appeals.

My colleague Kyle Ingram has written a lot about this.

- Rufus?

- Well, an old Sam Irvin separation of powers guy, I've studied that proposition.

You have to go back in history of North Carolina and realize that the founding fathers of North Carolina did not design a pure separation of powers.

They gave more weight to the legislature always.

And if the legislature wanted to make Kelly the director of the State Board of Elections, they could do so.

So I'm not surprised.

I don't think it will survive any appeal.

It's very, very broad power that the legislature has in North Carolina.

And as I say, it's unlimited.

- Henry?

- It's about what's in the Constitution.

And I've read the language in the Constitution, and it seems murky at best to me.

And that's why we have lawsuits.

And let's remember, this all started with McCrory suing his own party.

The Democrat lawyers for Governor Stein said it's too political.

But I mean, let's be honest about it.

The most political position in the state of North Carolina is the governor's office, and that is political.

You can't take the politics out of it.

So yeah.

- Colin, I saw a tweet, maybe from Matt Mercer, formerly of North State Journal, NCGOP, wrote a tweet.

I think it was him that said, hey, taking away powers from executive branch type officials, it's not a big deal, because in '88, Democrats stripped a Republican lieutenant governor and had no qualms doing so.

- Yeah, there's a lot of that.

And then there's a question, I mean, I think the most interesting question about this lawsuit was if it's an executive branch power, does that mean the governor, or does that mean anybody on the council of the state who's elected statewide?

And this ruling, as I read through it, it was two to one.

It was on party lines within the Court of Appeals, was basically saying that it would be potentially violating the separation of powers if you took the elections board and gave it to the legislature.

And since you gave it to the state auditor, who's elected statewide, he's technically part of the executive branch.

So the interesting fallout of this to me, because the Supreme Court ultimately upholds this, is this is essentially saying the legislature can parcel it out, so you could see a couple years down the road, maybe a Democrat takes the state auditor's office in a few years.

You could then maybe move elections to the agriculture commissioner, somebody else who's on the council of the state, and it's still considered an executive power to appoint that board.

- Dawn, does a ruling like this calm the political waters for one side wanting the election integrity and the other side saying this causes chaos?

- I wouldn't say it calms anything.

It probably fires up various constituencies, you know, because like the elections have consequences line, obviously elections do, but it's the margin of majorities in the legislature too.

And then also some of these things that happened, yes, Cooper had vetoed this bill and was overridden, but there are other things that have gotten through because budget writers will put it in a big budget document with raises and the governor has to balance, do you let that become law because you want everything else in it versus what you don't like in it and where is the line, what's worth fighting over?

So it is definitely another partisan fight.

- Kelly, I would have to add that having run 11 times statewide, we have had good election supervision over the years.

I've seen no partisanship that went to the level of being obnoxious.

So I think we've done very well in North Carolina and most states, as you well know, the secretary of state handles elections.

So we've done very well in our elections in North Carolina.

- Henry, this is a lot of responsibility being shifted onto the state auditor who happens to be Dave Boliek right now.

He didn't have to receive this power, they didn't have to give it to him.

So for someone looking forward to '28 or '32, what does this do for a potential gubernatorial candidate to have all this laying right on his desk?

- Well, I think Dave Boliek wants to run for governor.

I joke with him about it all the time and he doesn't refute it.

I think the leaders in the Republican Party are trying to set Dave up to run for governor.

I talked to Brad Briner this week, the state treasurer who I think would be a great candidate.

Brad told me he has no interest in being governor.

So I think Dave is the guy that they're queuing up for this.

And one of the arguments, again, from the lawyers from the governor was this is the only state in the country that the auditor is going to make appointments to the Board of Elections.

But the governor doesn't make the appointment to the Board of Elections in most other states either.

It's usually the secretary of state, which used to be.

- And ultimately, I mean, this comes down to party lines because you've got the state Board of Elections and all 100 county Board of Elections, the people are being nominated by the two political parties.

And in a state where we've got 40% of people unaffiliated, that's increasingly sort of looking like the two parties getting to be the referees, regardless of whether the final appointment is coming from the auditor or the governor or somebody else.

- Next topic involves Donald Trump.

The president campaigned in North Carolina for Republican US Senate nominee Michael Whatley.

It happened this week.

It was Mr.

Trump's first campaign rally since the Republican Party's midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.

Michael Whatley's leaning on Trump and national Republican donors as he campaigns against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

Henry, it made news.

The speech was certainly very, very interesting for Mr.

Trump.

What did Mr.

Trump do for Michael Whatley?

And if, let's start with Whatley, we'll work down to Buckhout, Jennifer Balcom, others running for office.

- You know, Republican candidates are used to having Trump come to North Carolina and give him a big bump.

I'm really wondering if that's gonna be the case this time.

My personal feeling is, I watched that thing from Gastonia the other night, and to me, the messaging is off this time because Trump keeps speaking to his own people.

You know, the people who are gonna make the decision on this in all elections in North Carolina now are independent voters.

And I didn't hear anything in that speech that I thought spoke to independent voters.

He was talking about how great the economy was, we're gonna end the war, but we're gonna wait 'til right after the election.

And you know, if the economy's great, the voters don't feel like it.

They're paying $4.50 a gallon for gas, $6.25 for diesel.

They're paying more at the grocery store.

It looks to me like people are now paying attention.

I was telling you earlier, I think, I've felt a shift in this whole thing in the last couple of weeks.

The Carolina Journal poll came out this week.

Has Whatley down 15 points?

And that, I mean, you can't say that's a left-leaning poll.

There was a left-leaning poll, that poll that came out earlier in the week that was tied to the Progressive Policy Institute.

Had him down 11.

The ECU poll, which was done two weeks ago, has Whatley down seven.

You know, the issue is, is Trump helping this time?

The voters said, 57% of the voters in that Carolina Journal poll said they don't think Trump's doing a good job.

So you know, I don't know where this is going.

- Rufus, when it comes to presidential visits to the state in support of statewide candidates, 1984, sir, Jim Martin had Ronald Reagan come to town, and you had an option of going with Walter Mondale.

When is it a great idea to have the president support you, and when do you think, twice?

- Oh, you're bringing back a nightmare in 1984.

I remember Mondale and Ferraro, don't forget that, came to North Carolina, and all the candidates, including my friend Jim Graham, Mondale would be in Wilmington, and all the rest of them would be up in Asheville, as far as they could get.

And I have some Republican friends, Henry, who are just praying that Trump will not endorse them on the local level, 'cause they're scared to death of him.

And I think people are just getting weary.

They're weary of this nonsensical talk he makes.

They're weary of the fibs.

I'm using a kind word.

And if I were a Republican running, I would hope that Trump would be in Mar-a-Lago hosting somebody.

- Dawn, I do wanna say, but candidates did share the stage with Mr.

Trump.

A few candidates I've interviewed for our candidate series are proud of his accomplishments, proud that he's in the office right now, and they say that his policies need time to take effect.

- Jennifer Balcom, I believe, was on stage, I think, Laurie Buckhout.

They are hoping that the base who still supports Trump, or Trump's base that still supports him, will help them out.

That's the only thing I can guess.

Also, maybe they don't wanna cross Trump and be a target.

They don't want any sort of negative attention on them for those reasons from him, but there's also potentially a lot of negative attention on them because people that are not happy with Trump at all, Republican voters who maybe liked him last time don't like him anymore and are not happy to usher in any more of his supporters.

I think we're gonna see a fair amount of backlash in the midterms now that might play out differently depending on the level of government of the election.

- The media coverage, that was a national event.

The Trump speech was nationally broadcast.

I don't think locals carried it.

So this dynamic, a 15-point race, if you believe Carolina Journal, with national attention, very limited access, my opinion is very little limited access from state and local media.

Is this part of the equation of why we're seeing a race shape up the way it is?

- I think it's become such a national race.

I mean, when you've got campaigns that have hundreds of millions of dollars between themselves and their outside group allies to spend on advertising, there's very little advantage to the risk of sitting down with local media.

I can get interviews with the state Supreme Court candidates.

I can't get interviews with the US Senate candidates, and that goes for TV stations, newspapers, and others around the state.

So you see all this focus on sort of national issues.

You've got Trump talking about crime and sort of sticking with some of the same messages that have worked for him in the past.

You've got local issues like data centers that aren't really bubbling up into this race.

Cooper's focused on affordability.

The race is kind of all over the place, and there's not really a coherent message, a coherent debate that centers on North Carolina issues at this point.

- Henry, there are Republican candidates.

They're tough to reach.

They're tough to book for interviews.

I don't know what you're doing with your morning show.

Should candidates look more locally?

Can a 15-point polling gap be shortened with ads?

Can the gap be closed with national advertising and appearances on Fox, Newsmax, and anywhere else?

- I'm a conservative talk show host, so I can get Republicans to come on the show.

I cannot get Democrats.

Don Davis won't come on my show.

Laurie Buckhout's gonna be on my show Monday.

The question is, Laurie's in a new district, District 1, Eastern North Carolina, first congressional district.

Now, they redistricted, of course, and they brought in Craven and Carteret County, where the Republican voters are, and so it's set up for a Republican to win it.

I think it's anywhere from a plus four, R plus four to plus six, something like that.

And so, you know, to me, that's gonna be a real bellwether test of whether Trump helps or is hurting in this particular case.

- He flew into Gastonia for that rally with the big plane.

He does this in Smithfield or Greenville in Eastern North Carolina.

Does that speech hit differently?

- Probably so.

I hope so, because again, you know, it's kinda like things we've heard from Democrat people in the past.

You know, don't believe your lying eyes.

The economy's great.

The war's gonna be over soon, and we keep hearing that.

And you know, I just saw a poll this morning, national poll.

71% of people in the country don't believe Trump has a plan to end the war.

So you know, that's what's on everybody's mind, and that's what he needs to be speaking to.

- A lot of items on the '26 midterm ballot, but let's take a closer look at the constitutional amendments that you'll find there.

This week, we're gonna focus on one of them.

The proposal to possibly limit property tax increases by local government.

So if you live in North Carolina, all 100 counties decide this question, and if approved.

The amendment would require the General Assembly to pass future laws limiting how much cities, counties, towns, special districts, any other local government property taxing authorities limit their ability to increase taxes.

The amendment itself does not specify numerical cap formula or any tax exceptions.

Lawmakers would set those details in future legislation out of Raleigh.

The ballot question on your ballot will read, "Constitutional amendment requiring limits on property tax increases by local governments."

Looks like a yes or no, Rufus.

Right now, polling suggests 80% of people say, if you ask them, they like the idea.

- Why wouldn't you say yes?

Who wants to have extra taxes?

I found nobody recently that wants to.

But let's look again.

I'm one who believes you should amend the Constitution sparingly.

Now this may be a good point, but constitutions are not made to go on what would be the general ballot.

And I believe, Henry, that the legislature, if they wished, could set the cap and do it without a constitutional amendment.

It's a measure to rev people up, and that happens all the time.

So I'm against it.

- I think this amendment has some real issues.

Number one, have you read it?

It's very vague.

It doesn't speak to revaluation.

It doesn't speak to capping any percentages.

It just speaks to limiting how much revenue a municipality can bring in, which is, I mean, what does that mean?

And, you know, we've got municipalities that need money.

I mean, the state auditor just, we know about Rocky Mount, the state auditor just came out and said, "Greensboro's got problems."

So I think this is gonna get a lot of pushback.

I think it's way too vague.

- Yeah, well, may I add another point?

We elect town councilmen, we elect county commissioners.

It's their job, in my opinion, to determine whether or not they're going to levy any kind of extra tax or lower taxes.

And so why do you have a, what I call is just unneeded amendment, Henry, to do what the obvious is that the legislature wants to do if they can do it on their own?

- Dawn, there is local governments.

You've covered city councils just like I have.

So why would voters vote to tell lawmakers to limit their local representative's tax policies when they could go to the ballot box and elect local council members who would limit tax increases at the local level?

- Well, not every, you know, when you vote for your council member, it's not the single issue of what is the property tax rate going to be.

Local governments also get revenue from sales tax.

I think one thing that I've looked into, what does it mean if you limit taxes in one way?

Does that mean taxes could potentially go up in a different way?

So there is that factor.

From my understanding, the reason the legislature made this so vague was because they couldn't come to an agreement.

So I think that's kind of where the sort of gray area, the problem now is that because it's such a amorphous like question of like a levy limit, but what's the amount?

What does that mean for sales tax?

What does that mean for transit tax?

What does that mean for income tax revenue and how all of those taxes balance out for what you want to fund?

People are already paying like pretty significant property tax increases, a lot of it because of reassessments.

So there's a lot more to do.

The House has been working on this for a year now.

The Senate, Senate Leader Berger just announced in the past few days that he's appointed, you know, this committee, which the House had already been doing this for a year.

So I think we might see something in the November, December voting sessions, especially depending on how the election results turn out, if the legislature wants to get this done.

However, Berger and Speaker Hall, the way they've been talking in the past has been that this is a 2027 legislative session.

- Yeah, and getting the House and Senate on board with the same plan to address property taxes is gonna be easier said than done.

I mean, bottom line, this is a turnout amendment.

Like as Rufus said, they can pass this property tax restrictions two months ago, they could pass them six months from now, whether or not this amendment actually passes to sort of give them that voter mandate.

But recognizing that a lot of people are genuinely upset about their property tax bills going up, this is something that maybe if you're a voter who's a little bit conservative, maybe not super excited about Michael Whatley for all the things that we discussed earlier in the show, that might be a good reason to go out to the polls to sort of stake your claim that I want property tax restrictions of some kind.

- And we have multiple polls now.

There was the Catawba College YouGov poll saying that most people support this.

There's also the Elon poll out this week.

I think Carolina Journal also had a poll that shows that people do support all of the, there's three constitutional amendments on the ballot.

- But Henry, an amendment has to pass during a statewide referenda.

You couldn't have passed an amendment in June or May or April, but you could have set the table and that appears to be what happened legally.

- I think the legislature just kept hearing from their people that my property taxes have gone out of sight.

My property taxes went up.

Greenville had revaluation.

We're one of those great markets that people wanna live, and so the property values went way up.

I've got a place in Carteret County.

The property taxes went way up.

So what you want is the council that's gonna come back and say, "We're gonna make the tax rate revenue neutral," and almost nobody did that on this last round of revaluation, so everybody's taxes went up 40.

In some cases, in small communities like Aiden, North Carolina, they didn't lower the tax rate at all, and people are paying 100, 125% more in taxes than they were last year.

- You can raise taxes without raising rates.

- They got good barbecue in Aiden.

- They do have good barbecue.

- Now, once you put something in a constitution too, it's hard to unwind the clock.

- Yeah.

Well, let's talk sports.

The UNC System Board of Governors is considering new rules for university athletics, including possible limits on subsidies.

We're teeing up, Henry and Rufus, on this one.

Good old Tar Heel and a Pirate.

The discussion covers the 15 public university athletic departments, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State.

Now, they can rely mostly on private revenue, tickets, media rights, sponsors, donations, but the smaller campuses rely more on student athletic fees, some campus support, and state funding that includes the sports betting revenue.

The Tar Heels, for example, in Chapel Hill spent $188 million in athletics in '24-'25, and then ran a $15 million deficit.

Spending is expected to exceed $200 million there this year.

Under a new state formula, sports betting revenue goes first to athletics deficits, then reducing student fees.

Now, the board has not approved a cap, Colin.

- Yeah, so it'll be interesting to see if there's really a push on this.

I mean, there's always the sports boosterism that wants to put more resources into getting a winning team, whether that's football at Carolina or something else, but at the price of academics, I mean, UNC Chapel Hill's been under hiring freezes on the academic side, so there's a serious question of to what extent you can take money that might otherwise go towards the rest of the university and put it into sports if the sports donors aren't ponying up enough to fill the budget holes that the football team may have.

- Henry, is that a separate argument to look at people who privately and graciously give to athletic departments versus funding for the academic side of these universities, particularly the medium and larger ones?

- Well, this whole thing is just so out of, it's crazy out of whack at this point.

I mean, we got such an arms race in athletics now, and no guardrails.

You know, they're trying to do some stuff in Congress, they're trying to pass that Protect College Sports Act this week in Congress, but my friend Steve Logan says the only way to fix it is a salary cap, but to the student fees issue, you know, I was on the Board of Governors 10 years ago, we raised this flag 10 years ago, and it's exponentially higher now, but here's the reason why.

They're paying the athletes, and the money's gotta come from somewhere.

I believe Chapel Hill and NC State student fees represent about 11% of their total athletic budget.

I think ECU, App State, Charlotte, it's now up to 56%, and that's too high, but you know, they've gotta have revenue from somewhere.

The ACC schools are getting $45 to $60 million a year from television.

ECU and Charlotte and the American, they're getting seven and a half.

App State's getting two and a half.

They're not getting the TV money to compete, and so, you know, ECU's coming up with different ways to make money.

They rented the stadium to Mr.

Beast.

They're having a Kenny Chesney concert now.

They're gonna rent the stadium to a guy named Rich Ballot to do that.

They've come out with a credit card.

The athletic departments are just diving for dollars.

They gotta have money.

- Rufus, take it from the Tar Heel perspective.

No money problems there.

It's been a top flight athletic department for years and years and years.

Historically-- - There are no problems in Chapel Hill, are there?

- No scandal at all.

- All I can say is, what a mess.

I'm supposedly on something called the UNC Board of Advisors, and I hope they'll take my advice, they haven't so far.

I'm not gonna get into the whole Belichick gang of employees.

- We're talking about funding and using student fees.

- I know, I don't wanna get into that, but you mentioned something, Kelly, that the revenue comes first from the waging to go to athletic problems.

Why does that not go to academics?

Now I got a degree at Carolina, and I don't think some of the things I think I've accomplished would be possible.

I don't think the athletic department, I don't think football, which I love, love basketball, love Dean Smith, I don't think that has helped me one iota in my quest in life to do a little bit of good on this earth.

Henry mentioned the right words.

Somebody's gotta take hold of that whole system, put some guardrails on it and say, "You can't do this.

You can't let the athletic boosters run a university."

That's what's happening now.

It pains me to see my great university, and I love Appalachia too, 'cause I had four brothers and one sister that went to Appalachia.

I don't know what happened to me.

Go off the hill, down to the hill.

It's gotten out of hand, totally like AI.

Gotta have some guardrails.

- Dawn, it-- - How do I follow that?

- People love their college sports team, and for many people, this is well worth the investment to have competitive sports at the level you're at.

We have one minute.

- Well, I will say I'm a Wolfpack parent now, and Carter Finley is having Metallica next year, so you can bring in money and then also use your stadium for things too, and hopefully avoid scandals.

But I do think that, especially when there are scandals and questions about an athletic department, a lot of people who are writing the checks for tuition think, "What is my student getting out of this?

The students themselves, why do you wanna go there?"

But I don't think there's a clear answer yet as far as how to work on the funding.

- I'd rather see Kenny Chosey with Metallica.

- There you go.

Actually, me too.

I would too.

- A decision has not been made on capping student fees or anything.

That's a future issue for a future Board of Governors meeting.

Thank you so much.

If you have an opinion, email me at statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll share it with 'em.

Thank you so much for watching.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

See you next time.

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