- [Kelly] New polling data suggests a static presidential race, but could there be movement in the governor's race?

And RFK Jr. sues to remove his name from North Carolina's presidential ballot.

This is "State Lines."

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[energetic dramatic music] ♪ - Hello again.

Welcome back to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me in the studio, Donna King of the "Carolina Journal" and the "Debrief" on YouTube.

Check out their moving picture show.

Political strategist Morgan Jackson, public relations consultant Pat Ryan to his right, and in seat four, WUNC Radio's political correspondent or you always have a great title over there, Colin- - Capital Bureau Chief, which I'm not sure how you become a chief, but you know.

- Yeah, I like that title, Capital Bureau Chief.

Editor in Chief over here.

You guys are well known.

- Intern coordinators, that's what I do.

Chief intern.

- Yeah, slightly that.

Hey, at least Carolina University's got a new poll out.

You know, people love their polls.

They love having us talk about them.

East Carolina's out with one covering some of the statewide races across the ballot.

This poll sampled 920 registered voters who are likely to vote.

Is that a registered voter or a likely voter?

I've not heard it phrased that way.

ECU's poll gives Donald Trump a one-point lead over Vice President Harris.

3% of voters out there, 3% of you are undecided on this one, and 2% of you are sticking to your guns with that third party candidate.

In the governor's race, Colin, Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson in this race or this poll, 47% to 41%.

I did look down and look into some things.

Mr. Stein has greater support among independents than Vice President Harris, among the folks that are gonna support the Democrat.

Inflation's the top concern at 30%.

And if you're worried about healthcare, climate change, and public safety and crime, which bubbles up in a campaign, less than 5% per topic.

Voters are looking at their wallets.

- Yeah, and this is an interesting poll to look at, just the shift between, I think June was the last time they conducted one, and it was a lot closer in the governor's race back then.

Well, what happened between June and now?

Josh Stein started running a ton of TV ads.

A lot of them are the ones that just use Mark Robinson's own words about abortion and things like that against him.

And then you look at this poll where I think just over 1/3 of women polled say they'd support Robinson, so really low numbers compared to Trump's support among women.

And I have to assume it's the ads that are making a difference.

And Robinson's just struggling to have enough money to combat those ads, run ads of his own, get his own message out there.

- Pat, what do you make of this new poll?

We've covered two or three different.

High Point had one.

"Carolina Journal" had one, much different numbers than a, was a just a few points between Stein and Robinson than this poll, and it was closer in June.

No other poll seems to have Stein so close in a lead.

- Yeah, six points is still a fairly comfortable lead.

I mean, to me, this looks a lot like it did in 2020.

Morgan may agree or disagree.

You have really a toss up at the presidential.

You have maybe a democratic gubernatorial candidate that's slightly favored.

You know, in that election, Republicans did pretty well in just the open down ballot races.

Of course, the Democrat won the gubernatorial race.

But what stuck out to me in this poll, and maybe we can talk about it later in the segment as well, was the question about confidence in election results.

To me, I think we can probably agree the standard there is, I'm really confident that the election is going to be fair, but 32% of Democrats, more than half of independents, and 83% of Republicans did not say that they had a lot of confidence in the results.

That sort of stuck out to me as potentially problematic, maybe something that, you know, policy makers can try to address in the future.

- Morgan, for transparency, you are on Team Stein running that campaign.

This poll comes out.

We saw one with double-digit leads.

I've heard "leaks," quote unquote, not from you, but from people saying you feel pretty confident in Mr. Stein's positioning.

But looking at this poll, what is it about Josh Stein makes him more popular with independents, in your opinion, than Vice President Harris at the top of the ticket running against Donald Trump?

- Well, I think several things.

First of all, it's what I'll say about the race in general is North Carolina's a 50-50 state.

You can take nothing for granted, as Pat is exactly right.

In 2020, there were polls that had Governor Cooper up 10 points, 12 points in October.

We won by four and a half.

Now four and a half in North Carolina is a blowout because we're a 50-50 state.

But at the same time, these races are gonna tighten.

And what we've got in the presidential race, first of all, is it's a fascinating thing.

It is dead even.

I mean, plus one, minus one dead even.

It's all the same thing.

This is a race that's really gonna come down to the wire, and I think it's gonna have a huge impact, the presidential, especially on a lot of down-ballot races, a lot of other things.

And in the governor's race, listen, one of the reasons Stein is doing so well with unaffiliated voters and especially even voters outside of the sort of urban core where Democrats are really strong is because we're talking a lot about his work on crime, work on to eliminate the rape case backlog, to fight opioid, to address the opioid addiction and things he's doing to push Congress, to install fentanyl scanners there at the border to stop the illicit drugs flowing into North Carolina.

Those are things that make you, when you do, when you talk about issues like crime, it makes voters say, "It doesn't sound like a Democrat.

It sounds like a different kind of Democrat."

And in North Carolina, that's how you win these elections and these close elections.

So, you know, I like our position a lot better than theirs.

I've liked our position better than theirs for a long time.

And as Colin said, a lot of our strategy as it deals with Mark Robinson is let him do the workforce.

And Robinson's been very generous to give us hundreds of hours of really insane things that he says, and we just make sure voters know about it.

- In regard to Joe Biden stepping away from reelection, retiring as president at the end of his term and adding Vice President Harris as the nominee, did that affect any of your races down ballot, particularly with Josh Stein.?

Did you feel anything?

- It's completely reset the entire political landscape in North Carolina.

In our polling Democrats pre the switch in the presidential, there was a 11 point enthusiasm gap, meaning Republicans were at 11 points more likely to say I'm very enthusiastic about voting.

Now after the switch, Democrats are 14 more points enthusiastic than Republicans are in North Carolina.

That is a huge deal, especially for down ballot in legislative races who don't have $80 million to communicate on television and make their own case.

And so it's a very big deal.

- I mean, that I would think that would probably revert to the mean over the next, you know, several weeks here, there was certainly a honeymoon period.

I'm sure you know, any Democratic voter would be enthusiastic and be super excited that they were losing and now they're not losing anymore, or it's at least even.

So to me that's reflective of just the massive change that took place and, and that may revert back to the main, but we'll see.

- Donna, if you're politically minded out there and you watch and you read all the news articles and you see every week a new poll comes out, including yours with Carolina Journal and Signal, what do you make of a poll that shows a movement in the governor's race?

The Robinson campaign's certainly touting that they're now only what, six points behind when it was, what, 10 or 11 under you?

Right?

- Sure, sure.

- So is it changing that much or just different polling methods being used?

- No, I think actually what we're saying is really what Colin was talking about, that it shows you the power of television advertising.

You know, it seems like that this has become an anti Robinson campaign and we may see more policy talking about more policy as we get closer, but I think one of the things that people are really are hungry for is they wanna know what people are gonna do when they get in.

Because this poll, the ECU poll, when you combine inflation prices on the economy, that's more than half of respondents said that was their number one issue going into November.

So that's a critical thing.

I think people are really hungry for more talk of policy.

What are you gonna do on day one?

- The Robinson campaign released a three-pager of major points that it would- - It did not get a lot of traction.

- I was gonna ask you about that.

Why did it not get traction, in your opinion, as an editor in chief and a journalist?

- Sure, sure.

Absolutely.

I think that it against speaks to the power of television ads.

You know, he issued a full rundown of what he would want to see, what his economic policies would be.

And I mean, it seemed somewhat crickets.

I think that he's gotta get out there and he's gotta start making that case and talking to media and talking about policy.

What does he want to do to make North Carolina families able to make ends meet?

Because inflation, the jobs report out just Friday morning is not a good sign and 11 of the last 13 months, they've had to adjust the numbers down.

So we are in an economy that's really struggling and you're seeing North Carolinians suffering because of it.

And I think that's what they wanna hear from these candidates.

- Yeah, I think the Stein or the Robinson Economic Plan was kind of vague.

He mentioned cutting taxes.

I asked his campaign, well, what taxes do you wanna cut?

- [Donna] Right.

- They responded, we'd like to cut this grocery tax, which I think is actually a decent concrete policy proposal, but they haven't really hammered that home anywhere else.

So it's just sort of this vague economic platitude as opposed to, hey, here's concretely how I can lower your grocery bill or help you save money on taxes, or whatever it may be.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's also tough.

It's also tough to get coverage when you refuse to engage with reporters.

- Yeah.

[coughs] - You have to talk to the press, you have to do press coverage.

- Yeah, I mean we get stuff from their spokesperson, but never the candidate himself.

- Morgan, what makes a campaign?

Vice President Harris is getting tweaked on this.

Reporters couldn't speak to Vice President Walls.

And even here, the Robinson campaign is in some ways targeted members of the media.

Not targeted, but just say, Hey, we don't trust you.

When do you know when you got a candidate you don't want out in front of the media versus when you can push one out there and say, go for it?

- I think it is about candidate talent and if I was Mark Robinson's team, I would not want him talking to the press either.

I think the things that he says versus what his spokespeople say are very different.

And I think Robinson continues to walk himself further and further out on limbs.

And even when he does ads and says, you know, I'm for the legislatures, I'm for the compromise the legislature did on a 12-week abortion ban.

Then he tells people in public, I haven't changed my opinion at all.

I've changed the way I'm talking about it.

I'm still for a total abortion ban.

And so that's why they don't want him talking to the press.

And listen, I think that's a somewhat smart move.

But for a guy who's being vastly outspent, if you can't go get me earned media on your own and you can't buy it, then you're gonna continue to struggle.

- But this- - No, you go.

- I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, this is a trend that we've seen actually for several years.

I mean, a lot of them won't debate because they feel like they can't gain from it.

With social media and Twitter and all that, they feel like they've got a direct line to individual voters in so many characters.

And what ends up happening though, is people don't hear from them.

And that's a big problem.

You know, we have been trying to get comments and from the governor's office from lots of others, and they don't respond, they don't reach out because I think in many cases they feel like.

They could only lose.

- I've had campaign folks, I'm trying to negotiate debates.

- Sure.

- And when they explain this is what we have to go through for a debate for one hour, they explain a debate these days is all risk when they can go on TikTok and Facebook.

So I don't know, is this the media's problem or is this a civics problem with American democracy?

- I always take the position that if you're a candidate or a political party, your job is to win the race.

You shouldn't feel an obligation or duty to go and do things that are gonna harm your ability to win the race.

That's your narrow interest.

I think it's the issue is probably reflective of declining subscriptions to state newspapers, declining viewership in potentially, you know, local evening news.

All these things make the media's power smaller, which means that it's not really worth as much to go and have a full fledged earned media campaign.

And also going directly to voters via a mail or TikTok or what have you, is entirely controlled.

It's zero risk.

And so the cost benefit reward of that question of earned media has really changed in the last 10 or 15 years.

- And Kelly, we've talked about this too with potential debates and things like that.

And one of the things campaigns have to assess is you gotta understand because of the risk and reward factor, the truth is most debates, there's very little reward.

It's mostly risk.

And so in order to avert the risk, you gotta spend a smart campaign.

I don't care if you're running for state legislature or you're running for president, spends hundreds of hours of preparation time to make sure that the candidate is ready for every question that comes across the bow and the truth of the matter, that's time you could be doing other things, raising money, campaigning, doing things like that nature.

And so it is a risk reward proposition.

And because fewer and fewer people watch debates and the truth of the matter is the knockout punches that everybody thinks is gonna debate, most of the time they just don't happen.

The Joe Biden, Donald Trump debate was one in a million where it actually had a change in the narrative of the race.

- What do you make of these debates?

Some media outlets will book these and they're like Friday night, seven o'clock live for either a half hour or an hour.

Is that worth it?

Just to have it, when you get an exclusive interview or an exclusive debate between two candidates, you're not allowed to retransmit it.

It's only allowed to air live once.

How much of an impact are debates having in North Carolina before?

I wanna ask about election integrity too.

I'm blowing my show format completely up.

These are important topics.

- It is important.

- What do you make of this?

- Absolutely.

- Because I remember the Senate debate Friday night, Friday night, seven o'clock.

- Sure.

Well, I think one of the things that you get in that kind of format, when you've got those eyeballs, those eyeballs are engaged.

It's not one of those things where that person may not turn out to vote.

The person who sits there and watches that on seven o'clock on a Friday, they're going to turn out and they're listening for policy things.

But that's the problem is when candidates are not willing to go through and learn their policy, make their argument, it's the voter who loses because they're back in the situation of having to pass the bill before they see what's in it.

Vote for the candidate before they know what they're gonna do.

- Colin, you can't take it personally when they turn you down for interview debate.

It's all business, my friend.

- Yeah, and honestly we've had better luck with interviews both I've seen a lot of them on this show and we've done some of our own at WUNC where the candidates will do one-on-one and you can package them together with an interview with their opponent.

That works just about as well as debates.

Plus you can sort of make them on demand.

A lot of voters aren't tuned in now, but they're like procrastinating college students.

You'll see the search results at the couple days before the election where people are like, oh shoot, state treasurer, who are these guys?

And they search for it and then our web traffic on those stories goes up.

So that team has to be more effective for the people who are legitimately doing their research than having a sort of appointment viewing at seven o'clock on a Friday night.

- When candidates, Colin, are not as open to you and I and Donna as journalists or hosts and for interviewers, does it degrade faith in the elections?

I wanna pivot to Pat's point because there's enough people out there.

It's measurable now, people, I don't know if the election will be, I don't if fair or smooth or what do you think?

- Yeah, I mean I think there's definitely a need to educate people more on the process and the safeguards that are there.

Some of the polling is interesting.

I've seen that people seem to have faith in North Carolina administer the elections fairly, but they don't have faith in the country as a whole because they see, you know, horror stories out of some other state about some sort of fraud issue or some allegations.

And so there's sort sort of sense of like, we can do okay here.

I like the people at the polls down the street that I interact with.

But those states over there, they might be crooked.

- Like my congressman's great, but Congress itself isn't.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Morgan, what do you make of the election integrity thing?

Even some Democrats now, I mean, was not many.

- Well here's what I'll tell you.

I think when you have President Trump who spent the last four years undermining election integrity everywhere across the country and saying, it is impossible that I lost because he can't accept the embarrassment of loss.

Most Republicans will tell you privately, of course he lost, he lost, his team will tell you he lost.

But a lot of folks can't admit it publicly.

And so when you have that megaphone and you spend your time sowing seeds and you say, the only way I'm gonna lose this election is if they cheat.

That's what you tell all of your supporters.

And I say to people this all the time, imagine, listen, I pull for the Chicago Bears, we lose a lot, lemme just say up front.

And so, but imagine pulling for a sports team and that where your coach goes out every week before the game and says, if we lose this game, it is only because they cheated.

They cheated to win because there's no way for us to lose.

And you have this cacophony especially within the Republican party and with the far right that continues to say that to appease Donald Trump, yes, the election was stolen.

The guy lost the election.

And to Colin's point, North Carolina had one of the best-run elections in the country in 2020, and they will do so again in 2024.

I think there were seven people who voted in North Carolina that shouldn't have voted in 2020 out of 5.2 million.

And guess what?

Those votes didn't count.

Sorry.

- No, go right ahead.

[overlapping discussion] - Point taken on the 2020 election.

Perfectly reasonable argument to put forward, but I think there's more to it than just pointing to that as a cause.

And you brought up the Chicago Bears.

When, and I keep on going back to this and maybe I'm just obsessed with it, but when you have the referees of the election appointed by one particular team and having majority control over the administration of that game, I think that itself is an unhealthy situation that is more likely to cause a reasonable person to say, Well, hang on, wait a minute, You're telling me that the Democratic Party is in charge of running this election and counting all the votes and all of that?

I'm not saying they're cheating, but that doesn't really seem right.

- But that's not even fair, Pat, in the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't control the Board of Elections.

- Who appoints the majority of the Board of Elections?

- So the governor, which has happened under Republican governors and Democratic governors.

- Sure.

- You have to remember that a Republican-controlled Board of Elections in 2016 and when Pat McCrory contested the election, McCrory appointees, they have to follow the law.

It's straightforward.

They follow the statute.

It is a perception game and not a reality game.

Even Madison Cawthorn, the great election denier that he was in his time said North Carolina elections were the best run in the country.

How is that, how can you, you gotta get away from the perception of who is, and the legislature's response by the way is, alright, we're gonna appoint the elections board instead and when there is a tie, we will make the decision, the Republican majority.

This is about power and control.

This is not about fairness, man.

- So I think perceptions are exactly the issue.

When one team is in charge of administering the game, I think the perception is, that's not fair and that's not right.

I'm not saying that there's been some, you know, clear malpractice or anything like that, but when close calls are made like third party candidates getting on the ballot or settling lawsuits over pandemic-related elections rules, when those types of calls are made and they fall towards one side of the game, I think people look at it and say, well, maybe that's because it's majority controlled by one political party.

- Donna.

- Yeah, absolutely.

But I also think that there's a culture problem with it because you've got this sort of lawfare approach to elections.

You've got, you know, Mark Elias and Democrat-run law groups filing lawsuits, what feels like, every single week and it makes people suspicious of the process.

And you see that on Democrats and Republican side and particularly Independents, which unaffiliated are the largest voting group.

So when you have 20% of people saying, I'm not sure this outcome is going to match the votes cast, that is a huge red flag and it may be time for a change.

- I wanna touch on one thing: RFK Jr.

He fought so hard get on North Carolina's ballot and he actually won it.

Now he's suing to remove his name from the ballot 'cause he is no longer running for president.

In what's proving to be a fast moving story, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has blocked the State Board of Elections from mailing out absentee ballots.

We're told The State Board of Elections has in fact told local boards don't mail anything and hold tight pending the RFK Jr. appeal.

I'll turn this over to you.

Speaking of that, it's a lawsuit from the RFK Jr. and let's say Trump's side.

- Yes.

Yeah.

Right, well, now he's endorsed Trump, right?

So, you know, in the very beginning of this, the state board of elections fought adding him to the ballots and now we're down to a crunch time 'cause he wants to come off of it, they don't wanna remove him.

North Carolina sends out absentee ballots earlier than literally every single state in the country, and they're all supposed to go out Friday for absentee ballots.

Of course already been printed.

One of RFKs arguments in this is that you are putting him in a compelled speech situation.

You're making him a candidate when he doesn't wanna be.

So they had 24 hours to appeal and that falls on Friday.

- Alright, Morgan, what are you making RFK Jr.?

Is he gonna siphon enough votes off Trump to help Harris or- - See, first, I gotta tell you, I think at this stage in the election, I don't think third parties, there are a lot of votes.

I really don't.

I think there are protest votes that probably were not voting for either side to begin with.

They were probably gonna skip the presidential if they're not gonna vote for third parties.

So I don't think it's that big of a deal.

You know, I don't know what we should expect outta RFK for a guy who carries a dead bear in his trunk and a dead whale on his own on the top, and has a brain worm.

Here's a guy who is fighting at the same time to stay on the ballot in a bunch of states because he wants those votes counted.

He wants to come off in states where he thinks it's gonna hurt Trump.

And it's really insane.

But it's a practical thing.

I think the state attorneys made a good argument yesterday, like, this is not a game.

You sued to get on the ballot.

You got on the ballot.

Now you wanna sue to get off the ballot, and you're doing all that in a manner of days when this is a practical thing.

Ballots are printed, they're going out in the mail.

Are we gonna stop our entire process because of one man's vanity who can't decide if he wants to be on or off the ballot.

- Courts are involved in the election 2024 North Carolina.

Pat, your take on the RFK situation.

- Oh, I think he's decided, I think he's decided he wants to be off the ballot in North Carolina and on the ballot in New York, for example.

- The decision's been made.

- Right.

Look, totally point, easy, I think he's in court on the same day in both states arguing very different, obviously, positions.

And that just gets back to, I think a point I made earlier, which is the point of political campaigns and parties is not necessarily to be intellectually consistent at all times, it's to win races, or at least achieve your desired political outcome.

I think that's what you see the campaign trying to effectuate here.

Which I think just underscores the importance of having perceived and real impartial adjudicators, the courts, the board, what have you, because you have these various interests that are just out for themselves, and rightfully so.

And you need a fair and perceived to be fair answer to those questions.

- All right, Colin, I want to jump on another topic to you about North Carolina voucher funding.

Journalist Brian Anderson, who we know of as Anderson Alerts on the Substack platform.

You'll have to look it up.

He's reporting Republican lawmakers may be on the brink of expanding school vouchers, or what they call opportunity scholarships.

Republicans had an interest in funding every school voucher application for this school year, then a budget adjustment bill never passed.

We are under a two-year budget.

That seems to be a bone of contention on Twitter, for whatever reason.

Brian Anderson reports there are nearly 55,000 families awaiting scholarships with used public funding to cover private school tuition.

And state law is already going to increase funding in the years ahead if Republicans stay in power and get their way with the budget cycle.

Colin, your thoughts on this and then we'll get.

Cooper came out, the governor's already out, but I'll start with you and work around.

- Yeah, so there's a lot of moving pieces on this.

There's still not a formal deal announcement between the House and the Senate on this funding.

They both support funding more private school vouchers for wealthier families, but they couldn't agree on the details before they adjourned for the summer.

So there's been this big pushback from families who've been waiting to find out are they gonna get these or not.

And the school year has obviously started, so people have had to make choices.

So we'll find out soon, do they have a deal?

What exactly are the details?

But we've already seen the governor come out with a press conference on Thursday blasting this plan as something that's gonna be detrimental to public schools.

So this is gonna be a big partisan fight with the backdrop, of course, of the election looming just a few months away.

- Morgan, this story obviously has legs.

You went public and made your stake against school vouchers.

- Listen, I think the government's been very consistent.

We're talking about adding $625 million this year for private school vouchers.

These are taxpayer dollars that would go to.

This is not about opportunity scholarships.

This money is very clear.

These are for folks who can't afford to send their kids to private school and don't meet the prior income thresholds.

These are higher wealth individuals who are basically taking taxpayer money outta public schools to give to families so that to subsidize their private schools.

And the thing about it to me is look at the states around the country that have gone down this road.

Look at Texas.

It has decimated their public school system.

You have rural red, very rural red Republicans in Texas who say this was a huge mistake.

And in North Carolina, half of the voucher, more than half of the voucher money goes into just a few counties, and they're all urban counties.

If you're in rural North Carolina and you're a rural legislator where you have maybe one private school that accepts vouchers in your entire county, that money's coming directly out of your school system that's going to Wake and Mecklenburg and these places.

And I can't believe these rural legislatures are gonna do that.

While at the same time, this crowd is not doing anything to help with teacher pay.

We only pay $5,000, we pay $5,000 a year less per student on average than the national average.

And that's a problem.

- Down to 70 seconds.

Pat.

- Sure.

Basic philosophical difference between the governor of the legislature that's never going to be resolved.

I will point out that per people funding for public schools does not change whether there are more or less opportunity scholarships in place.

And you know, perhaps more private schools will open in rural areas, and that'll cause people to change their opinion.

- And Donna, you have the last word.

30 seconds.

- Absolutely, well I think when we just look at our performance that's coming out of our public schools.

We're just now in many groups only coming up now to 30% reading proficiency.

You know, parents are being underestimated in their desire for something better for their kids.

This is not an experiment.

They need to have choice regardless of their income level.

- All right, panel, thank you so much.

Great discussion.

We've got a little debate in there, Colin.

And Morgan, good to have you, Pat.

We'll see you all very, very soon.

Most importantly, thank you for watching "State Lines" every week.

You're the reason we're successful.

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