- [Kelly] Lawmakers
approve full funding of school vouchers
this school year. Sheriffs could be
required to cooperate with federal
immigration officials. And RFK Junior's name won't be on the state ballot after all. This is "State Lines." - [Announcer] Quality public
television is made possible through the financial
contributions of
viewers like you who invite you to join
them in supporting PBS NC. [bright music] - Welcome back to
"State Lines," everyone. I'm Kelly McCullen. Joining me today, some
good friends of the show, Dawn Vaughan of the
News and Observer, representative Allen Chesser
from Nash County joins us. Senator Mary Wills
Bode of Granville and Wake Counties
to Allen's right, and former North Carolina
Supreme Court Associate Justice Bob Orr making a second
appearance on the show. And you are quite a popular man. People said they love seeing
Bob Orr on this TV show. - Ratings through the roof. What more could I ask for? - Double ratings
through the roof. State legislators convened in Raleigh this
week to pass bills that were previously stalled
when budget negotiations collapsed this summer on
a budget adjustment bill. Yes, we have a budget
in place for two years. The House and Senate
approved an expansion of those school voucher or
opportunity scholarships. It would clear a backlog of 55,000 voucher applications, covering families of
every income level. The bill would boost vouchers
by about $463 million. Lawmakers did agree to boost
public education enrollment by $92 million. But Dawn, they did not approve any additional
teacher pay raises. Speaker Tim Moore, who's
heading to Congress in all likelihood, wanted
the teacher pay raises, but he gave back to get
the vouchers through. - Yeah, so this was a
House and Senate deal. It's Republican controlled
in both chambers. And it was the return
of the mini budget, which if people remember 2019, that was a method
that Republicans used when they were dealing with
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. But they didn't have
the supermajorities. So now that they have
the supermajority, it's chamber versus chamber, which is just interesting
in a different way. And the big house priority
this past session was the ICE cooperation bill, or at least it was for
rules chair Dustin Hall, who is probably gonna
be the next Speaker. And then the Senate,
Senate Republicans, wanted to fund that private
school voucher backlog. So those were the
two big things in it. There was money for
public education, for K12 enrollment growth. So Speaker Moore
will point that out, but it wasn't the raises that he and other House
Republicans wanted because the Senate
wasn't on board. And what Senate leader
Berger told me was that it was really
about getting together, having this mini budget bill that both chambers had something they'd already passed
or a version of it. And that's why the
raises weren't included because the Senate
didn't want it. - Well, Senate didn't want it, but you're in the House
of Representatives, Representative Chester, what
do you make of this deal? It does make intuitive
sense that you would cover some of the criticism
of public school funding by throwing teacher pay on
top of the school vouchers and calling it a compromise. Why couldn't that get done? - It just seems like the votes
weren't there in the Senate. So rather than kill
the entire bill and let the perfect get
in the way of the good, we took what we had available
that we knew we agreed on, and we moved forward with it. And I think it sends
the right message too. I think it would be
misinformation to assume that the Republicans
in either chamber want to dismantle
public schools. The way I look at it is
we're building a new ship, and so we're gonna pilot
this ship over here and see how it works. But say 90% of our students
still exist on this other ship. And whether or not you agree
with the course it's on, or if it has holes in it,
we're not abandoning that ship. Every child on that ship is
part of our future, right? Children account for
25% of our population, 100% of our future. We don't want to abandon it. We're just trying to see
if there's a different way, a newer way, a more
effective way to get to the same destination. - Senator Bode, I'll let
Republicans and Democrats fight over school vouchers. However, it's $463 million. That is extra money, whether you like the way
it's being spent on education or not for families. But you also have a large
rural contingency out there. How does this flow
out in the rural areas of North Carolina
from your perspective? - Sure, so we've talked a
lot about public education and we talk a lot
about private vouchers. And what I think we
miss in the conversation is what the purpose of
public education is. And the purpose of public
education is to ensure that every child
has the capacity to chase the American dream and to make that dream realized. And what that looks like is, regardless of where you live
or what kind of situation you are born into,
here in North Carolina, we will get you to school, we will make sure you are fed. And when you walk
into that classroom, you have a well-resourced
and staffed room to learn in. And when I see the facts and figures about our
public education system, one out of every nine teachers have left the public school
system in North Carolina. We had over 60,000 students
walk into the classroom this year without a teacher because we have 3,000
teacher vacancies. And North Carolina is
in the top 10 worst states for teacher pay. And so, you know,
with all due respect, I completely respect your
analogy about a ship, but I cannot understand
for the life of me, with all of that information, why we would be diverting
hundreds of millions of dollars away from
our local public schools into the bank
accounts of private, unaccountable schools
in North Carolina. This situation is serious, and children deserve an
opportunity to chase that dream and make it a reality
instead of an illusion. And I just, it breaks
my heart for children, not just in rural
North Carolina, but across North Carolina that aren't going
to have that chance. - Do you see an opportunity where a marketplace could
arise for private school, more private schools
in rural areas, if you're using public funding, and teachers could
gather together, create their own campuses? Does that happen, or do you see it's just going
to be have it, have nots? If you're in the suburbs,
you've got plenty of private schools. If you're out in
Eastern North Carolina, you have no options. - Well, I think part of
the problem is the fact that children have
to get to school, and they have to be fed
when they get to school. And these private schools
are not required to do that. And so school systems work
on economies of scale. And so, when we're
siphoning off resources, that does create
holes in the ship. And that, that does
cause problems in terms of how we resource a school
in terms of getting kids into a classroom
every single day and making sure
they're ready to learn. - Judge, as a policy,
55,000 families were waiting and wanting those scholarships. So, there is demand for it. How do you, how do you
do what the voters want and also call it bad
policy in some ways? - Well, one, I still think
vouchers are unconstitutional because you're
taking public funds and you're giving them
to private entities. And a number of these schools
are religious schools, which discriminate based
upon that particular faith, which is fine. But if you're going
to use public funds, the state constitution
says you can't do that. But if you're going to have
a marketplace of ideas, you need to be on
an equal footing. And as Mary Will said, the standards that the private
schools get to operate under is extraordinarily different and more favorable than
the public school does. I mean, the private school, if they need a six-foot
nine power forward for their basketball team, they can provide vouchers that
will allow that individual to go to the school. On the other hand, if you have a child with
disciplinary problems and poor academics, they'll say, no, he can't come to our school. So, it's, it's an
unfair comparison, and you really will never
get a fair marketplace. Well, they're beating up on
you, Representative Chester. What's the last word to you? And we'll go, we'll come back and talk about this
ice bill after this. - Yeah, I think. So, I mean, it's fair
points on all sides, but the goal is here, what's hidden in all
this is the admission that if you give
people a choice, they're fleeing the
public school system. And the constitutional
obligation that we are faced with is
providing a quality education. The truest definition of
public education is a public, publicly funded education. We are looking at if
there's a different model by which we can
fund that education and still provide
a quality education and honor our obligation. - All right, we're
gonna stay with you. Republicans also approve
requirements this week that local sheriffs cooperate with federal
immigration officers when those sheriffs
are issued detainers on a person who's been arrested. Republicans are
addressing their issues with primarily
Democratic sheriffs and Democratic counties
choosing not to cooperate when federal immigration
officers want an arrested person who is believed or
is undocumented held. These holds allow federal
officials to pick up that immigrant for possible
deportation processing. Opponents say local
sheriffs won't be trusted by the community, these
certain parts of it, if they must cooperate
with immigration officials. Representative Chester,
can both things be right? - So, I think this is one of
those scenarios that is ripe for political jargon. But the reality
is just not there. This has been the law of the
land without requiring it, but sheriffs have been
expected to cooperate with law, especially federal law,
for their entire tenure. ICE detainers have
existed for 50 years. And all we're saying is
if someone is arrested for a violent crime and an ICE
detainer is issued for them, that they're held. It's not gonna be any
additional roundups. It's not gonna be any
additional targeting. It's people who are already
involved in the system. As a former law
enforcement officer, the safest place
for me to interact with someone is in a controlled
environment like a jail, or a Sally Port or
something like that. Going out into the
uncontrolled environment makes it significantly
more dangerous for me to interact with that person, to take away and
remove their freedom. If it's just a continuation
of the detention that's already been,
they're already in the jail, then that's significantly safer for our law
enforcement community. - Senator Bode, this is
very, very much political, and the Democratic sheriffs
will let you know that loud and clear. Is it political, or do we need a state law
to tell local sheriffs, why don't you do to what
Representative Chester says? Do what you've been
doing for 50 years. Why did you stop? - It is political. And I'll tell you the most
profound data point around why it is political. Earlier this year at the
congressional level... - We had a bipartisan, extensive bipartisan Immigration and Border
Security Funding Bill that was brokered by
Republicans and Democrats, and it had momentum, until former President Donald
Trump got on social media and signaled to Republicans
they should not get it passed, and he did that for
political reasons. He would rather run
on fear mongering than actually problem-solving
for the American people, and we all want
safer communities, we all wanna provide
pathways to citizenships for people who wanna come here. And we also all want
our border to be secure, but it is incumbent upon our
federal, elected officials to make that happen and
listen to the American people, and not just a former president who's running to be the next president
of the United States, - Dawn, and just like that, this local issue,
which is what it is, goes national,
- Yeah. - and it's Donald Trump's fault that some of these counties
don't work with ICE. - It's interesting, the local,
state and federal, right? - Yep.
- So this is the state, in telling local
government what to do. And local government
doesn't always like that, the same way the state
doesn't like the Feds, and, you know, anyway, it's obviously a campaign
issue, immigration is, and, you know, the timing
of passing this bill, the voucher backlog, you've got a lot of voters who, you know, lawmakers
this past year, promised that they would have the Opportunity
Scholarship Program, and then they didn't deliver. So that's a lot of, one
reason that was in the bill, in addition to both
chambers wanting it, and for Republican
candidates also, they know immigration
is a big deal, and the ICE Bill has
been around for years in different versions, but the timing of this is that the House and Senate
both liked it, candidates running
on immigration, whether they want it for
up-ballot or down-ballot, you know, wanted to
get this accomplished, and that's why it
happened this week. - Judge, if the county sheriff
won't work with the Feds, then why would they even listen
to any state legislators? - Well, I would
point out two things. One, sheriffs are
Constitutional Officers in the State of North Carolina, and so they have a certain
degree of independence. And historically,
Republicans have always said, "The local officials know best, we don't like having
Washington or Raleigh dictate the local officials, how they should run
their business." And so, I would question
in this context, aren't we sort of getting
into the business of how an individual sheriff
may make decisions on enforcing the laws in his
or her particular county? And, you know, sheriffs
have to follow the law, whether it's federal or state, but trying to force them
to do certain things that they're not necessarily
required to do legally, I think is questionable. - In your experience when you
were in the public sector, have you ever seen bills where state legislators
would go down on local about federal issues? - I've been around
about 20 years now, I don't recall
very much of that, but it has become
an issue recently. - Well, I think
we've seen a lot more over the last few years of where the
legislature is sort of messing with local
government, local decisions, whether it's school boards, you know, county commissions,
sheriffs, of the like. - Alright, back to you, Judge, I wanna ask you about this
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issue. The campaign has sued several
times in several courts to be removed from the ballots
in these respective states, RFK one one in North
Carolina this week, his lawsuit travel
from Wake County Court all the way to the State Supreme
Court in just a few days, with the Supreme Court ruling that Kennedy's name be
removed from the 2024 ballot, and those ballots be reprinted before getting mailed
to absentee voters. This was a 4-3 majority, So one Republican did dissent says, "An accurate
ballot," the majority says, having an accurate ballot, much more important, Judge, than the printing
cost, mailing delays, and inconvenience of the
State Board of Elections. - Well, Justice Dietz, who
was the lone Republican who joined the two
Democrats on the court, Justice Allison Riggs
and Justice Earls, really wrote a very effective
and powerful dissent to the majority saying, "There are statutes in place
that allow Kennedy's name to, or allows Kennedy to
withdraw as a candidate, but it doesn't
necessarily guarantee that the name comes
off the ballot, that the State Board
has the ability to determine whether
it's practical." The State Board said, "It wasn't because of the extraordinary
cost of reprinting ballots, and also the delay in
getting absentee ballots to Military people overseas,
to college students away.? So the interesting thing is that really didn't get
a lot of attention, is the whole context of
presidential candidates is really, and this isn't a
very legal term, squirrelly, I mean, you know,
presidential candidates don't file in North Carolina, you're actually voting
for the electors, you know, you're not really
voting for the individual. And one of the troubling things about Kennedy's situation was, when he announced, he said, "He was simply
suspending his campaign and that he was gonna stay on
the ballot in certain states that weren't
battleground states." And then you go to the
We the People Party, which was the entity
that arguably. - Nominated him for the office and they had to scramble
around, find somebody to say, oh yeah, well, yeah, he's
no longer the nominee. It was a mess. - Senator Bode on this ballot
issue, you know, I get it. Last second delays, Board of
Elections way inconvenienced, absentee voters delayed
by a couple of weeks, at least at this point,
however, it's a clean ballot. It would now be an accurate
ballot by definition. So how do we interpret this
if say, we're not a Republican or a Democrat necessarily
wanting the partisan victories? - Sure, totally,
politically, you know, I think it's a good thing
he's off the ballot, right? I get it, people, he's
no longer running. That totally makes sense to me. Practically speaking though,
you know, deadlines matter, and they really matter
in the case of elections. As Justice Orr mentioned, we
have state and federal laws that dictate how and when
we do things to ensure the fair administration
of an election. And I think that
one of the things that people don't
really understand is
that there are a lot of different ballots
in North Carolina because elections are
run at the county level. And so there could be
municipal, countywide, district attorney, all
different types of elections that are gonna be
administered this November. And so all of those ballots
have to be reformatted and then reprinted, which is
a very time consuming process. And it's also very expensive. And so the counties,
and I was reading about smaller counties that
have to pick up the bill to reprint these ballots. It's very chaotic and
very time consuming. And you know, we have a lot
of overseas military folks that wanna exercise
the right to vote. And the timing of
that is gonna be put into a lot of uncertainty. And to think that the people
who are on the front lines defending our right to
vote may not be able to exercise the right to
vote because one person couldn't make up their
mind if they wanted to be on the ballot or didn't
wanna be on the ballot, is so incredibly
undemocratic to me. - You know, Representative
Chester, I saw an article online where, you know, the
headline was RFK JR. sabotages the North
Carolina election by asking to be removed from the ballot. That's a strong term. However, he is not running and
he let North Carolina know, and it was still in August
at that time, right? So what do you
make of this issue? Can the counties
handle this printing? And we're gonna
have to deal with it whether we like it or
not, Supreme Court says. - So I agree with
the majority ruling where this having an accurate
ballot is far more important than the convenience
to the board whose job is to provide an
accurate ballot. As one of those
who served overseas during an election cycle,
if a ballot makes it to me, I want it to be an
accurate ballot. I wanna know that if I bubble
in next to somebody's name and mail it back, that that
person is actually on the ballot for that election cycle, don't
wanna throw away my right to vote on an inaccurate ballot. So I think the accuracy of
the ballot is primary here. Deadlines do matter and he
met the legal requirement to be withdrawn from the ballot. It was that some ballots had
been printed with him on it. And so do we reprint the ballots
and at an additional cost? I think what is paramount here and what should be
focused on is making sure that voters have
accurate information and are provided
accurate ballot, and therefore, they're not
canceling out their vote by voting for someone
who's not running for that office anymore. - Yeah, I would note, and
that's an important point, Justice Dietz in his dissent
said that there are other ways other than destroying
the current ballots and reprinting new
ones to inform voters. Whether it's posting
notices at precincts or on an absentee
military ballot, putting a slip of paper
in saying that Kennedy is no longer a candidate. So it's a valid concern,
but Justice Dietz felt like there was, there were other
ways to deal with that. - Either way, I mean ,the
taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for this. - What struck me,
Dawn, is when it comes to election management, Elaine
Marshall tweeted this week, "Hey, here's a
friendly reminder. secretaries of state
in North Carolina do not run elections." - Yeah. - Who would wanna be on
that board of, I mean, everything's got heat on? - Yeah, for sure, and I think
there's been some evidence that on local board of
elections, election workers, it's yeah, it's a stressful job. And how do you recruit
someone for something where, you know, you're
constantly be under attack? But you could say the same thing for a lot of jobs,
including ours. - I mean the administration, the administration of the
administration of elections, it's a very delicate ecosystem. And so I think this has
just caused a lot of chaos. And like I said, it's been
very costly and so, you know, we just, we have to hope
that it's gonna go off without any more hitches
'cause it's gonna be tough. - Knock on wood. - Knock on wood. WRAL TV in Raleigh released
a new poll this week on some statewide races. It partnered with the company
Survey USA to poll 900, I hope I'm reading
this correctly, 900
registered voters. About two thirds of them were
believed to be likely voters carrying a 4.9% margin of error. And then the WRAL race for
this week, the governor's race, Democrat Josh Stein, is
carrying a 14 point lead over Republican Mark Robinson. Down ballot in the
Attorney General's race, Jeff Jackson leads Dan
Bishop by seven points 43-36 with 21% of the voters not sure. Not sure is a pretty
powerful candidate right now. In that Superintendent's
race, Democrat Mo Green. Leads Republican, Michele
Morrow, by two points, 40% to 38%, Dawn. 22% in that race are undecided. Are they undecided or are they not
telling the pollsters who they're voting for? - They may not, council of state is a big deal for those of us that
have jobs in politics, but a lot of people don't
even know what the jobs are. And my takeaway from
the poll results of Superintendent of
Public Instruction is people probably haven't
even paid attention to it yet. And AG, beginning of
the election season, I thought that the Dan
Bishop-Jeff Jackson race was gonna almost eclipse the
Josh Stein-Mark Robinson, which it has not. So I think some of it is
people paying attention. Everyone's got a new
poll about every week, and it looks like Stein has
pulled ahead of Robinson, depending on the poll. And I think the
rest of the ballot is still really up in the air, because the presidential race is getting a lot
of the attention and the governor's race. - I wanna be clear,
Representative Chester, we followed the polls 'cause folks just love
looking at a poll. And every week we have a new one from High Point and Elon, ECU, now WREL, Carolina Journal, they all say slightly
different things. One thing does seem consistent, Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson by either a little or a lot, and everyone else could be tied. - Yeah, so it's definitely, North Carolina is
retaking its claim at a battleground
state for sure. We're gonna see what a
lot of what I believe are called ping-pong voters
down the ballot, I think. Just because we tend to vote for the candidate
over the party. We've seen it, we've
seen it in the past where the same electorate
elects a Republican at the top of the
ticket with president and a Democrat in Roy
Cooper for governor. And that's what makes politics
in North Carolina fun. It's important to
remember though, that it's just a
snapshot in time. A poll holds no one accountable. It's just a snapshot at those
who choose to participate and choose to answer
honestly, we're hoping. - Do candidates owe
it to voters to debate even if they don't want to? Because in the
absence of an AG race, it's not elevated because there's not any debate. There's been no debate,
it's all ad driven. And even Jeff Jackson told me, "I've raised about $10 million. I'm on TikTok, and 37% of North
Carolinians know who I am." So there's a awareness issue. Debates matter or
are we in an era where it's gonna be media and social media
all the way home? - So I think there's a ton
of information out there available to the voters. There's no obligation for
a candidate to debate, but I also think that the voters
might hold you accountable if you choose not to. Ultimately, everything that
we do on the campaign trail is going to be
judged and measured by the voters in the end. - I think Representative
Chester has a really good point, and I watched last
week's episode where you had Morgan
Jackson and Pat Ryan on talking about debates and they talked about what's
the best for the candidate. It's also best for the
people and the voters. And they would like to
hear the two candidates talk to each other. At the superintendent race
we were just talking about, Mo Green, Michele Morrow, I think have like three or
maybe four debates scheduled. We don't know if Stein and
Robinson are gonna debate, or there'll be an LG debate, so.
- Yeah, you do. [everybody laughing] Yeah, you do. - But people need to
see how they interact. And when you're watching
someone on video talk to somebody else
with a different opinion, you learn a lot more than just what you read and media and campaign
ads and everything else. - I'm almost out of
time, Mary Wills. - That's okay.
- Give us 30 seconds and we'll finish
up with the judge. - Oh my gosh, well, I
will say, at this point, even though we are
in mid-September, we still have a lifetime
to go in campaign time. So I think that
anything could happen. And if I were managing
any of these campaigns, I would tell, what I say often, there are only two
ways to run a race, scared and unopposed. - [laughing] That's right.
And all of them are contested so they
better keep running scared. - 10 seconds, tie a big
ribbon on this one, Judge. - The Jackson-Bishop
race is fascinating because both have
a lot of money, but we're not seeing
a lot from them. And I'm waiting to see whether
there's a huge, huge push right at the end
of the campaign. - The old Richard Burr campaign, don't start til October 1 and push hard and go ahead. Well, thank you so
much for being on, it's a very fast half hour and been very informative. Thank you, folks, for watching. Email me, statelines@pbsnc.org. I'll share the emails
with this crowd. Thanks for watching. I'm Kelly McCullen. We'll see ya next time. [upbeat music] - [Announcer] Quality public
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