- [Kelly] Focus intensifies at the Allison Riggs-Jefferson Griffin North Carolina Supreme Court race.

And Governor Josh Stein announces new executive orders to protect reproductive freedom.

This is "State Lines".

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Hello again, welcome to "State Lines".

I'm Kelly McCullen.

We have a great panel sitting around this table today.

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Bob Orr.

Bob, you really, really need to be on this show this week.

- I'm glad to be here.

- Always welcome, Donna King of "The Carolina Journal", Cardinal & Pine's Billy Ball rounding out our editors in chief panel today.

And on the end debuting, Chair of the North Carolina Libertarian Party, Ryan Brown enters the deep water.

Are you ready to go, Ryan?

- Ready to go.

- Welcome to "State Lines" by the way.

- Thank you, thanks for having me.

- First time on, and certainly not the last, but lots going on this week, beginning with the Supreme Court in North Carolina.

Now that state Supreme Court race remains in limbo.

Federal appeals are active to determine whether Jefferson Griffin's challenge of 60,000 voters and their 60,000 ballots belongs before a federal court or before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs on your left maintains her 734 vote lead and she'll also maintain, she's already won this election for North Carolina Supreme Court.

The Griffin campaign is arguing up to 60,000 voters may not be entitled to vote in North Carolina and that many people cast ballots from outside our state, Bob, who have no intention of living here or either returning to North Carolina to live.

And I'm nervous being around you because you're a constitutional lawyer.

I've never seen a court case like this.

I've read a dozen articles in mass media and the way you describe it, most of us don't exactly see this the way it actually is or maybe reporting it a little bit off.

But what's going on?

- Well, it really is a complex set of cases and legal issues that are before two court systems.

And the one we need to focus on right now is the US Fourth Circuit, which will be hearing oral arguments on the question of whether the case should go back to the state court system for resolution or whether it should stay in the federal system in front of Federal District Court Judge Meyers.

And so those arguments are January 27th and I think we'll get a fairly quick decision on that.

And it either goes back to the state court, and I think there's still a long way to go if that's where it ends up.

Or it goes back to Judge Meyer and he'll have a hearing or a trial on it.

- I wanna ask you, what's the difference if your case goes before a federal judge versus goes through and up to the state Supreme Court?

- Well, you obviously have a federal system and federal laws.

There has to be a federal question and that's what they're arguing over.

The Justice Riggs camp is saying that the Help America Vote Act is the federal issue in this case, and therefore it's a federal question.

And you have a specific court system all the way potentially up to the US Supreme Court.

If it's not a federal question, it has to work its way up through the state court system, ultimately to the Supreme Court.

And one of the kind of funky aspects of this is that Judge Griffin's lawyers filed this petition for a writ with the Supreme Court and seemed to sort of bypass the trial court.

And if it goes back, I think that's one of the issues that'll have to be resolved.

Where's it supposed to be?

- Lots of legal issues here.

I did see the Republican Party of North Carolina tweeted back at some of the dialogue we had online this week and said, you know what?

The State Board of Elections knew about this problem and did nothing about it, so now we're in court.

- Right.

- What do you make about this?

This has always been a problem and no one's ever called it out?

- Sure, sure.

I mean, some of this is because of a big chunk of those votes is 5,500 votes or so.

What Judge Griffin's attorneys are saying in their filing that you just mentioned on Tuesday, is that really this needs to be focused on those 5,500 votes from overseas that did not submit a photo ID.

- [Host] Not 60,000 votes.

- Right, they want them to first really look at these 5,500 votes that of course, under North Carolina's voter ID law, even absentee mail-in ballots have to have a copy of that photo ID or a form saying they don't have one in the front envelope of that ballot as it gets mailed in.

And what they're saying is that the North Carolina State Board of Elections accepted those anyway.

So they say that the State Supreme Court really needs to focus on those 5,500 ballots first.

Now they allude, they say they believe that maybe that could turn the race.

- Well, can I jump in just for one second?

- Please, yeah.

- That is the one issue that the State Board of Elections was unanimous in ruling in favor of Justice Riggs' position.

And so you had the Republican members of the state board saying that there was not a problem with those overseas military voters and residents complying with a regulation and statute that had been in place for a number of years, and voting without a photo ID.

So it's an interesting dynamic to that focus.

- Billy, let me screw my head back on straight here.

Let's take this to a partisan political battle here.

Now we've got really good lawyers who are doing what lawyers do, look at the law, find advantages, or you would call 'em loopholes, but if Jefferson Griffin's team can make a valid point that there are illegal or improper ballots filed, why wouldn't he and his team go for that?

- I think that's certainly what they're arguing, is that they're entitled to do this.

And of course, any candidate is entitled to, of course, the recounts, they're entitled to the questions about the process.

What this sure looks like though is changing the rules after the election has happened, and it boils down as well to can you prove that any of these voters are not eligible voters in North Carolina?

The bigger picture here too, which I'm, you know, I don't know what the justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court are talking about or thinking about behind the scenes, but I hope that they have in their minds that people are beginning, or they're well past the point of viewing the court as a partisan tool.

And that should be troubling to anybody who comes from the judiciary and wants to see these courts as we need them to be, this independent part of the process.

And right now there's a concern, are we setting a standard that elections aren't gonna hold up unless you also hold the court too?

So I think there's a lot of concern about where we head after this election.

- Ryan, what's interesting, libertarians, they scrap and scrounge for every vote that you can get.

And in this case, it's a very high profile race.

We're a judge at this point says, you know, "I'd win if every legal vote was counted "and every improper vote was discarded," or at least he believes that.

What's the libertarian take on this?

It's a system versus democracy.

- Sure, well, obviously libertarians want every legal vote to count and no illegal votes to count.

But I think part of the problem is that as it was raised earlier, this was known about back in December of 2023, and so there's been a over a year of discussion about this, and it's a partisan board of elections.

So right now, it's almost impossible for a libertarian or an independent to be on the State Board of Elections.

So I think the real cause, something that we should look at to change is to get either an independent or add more parties to the State Board of Elections.

That way there's more diversity on the board, it's not a straight three-two majority voting across party lines and maybe we wouldn't have to go to court, which is also partisan, with basically Republicans or Democrats, so I think if we could make the State Board of Elections not as partisan, we might be able to get some of these issues dealt with before an election, so we're not going back after the election and trying to challenge ballots.

- That's how you do it, Bob.

Come right on the show, go right to a policy proposal.

- And you're exactly right.

I mean, unaffiliated voters are, essentially, and Libertarians, left out of the state board and local board, so I think there's a real value there, but I would encourage folks to read the dissent by Justice Dietz, who is a conservative Republican- - In North Carolina Supreme Court.

- On the North Carolina Supreme Court.

He said, "There may be valid issues, but under a federal doctrine called the Purcell doctrine, these lawsuits should be dismissed."

- Don't wreck an election and make people doubt elections.

Isn't that the gist of it?

- Yeah, it's a very powerful dissent.

I encourage people to read it.

- All right, Governor Josh Stein has announced new executive orders he says will protect reproductive freedoms, both in and out of North Carolina.

He's ordering all state agencies to protect medical privacy and protect doctors who provide legal abortion services, so state government will not be collaborating on requests for information on who's had an abortion or the medical providers who offer them.

Governor Stein says it's already state law.

He's just clarifying things.

- There are other states that have passed bans on abortions and seek to come into North Carolina and govern the behavior of medical providers in this state.

They do not need to worry that the state of North Carolina will somehow assist law enforcement in another state to reach into North Carolina for having done something that is legal in North Carolina.

There is some information that the General Assembly has required clinics to provide to the state when it comes to an abortion.

I wanna make sure that the women of North Carolina know that we are gonna do everything in our power to protect that privacy, to make sure that it remains sacrosanct because it should be their decision to make.

- Donna, we've have legislators on this show for months and years now, a couple years now.

I've never heard of a state coming in and demanding that in-state doctors and the government provide information for prosecutorial purposes.

However, I have heard of that being a possibility in other states.

- Sure, sure.

No, I mean, I have not heard of that either.

I mean, I think a couple of things.

One, I think the fact that people are coming to North Carolina to access abortion indicates that, you know, speaks to North Carolina having probably the least-restrictive rules on it in the Southeast and it shows that the Women and Children's Act is providing that access to abortion that Stein and his supporters wanted in the first place.

The other question then is, so if it's not happening, why this now?

And that's an important point to make because what this does really is stoke those embers of what Stein ran on.

This issue was a big part of his campaign and this is telling those Democrats to keep the checks coming.

I mean, you know, that is one of those things that he's really going to use this issue.

It shows that he's gonna use this issue through his governorship in there, which also brings us to, he spent a lot of time and done some good work on saying, "Look, I wanna work with the legislature.

I want to build a better working relationship than we've had for the last four years."

So which is it?

That's the issue.

Why this right now?

And I really think that we're looking at, you know, stoking those embers of disagreement rather than finding somewhere where they can, you wanna work with the legislature or do you want to govern with executive orders?

- Billy, why would conservatives view that as antagonistic if Josh Stein is saying, "I don't want state government helping outside prosecutors who come in and demand government access to private information."

You know, I think with Governor Stein, you can view this as either getting more checks from Democrats or you can view it as delivering on what he- He has put himself forward as a candidate, which is a supporter of reproductive freedom.

Whether it's antagonistic to the legislature or not, I think the legislature has been clear in their intentions to restrict abortion rights.

We've had legislators who said that if elections go well, 12 weeks isn't enough, that they'll roll this back further.

I don't think that that's a ridiculous thing for supporters.

- But that guy lost by about a million and a half votes.

- But Republicans are still in charge of the legislature.

- [Participant] True.

- So, you know, I think what this is is this is America after Roe is gone.

You've got states that are either going to be supportive of reproductive rights and offer some sort of safe haven or you have ones that are going to go after them.

I think Governor Stein is making it clear that he wants North Carolina to be a place that offers some sort of safe haven.

- Ryan, what do you make of Josh Stein going sort of western North Carolina, makes a big announcement on a social issue that was part of his platform.

So he, to everyone's credit, he's doing what he said he would do.

- Yeah, I think it's a consequence of the split government.

I don't think he's gonna get anything outta the general assembly that's gonna be more restrictive on abortion.

So I think in order to appeal to the base and, you know, make it look like he's strong on the issue he puts out in executive order.

I do like the fact that from a libertarian perspective, it's a nullification of federal law, a potential federal law.

So the feds come in asking for health records, it's nullifying that the state and saying the state's not required or allowed to help.

So I do like that aspect of it.

But yeah, I think this is just him trying to appeal to the base, say, Hey, we're, you know, we can still make some changes.

We can still be purple in the south and we're not gonna be hard read like the other states.

- One thing about the feds coming in wanting information, what about other states coming in wanting information?

- I think that's fine as well if you wanna block them.

I don't think we should be telling other states any sort of medical history to be honest.

It should just be between the doctors and their patients, regardless of whatever the issue is.

- Bob, I have to say I'm getting to be an old man now, I've never heard of policies passed by legislatures that would empower prosecutors to go to other states wanting to know what I was up to.

- Yeah, and let me just say, I think the announcement was in Charlotte, and I just wanna be clear, that's not in Western- - That's not Western North Carolina.

- That's not Western North Carolina.

But people hit him on it.

They said he went that way and then discussed this instead of holding- - I think Donna makes a valid point about the timing of this, particularly right after the inaugural address where he called on working together with Republicans and staying away from hot button social issues.

And so while I fully understand, you know, the thrust of what he's trying to accomplish, there is some question about the timing now.

And maybe it would've been better if it had been in response to an actual request from Texas or one of these states with extraordinarily restrictive women's health laws in response.

- Why wouldn't he just shut that off now before that happens and creates a stink in the media and in public discourse?

- Well, it's always easier to me to talk about a specific case and situation as opposed to sort of the broad general parameters of what he has instructed his government to do, but I'm not sure it's for fundraising purposes.

I do think, you know, the base in this issue is important to the governor and his supporters.

So maybe it was okay to get it out now, but the timing was a little- - Donna, last word on this one.

- Sure.

I mean, I think one of the other things that raises a red flag for me a little bit is that we have seen a dramatic increase in executive orders since 2020.

And I think that what we're seeing here is rather than going to the legislature and working with the legislature and saying, Hey, I'd like to put some safeguards in place for patient information privacy and finding some common ground, we're going through executive order and I'm hoping that that is not a trend that we're gonna see continue into the Stein administration.

- No bills are filed yet.

They could do it.

- Can I say that I think that, when it comes to working with the legislature, that's a nice idea.

But we're talking about a legislature that's having fake hurricane bills to take powers from people who just won elections.

So I don't think that we're talking about this cordial exchange of information.

I would love that, but I don't think that's reality.

So I think what Governor Stein has done is work in the reality that we have in North Carolina.

- The US Department of Transportation is releasing $335 million in new funding for highway construction for western North Carolina and parts of eastern Tennessee.

Most of that new cash is earmarked to actually rebuild portions of Interstate 40 here in North Carolina.

The program has now received over a half a billion dollars.

It's being called Emergency Relief Bill.

It allows for the quick release of funding without all the red tape.

And also earlier this week, FEMA extended those housing vouchers so folks displaced by the hurricane Helene can remain in hotels.

That was going to expire.

It was causing a big panic on Capitol Hill and among the local regional advocates and politicians.

So things are moving along, the safety net is in place, it appears, in western North Carolina.

No one seems to be complaining about the safety net now.

- Yeah, the problem with the word "emergency" is it makes everything like this sound like a moment.

These things linger.

Ask anyone out in eastern North Carolina after Matthew, ask the folks out in California who are going to be feeling these wildfires for a long time.

The folks in western North Carolina, the same.

These are going to be problems for them for a long time.

Losing everything, losing your home, it's not something you just get over with once the TV cameras leave.

So I think that that's what we're talking about here, is making sure that we don't have people who are out in the streets, out in the streets in the winter because we didn't provide some sort of safety net for people who've lost everything.

And truly, that's what's happened.

If you look at what's happened out in western North Carolina, just flattened areas.

We had a reporter out in Chimney Rock this week.

This is a long-term thing for North Carolina to address.

And frankly, as climate change causes more and more of these types of once-in-a-generation storms to happen, I think we're going to need to have a way to respond quickly and effectively.

- Ryan, what do you make of $500 million coming in?

We're going to rebuild these highways, open Interstate 40.

We can get to Nashville again, get to Memphis, and as well as at least keep folks who don't have a way of moving into anywhere else to live, they can stay in the hotel.

But it's government coming in and helping bridge that gap for now, at least till March with the housing.

- Sure.

Yeah.

As Libertarians, we believe in the private charity that can help these people.

However, the government's already taken our money, they already have it, so we might as well spend it on something that's useful.

So the $500 million coming in is going to be helpful to build the roads, rebuild the roads, and whatnot.

To Josh Stein's credit, his first seven executive orders were all dealing with Helene in the West.

And what it did is it reduced a lot of the regulations based on transporting fuel and food and how many hours people could work.

And I'm sitting here thinking, "Why do we have those in the first place?"

Because they're preventing the recovery and it's taken three months to get those lifted.

So, why do we have those in the first place?

And second off, I think Josh Stein has a real opportunity to work with the legislature to put in place some sort of system that allows the people who are paying full property taxes on their properties that have had their houses washed into the river some sort of relief.

We have an extension to the FEMA housing vouchers, but those are done in January 28th.

So it's just two more weeks.

There has to be long-term changes and we have to allow the people to rebuild.

And all of the emergency declarations are only working with how the government of North Carolina can do procurement.

- If you line up policies of what the state should explore, it seems like there's a lot of work to be done in the long session.

The property tax issue is a real issue.

There's no legal mechanism to not let people, People have to pay taxes regardless if the house is there or not.

The red-tape issue Ryan brings up makes the world go faster, easier in recovery.

So why isn't that normal?

Why do we have to go back to a default bureaucracy that makes things that more difficult whence we're healed?

- Well, it's finding the right balance between regulation and freedom to build in a floodplain and not be able to get insurance.

And then the flood comes along, you've lost your home.

You have no insurance, you can't really build back.

But let me say, on the 500 million, that's for I-40, which is an important quarter from Wilmington through all the way to California, ultimately.

But there are so many other road issues around West and North Carolina that were impacted by the hurricane.

And that's primarily gonna be the state's responsibility.

There's gonna be a huge need for the legislature and the governor to work together if we're going to address these kinds of issues that Billy and Ryan have been talking about.

- And next week, we got a presidential transition.

We'll see if the flow continues here, Donna.

North Carolina congresswoman, Virginia Foxx, has been elected to a very high-ranking committee chair in Congress.

She will be chairing the House Rules Committee for speaker Mike Johnson.

Representative Foxx can and will control which House bills reach the floor for debate and vote.

And, Ryan, she's the only chairwoman of the 119th Congress.

Just a tidbit on that.

But Virginia Foxx has been around a while, and where she's from, she's popular.

- She is.

I, however, think that Thomas Massey is probably one of the most heroic senators that we have, or congressman that we have right now.

He was great at standing up against a lot of the spending in the last five years that's caused the inflation we have right now.

He's butted heads with Donald Trump so much so that Donald Trump has told him that he needs to be removed from the GOP.

So he wasn't necessarily Trump's guy, he doesn't wanna go along with all the spending that Trump does.

Virginia Foxx, on the other hand, has been around since 2004.

She is very popular, but she does support the inflationary spending for the war on terror, the war in Europe, the war in China, the war in the Middle East, all of these wars that cost us money at home.

And she's in support of taking North Carolina taxpayer money and sending it out to the rest of the world.

So maybe it's a bit cynical, but I foresee a lot of inflationary spending in America's second bills, unlike when Thomas Massey was in charge.

- Billy, Virginia Foxx, Republican, conservative, loved and hated both in the political circles, but she's the rules chair, that makes you very powerful.

Could be good things for North Carolina when you need support.

- Possibly.

Representative Foxx, she would seem to fit the mold.

She has proceeded the Make America Great Again movement.

But she fits that sort of mold of politician, and she kind of fits in with North Carolina's history of politicians, with people like Jesse Helms, who were antagonistic to people who disagreed with him and beloved by people who agreed with him.

So I think Representative Foxx fits in with that quite nicely and will probably fit in well with what Trump is intending to do in Congress.

- Donna, I don't think government will shrink under Donald Trump's presidency.

[Donna laughing] So what does it mean to have a rules chairwoman- - Sure.

- from the Triad coming in and helping us out?

- Well, this is a critically powerful position, rules chairman.

This person becomes the traffic cop, judges how fast things are gonna move, what they're really gonna consider, getting some cohesive agreement within the caucus.

This is a really critical position.

And she has proven over the last 20 years, over the two decades, to be a tough, tough person to work with, and really holds the line.

She's a Trump supporter.

Actually, I would disagree about the spending point, she has been really fighting for reducing spending and those things.

She's been a pretty strong conservative and has supported the Trump agenda and I think that she really is going to push that when we go into there as the world's chairman.

- Very quickly on this one.

- I think it's a great help for North Carolina on the hurricane relief because how much money and whether those bills get pushed through and how much of that money comes to Western North Carolina, and maybe even Eastern North Carolina, is critical to have the rules chairperson from the state.

- All right, I wanna move, we've got 90 seconds, we're gonna run the table on this last thing, but it's interesting, the 2026 Republican primary for US Senate took a bit of shape this week.

Businessman, Andy Nielsen says he's running for the seat currently held by US Senator, Tom Tillis.

Nielsen is active in Republican politics, he worked on Richard Vinroot's gubernatorial campaigns, Bob, and he ran for Lieutenant Governor a few years ago, he's also worked with you, the media says, on an alternative 2020 Republican National Convention and, of course, that means Team Tillis comes out and says he's a never Trumper and so there we are already, not even sworn in the new president, we're looking ahead to the midterms.

I got just like 15 seconds for everyone.

Tell us about Mr. Nielsen.

- I think he has shifted more towards the Trump MAGA segment and he's just one of many patriots who will jump into this primary.

- Donna, is this an uphill battle?

Tom Tillis seems to- - Right.

He's gonna be really fighting name recognition.

I had not heard of him until we talked about doing this and so jumping in early, maybe he's hoping to build it, but I think that's gonna be his biggest problem.

- Billy what does it say about politics?

You can run in a primary for statewide office and still be an unknown once you throw your hat in the ring for US Senate.

- Well, he threw it in early so he's given himself some time to build that name recognition.

But this was always going to be a difficult election for Tillis and if he gets out of the primary, it's gonna be very difficult election in the general.

- Ken Nielsen played the spoiler.

You know, a thing too about spoiling some races.

What can you do?

- Regardless of who wins the primary, the Libertarians are looking to run someone and we'll make sure we get good Republicans or Democrats and if not, we'll spoil.

- All right, that's the- [guests laughing] That's the show.

Judge, good to have you on.

Thanks for explaining all this Riggs business.

- I'm trying.

- Griffin business.

Donna, always ready to have you.

Happy New Year.

- Good to see you.

- Billy, good to see you back.

Good luck on your "Southern Storytellers," be watching online for that, as well as read Cardinal & Pine and nice debut Ryan.

Thanks, you represent the libertarians well.

- Thank you.

- All right, that's it for us here.

Thank you for watching.

We always appreciate you most.

Email me, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I appreciate you.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next time.

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