- The state senate convenes to address election reform proposals, new powers for the Supreme Court and new hemp regulations.

And Governor Stein wants real teeth behind Duke Energy's promises to protect electricity customers from the effects of big data.

This is State Lines.

- Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

♪ - Welcome to State Lines, I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, political analyst Joe Stewart.

WUNC News' Colin Campbell.

To his right, Kimberly Reynolds of Maven Strategies.

And the debuting Patrick Sebastian of Opinion Diagnostics.

Hello Patrick, welcome to the show.

- Good to be here.

- Well, summer's almost over, Joe.

- Just about.

Back to school.

It's gonna be turning colors on the trees here soon.

- Back to school, back to Raleigh this week, where the North Carolina Senate convened and passed some legislation, including more state elections reforms.

It's House Bill 958, if you want to look it up on the internet, it's there.

Cut seven days off the early voting period for the primaries and city elections.

Federal databases could be used to detect ineligible voters.

Candidates running in party primaries would need to have been part of that party for one calendar year, not just 90 days.

And the state DMV could and would supply Social Security numbers for use maintaining voter rolls.

House, I'm told, is scheduled to convene next week.

And of course, you would expect that to be on the calendar, Joe.

But until you see it, and until you see them take up that bill, we don't know.

- I think these issues have been much discussed and debated.

There's federal legislation, the SAVE Act.

President Trump is very keen on getting passed in the U.S.

Congress.

I think this is an election year issue.

Republicans are interested in being able to feel as though they've delivered on some greater protection of the integrity of the election process.

I think there are voter segments that are key and critical to Republicans that feel as though there's some doubt as to whether the electoral system in this country is fully operating fairly.

I think it is important, though, as a matter of public policy, to distinguish between being worried about the process and being upset with the results.

And so, to some extent, I think these provisions, some of which would make sense, we have extended the period of time people can vote.

It used to be you had that one day, and you had to go to a place to vote.

We have made it a lot more customer-friendly by having early voting and absentee ballots and those sorts of things.

But there is an expense to elections.

And if you have an extended duration where people can vote, there's more money that's needed to do that.

I do think it's an important thing for the people of America to feel that there's confidence, that elections are run fairly.

I think there's a lot that needs to be invested.

It may be time to look at the way we're structured in North Carolina.

We have a state board of election and 100 county boards of elections.

Maybe there needs to be some better system to centralize the way elections are managed in North Carolina.

But I do think this is likely to be taken up by the House, and I think it will be an issue that Republicans in the legislature want to talk about when they go back into the district.

- Set aside integrity, I mean, that's what this is about.

However, it's politicians doing political things and where the topic is the election, so you might as well do your right off half the state buying into these changes or are people gonna be open-minded?

- I mean, it's gonna be perceived as political.

I mean, certainly the cuts to early voting, a lot of people see that as reduced opportunities to vote.

Of course, the argument in favor of cutting early voting just for the primaries is that a lot of those days don't get very well used.

You've got the early birds who show up on day one and it's crowded, and then there's hardly anybody coming in for a few days.

Then you get to the end of the early voting and suddenly it's crowded again.

So this condenses that.

But this was a big priority for Senate Leader Phil Berger, who notably just lost a primary recently in part because the early vote really didn't go his way.

Election day votes did go his way.

So certainly there's a political element to this.

- Yeah, Kimberly.

- I think you also have to look at it in the larger scope of what's being done in elections bills and some of the changes they've made.

First of all, I think our system isn't broken and it's really important to start out by saying that.

And so the integrity of our elections is strong.

And so there's this part that that just needs to be said out loud.

I think you also have them removing early vote locations from college campuses, which primarily helps Democrats.

And so you've seen some of those moves.

You have seen them giving the local boards that are run by Republicans the ability to throw out votes.

They only need the majority, which is the Republicans, to do that now, which is a huge change.

And so I think there are going to be a lot of tight races.

You saw Phil Berger on election night only down by or lost by two.

You've seen a couple of House and Senate races last year, tight by a thousand or less, Allison Riggs.

So they're also getting control so that if they have the outcomes are in play, they can control those outcomes.

- Well, if you'll just look to your right, you'll see someone who had a say in Sam Page's victory in that Senate race.

Would you have lost that race if early voting were only, were seven days shorter?

- No, I don't think so.

I think it would just been condensed into 10 days.

And the goal of early voting is simply voter participation.

And I think going from 17 days to 10 days is fine, provided that we maybe have more early voting locations in that 10-day period.

So you can have voter participation at the same level as it is in 17 days.

And also we shouldn't forget as well, when you have 17 days of early voting plus election day, that's like 18 election days.

It's incredibly taxing on the system, on the board of elections, on those staff who work around the clock during that time.

And if we can have fewer days and perhaps more locations during that amount of time, I don't see actually having any drop off in early vote at all.

- Why is there a perception that longer early voting periods benefit only Democrats?

This country elected Donald Trump with plenty of early voting.

I'm confused about why is there not only a fear, but a tactical opposition to early voting being extended?

- I think some of it's the cost and some of it's the strain on the system.

But it used to be, in 2008, Democrats killed in an early vote, what made it impossible for John McCain to come back in North Carolina and beat Obama, 'cause he didn't.

But actually Republicans have done much, much better in early vote over the last couple of election cycles.

So I don't, from a political standpoint, I don't have a problem with early voting at all.

I like to have more access.

I just don't know if you need to have 17 days of it and strain the system.

- Joe, really quickly, there's this using federal databases to keep ineligible voters off the rolls.

People don't like ineligible voters on the rolls.

I'm also noticing here, social security numbers though, used to track voters.

When I was a kid, remember that was a thing.

They would never use the social security number to track an American citizen.

That's a bit different than the old days.

- Yeah, no, I think the intention here is to make sure that the voter rolls are being maintained appropriately, that you don't have people that are ineligible either because they're not lawful to vote or they're passed away and they shouldn't be voting as a result of that.

I think the idea is if you have the additional digits in a social security number, you're more likely to get an absolute match of a person on the voter roll.

You know, DMV using the four digits was really just to make sure that there was a little bit of integrity in terms of the transmission of the information onto the voter roll.

But I think this is just a desire to make sure it's absolutely correct and so they can identify whether someone's lawfully on the roll or not.

- Kimberly, and this idea that a candidate needs to be a member of their party for one calendar year, you're seeing this around America.

People are running in parties where they've never voted in that party, but somehow they're proudly Republican or proudly Democrat.

This spoiler thing to confuse voters, is that more conspiracy?

I see it and I think it's weird.

- Well, I think that's, I disagree at least in North Carolina that they haven't been voting with that party.

A lot of people are unaffiliated voters, but they are pulling a Democratic ballot or a Republican ballot and you've seen that.

I mean, even Bob Briner was an unaffiliated and then ran as a Republican as a state treasurer.

So I think you've seen that everywhere.

I think a year is a really long time to say, "Oh, if you haven't done that in a year, you can't."

Especially if you can see where they've been and that you can see they've been a Democrat or a Republican.

I think that they have seen some folks that they are like, "Oh, it's just tightening and making hard for candidate recruitment."

- Yeah, and unaffiliated voters are the largest share of the voting population, but if you wanna run for office, unless you wanna go through a really cumbersome petition process, you've gotta sign up as a Republican or a Democrat before you file.

- Is this an issue in North Carolina?

The Sullivan race, there's an Alaska and US Senate race where the guy has the same name.

I mean, there are two candidates with the same name.

Is that happening in North Carolina?

I've heard of Democrats running in the Republican primary sometimes.

- You've had some party switches.

We had a Supreme Court race, I guess maybe in 2018, where you had people posing as the other party to be able to run and muck up the system.

We had that happen.

And we've had some former Democrats switch to Republican and run statewide recently.

So it does happen, but I'm just not too worried about it.

And one year to me is fine.

- All right, well, Senate Republicans have supported this week giving more power to the state Supreme Court to sanction judges or remove trial judges who are under investigation.

The proposal would give the state Supreme Court power to punish and remove justices or judges, whether or not the Judicial Standards Commission has recommended it.

The state Supreme Court justice could remove trial judges if the Judicial Standards Commission advises removal.

The House could vote on this bill as well next week.

Patrick, this is one of those that's down in the weeds.

So the Supreme Court can just take a judge, lower judge off, and then it doesn't matter.

But the Supreme Court justice can only take out a trial judge if given permission.

Is that right?

- Right, yeah.

Well, you have to go through the committee process to be recommended to go through the court.

But I thought they'd go ahead and give this power to Dave Boliek like they've given all the other power to.

But so it's a nice, it's a change here.

But let's put the motivations for this law aside for a second and just talk about the pure politics of it.

And my question to my Republican friends is simple.

If instead of conservative Justice Newby being the Supreme Court chief justice, it was Chief Justice Anita Earls instead, would you be voting for this bill?

And if you would not vote for this bill, if it was Chief Justice Democrat Anita Earls, I wouldn't recommend voting for it now.

Because if Republicans lose this year in 2026, the Supreme Court seat, and then they lose in 2028, there's three seats up in 2028, the court's gonna change from Democrat to Republican in just a couple of years.

So this kind of power could be corrupted.

I don't think Newby would corrupt this power, but we don't know who the next chief justice would be.

And this is a lot of power to give to somebody that we don't know or we don't trust.

Why start now?

Why start the precedent?

So they trust the Republicans, Kimberly, and don't trust a Democratic Supreme Court justice.

That's what I heard.

- That's what I heard, and I find it laughable.

And I also think... - You should be on my side on this one.

- Yeah.

Well, we are in a little bit of different way.

I mean, I do think the question to ask is, what problem are they trying to solve for?

And I can't figure out what the problem is.

And I'm not a lawyer.

This is beyond me.

But digging in and trying to answer this question just to sit here today, I don't know why they're doing this.

I think judicial standards, they made some changes in 2023 to judicial standards to change who actually appointed the members, to move that around to give them more appointments.

So judicial standards is, by what I can see, doing a good job.

It needs to be independent from the judiciary.

I have no idea why we would consolidate this power and give it to someone.

When I see Newby, I see someone... It wouldn't be the Supreme Court making it up.

It would be Justice Newby always, because that's who runs that court.

So I don't think... I have a different opinion on that one.

- Colin, I was never on the court beat.

I was on a lot of beats at the legislature.

But when it comes to the Supreme Court, now that it's partisan races and partisan people serving as justices overtly, where's the influence gonna come from?

If not from a standards commission, would it be political parties pushing on justices in these districts?

- I have no idea.

Potentially.

And you see some of that with the Judicial Standards Commission.

I mean, there's some more political appointees on that.

In fact, just this past couple weeks, the legislature has an appointments bill that puts Paul Kobel on that.

And if you're not familiar with Paul Kobel, former Republican Raleigh mayor, now is the legislative services officer.

So essentially the appointed guy who runs the legislature from an operational standpoint.

He will be on the Judicial Standards Commission soon.

So certainly all these appointment powers are getting shifted around.

And all of these appointed boards are getting more and more partisan and political, with more of a influence from the legislature, and sometimes in this case, the Supreme Court majority.

- Joe, is it really becoming more partisan, or is it just Democrats and people who don't like Republicans going, "Oh, it's being more Republican, but it would be just fine if it were the other side."

- You know, it's interesting.

I was on a panel at the North Carolina Bar Association Conference recently, and they commissioned a survey every couple of years to ask voters about this issue of partisan elections for the judiciary.

And interestingly enough, I mean, 78% of the respondents of that survey said they absolutely supported these positions being elected, but 71% said they wished it was nonpartisan.

And so I think people do have a hope that somebody serving in a judicial role would be impartial, and they are sworn to be impartial in that regard.

But in the context of an election where it is partisan and they have to appeal to the voters, there's going to be an additional complexity to all of this.

And I think Patrick's right.

The thing that will be interesting in two years, when we have three Supreme Court races on the ballot and, in effect, possibility of a partisan shift in the balance of power in the state Supreme Court, we may for the first time see somewhere upwards of $100 million or $150 million come in, in support of and opposition to these candidates.

Is that the kind of elected judges we want, where there's a lot of money being spent?

Or are we looking for people that are going to be just good jurists that can run successfully as Democrats or Republicans?

- Who puts $150 million into a "nonpartisan race" where everything is impartial.

Come on.

- Well, it's partisan, but the 2028 race will, in effect, help shape the state Supreme Court leading in the 2030 redistricting, and the ultimate litigation will occur as a result of that.

- All right.

Well, let's calm down.

Let's talk about hemp.

- So exciting, yeah.

- Very exciting.

- Great segue.

- Nothing says PBS like a good judicial theory and policy discussion.

Well, law enforcement agencies say state lawmakers should follow through and ban people under 21 years old from buying CBD and THC hemp products in North Carolina.

It's House Bill 328.

That would, in fact, establish that 21-year-old minimum age, but also align the state hemp regulations with incoming federal regulations that industry observers say and local business owners tell lawmakers would wipe out a growth industry.

Whatever state is or was a top 10 state for hemp products, there's bipartisan consensus, Kimberly, that there are a lot of cheap foreign products out there, the gas station hemp.

It's a big problem.

You've got local breweries, other producers, and their lobbyists trying to ring the bell saying, "Hey, we do things the right way.

We're being unfairly maligned with this gas station level of product."

This one gets complicated as well.

People like to use the hemp products in this state.

The law enforcement wants lawmakers to make a law to give them something to enforce or write tickets or whatever.

Help me sort it.

- Well, I don't know how to sort it, but I can say I think there would be consensus about the part to raise the age to 21.

I mean, I have two high school children.

You can see a hemp shop from their high school.

I mean, they are -- I feel like they bought that location targeting that high school.

So I think that is a problem.

But the hemp industry is a $3.5 billion industry for North Carolina, and to go and go under the federal regulations and just wipe that industry out is alarming.

And I just don't think that's the way you should do business.

- For those of you in PR, do either of you -- do you have hemp customers?

- I do not have hemp customers.

- Okay, so we can talk about this with a pure heart, Colin Campbell.

It is an interesting issue to the point they're selling a controlled product, a regulated or semi-regulated product in front of high schools and all.

But this bill just lumps everyone together, puts us back to, I guess, wherever we were five, six, seven years ago.

- It sets this federal standard, which very well could change at the federal level.

There's a push within the Trump administration to change some of these rules before they take effect in November.

But this would make this permanent for North Carolina, regardless of what happens in D.C.

And one of the hemp advocates that I talked to described it as basically, you're claiming it's not a full-on ban, but this would be like if you said, you can sell beer, but it has to be 0.1 percent ABV, but basically water.

So you're effectively banning most of what's on the market now.

And you've got now craft breweries, beer distributors that are involved in selling these products that are very much opposed to this, because this is going to take out a chunk of their market.

Particularly the THC beverages have become so mainstream that they're in grocery stores and Total Wine and Target and things like that, and restaurants as well.

So certainly a big shift coming if the House pushes this.

I think you're going to see a big lobbying push when lawmakers come back in the House next week.

- Joe, we've got the free market out there.

The folks do like it, but you do, it is intoxicating.

You represent the insurance industry in some regards.

So I can see both sides.

- Well, it's interesting for me as a native North Carolinian to think of this as an issue in a state that had prohibition 10 years before it was a national thing.

And the original liquor stores run by the state had walk-up counters, so you had to ask for what you wanted because they felt the shame would keep you from getting too much.

And now we're talking about hemp, and we have marijuana for sale on the Cherokee reservation.

So it's a very different state.

I do think this issue from a political standpoint is probably more generational than it is partisan or ideological.

A younger cohort of Americans feel very differently about these kinds of things.

And I think maybe, perhaps, it's just the nature of a North Carolina that's predominantly people from other parts of the country and increasingly driven politically by younger generations of voters.

I think there's going to be a desire to see this stuff made available.

- I actually disagree with that.

I think you're finding a lot of older generation people, people in pain, people who can't sleep.

- There's billboards that are like gummies for grandpa or something.

- Yes.

And I think, again, I just think if you want to make some changes and you want to protect young people, that's one thing.

But coming in and wiping out an industry wholesale is completely different.

- You better jump in here, Patrick.

This is the way it goes.

- This is effectively a ban is what it is.

And people may not know bill numbers, but they are going to remember the legislators who took away their gummies off the shelf.

And I got to tell you, these gummies -- I know it's not the only product, but that product is very, very popular.

And people of all age groups take them, one reason, in lieu of alcohol, because it doesn't give you a hangover the next day.

It's a way to have a little bit of relief without a hangover the next day.

So they're very, very popular.

I think the legislature is badly underestimating the anger this is going to cause.

We tried this at a much different level with alcohol, tried to ban alcohol.

This thing is already available on shelves.

So to remove it, it's going to cause quite a stir.

And it's not a risk I don't think I would take.

What I would recommend politically is to just put guardrails on it, 21 or older, to buy it, get it away from schools.

Packaging has to have plenty of information, so people know what's in it, and test it and make sure it's quality product, so people aren't going on the black market after this stuff is banned and getting it from, ultimately, the cartel.

We don't need that in North Carolina.

- And the process on this is weird.

This bill popped up out of a conference committee kind of at the last minute of the session, went through the Senate without a whole lot of debate.

And they've been trying to pass Hemp Regulations for several years now, and the House and Senate haven't been able to get on the same page.

This is as close as they've gotten, but also the probably most drastic level of restrictions that we've seen proposed in this, as opposed to one of the other more basic kind of regulate this, make it 21 and up that we've seen in previous bills.

- What also makes this interesting, though, is that the Senate adjourned and went home.

So the House could pass this, the governor could veto it, and then where does it go between now and November?

- And if the House doesn't pass it, the Senate's not back until November, so some other sort of lesser hemp regulations that could be on the table, we're not going to see that until the end of the year.

- Does Governor Stein veto a bill if it goes to him on this?

- I mean, yeah, I would think that he probably would.

I mean, it's a $3.5 billion industry to North Carolina, and it jumped from open to essentially a ban, and there's got to be a middle place here.

- All right.

North Carolina's House will convene a session next week, as we've been discussing, with budget corrections that hemp, other bills available for a vote.

And of course, we really can't forget there are two veto bills still out there, eligible for veto overrides attempts.

The homeless can't ban on public lands that Governor Stein did veto.

He says it's too expensive for local governments to actually cover the cost of.

And there's House Bill 50 that the right is really watching and holding the Republican feet to the fire, allow permit-free concealed carry of firearms, called constitutional carry.

Everything I'm hearing, we've talked on this show, is that firearms bill appears dead because a couple in the Republican caucus simply will not vote to override, makes a three-fifths vote majority impossible, Colin.

What's the vibe heading into next week?

We've hammered on a few of these issues.

- Yeah, I'll be interested to see if we still have the two unaffiliated Charlotte reps who lost their primaries voting with Republicans, particularly on this homeless camping bill.

That seemed to get some Democratic support initially, so that might be Republicans in the House best shot at doing an override.

The gun bill really is some sort of a numbers game.

I think you could see House Speaker Destin Hall bring that up if enough people are absent.

And we certainly, in the Senate session this past week, there was a day where I think half the Democrats weren't there.

So it's certainly possible if he looks out there and sees the numbers he needs for this gun bill that it could go through, but it also might not.

And if it doesn't, and he doesn't have the numbers between now and the end of the year, then it goes away.

- Joe, I've heard from House Republicans, some of them are saying, "There's no way we're doing this bill.

It would cost us 10 seats."

- Yeah, well, it is three-fifths of the members present and voting, not three-fifths of the total body, so it does matter who's there on a particular day for this.

But I do think there are voices within the Republican caucus that are uneasy with the idea of taking away the permitting process for this.

We'll just have to see, but I don't know how significant it is in terms of the elections.

- What gets done next week, Patrick?

Hopefully, just no unforced errors is what happens next week.

If the votes aren't there for these issues, I think the Republicans need to pack it up, go home and campaign.

There's a few tough seats that are going to be difficult to keep in both the House and the Senate.

Having said that, I will note, these districts are drawn so well politically for Republicans that maybe you can blame the national environment for losing a handful of seats in the House.

But if it's a 10-seat difference or even over five seats, that would be a catastrophic failure at the legislative level and the campaign level of these caucuses.

And you don't want unforced errors at this point that are going to turn out even more people against you in a midterm election when we have somebody in the White House who's not especially popular.

- Kimberly, what could be done in this state in one week, that off week when you pass a handful of bills?

Could it help you?

Could it hurt you as a Democratic consultant?

- Well, I think Patrick is right, and it could hurt them.

I mean, they have the power.

They are controlling what is moving.

And they need to get home, because they see the environment collapsing for them.

And you've seen, no matter what poll I look at, the Democratic -- the generic ballot is favoring Democrats.

And they need to get in their districts, because the Democrats are ready to take advantage of that.

- All right.

I have a couple of minutes left.

I want to touch on the last report.

I saw this in Axios this week, that Duke Energy signed on to some White House pledge that would protect residential power customers from any higher prices that could be linked to increased data centers.

There is a settlement pending where Duke Energy would raise residential rates on North Carolina by a total of 9.5 percent over two years.

It focused citizen and political attention on power rate and the hikes.

This settlement could include having data centers pay the full cost of the new energy they would need.

Governor Stein says that's great.

The pledge to the White House, perfect.

Now put it in written policy for North Carolina, Colin.

Is it going to happen?

- Potentially.

I mean, I think that's the -- will be the interesting thing to watch here, is Stein is pointing out, rightly so, that if this wants to -- should be a real pledge by Duke Energy, then they've got to put it in writing to the Utilities Commission.

The Utilities Commission, as our state regulator, can then be the one to enforce it and make sure once you get into the fine print and into the weeds that truly the data centers are paying their own share of the power cost and it's not getting pushed around to other electricity consumers.

So this will be one to watch for sure.

- Joe, this is very quickly, is this about power -- is this about the power grid needing modernization or data centers -- we're blaming data centers for everything under the sun.

- I do think it's true that data center phenomena is a critical element of the infrastructure this country needs to be competitive globally because of all of the additional computing capacity that's needed for AI systems.

But people have a right to be concerned about the potential impact, not just on electricity rates but on the environment and other things.

But we need to get this resolved so that we can be competitive with places like China that are building these every day.

- Why would -- politically, why would a company in North Carolina go to the White House, make that agreement, but then come back to the state where they can put teeth into a policy and it's not really part of the deal right now, not so much?

- The bottom line, these data centers become politically toxic for local leaders to put into zonings.

They are getting thrown out of office when they pass these -- put these data centers in their backyards.

And that's unfortunate because we do need data centers.

If you have a cell phone, if you use technology, you can thank a data center for that.

They do provide great tax revenues for local economies.

But all people are hearing right now is that their energy rates are going to go up.

They're going to be using an inordinate amount of water.

They're very -- they say it very loud.

A lot of those things have been addressed.

A lot of those things really aren't actually true with modern data centers, new data centers.

But the fact of the matter is, these guys are going to have to spend a boatload of money with the PR war and educating the public on this, and also backing up local officials who support these things, because they're walking the plank for -- and they're going to get thrown out of office.

- Twenty seconds.

Last word to you, Ms.

Reynolds.

- Well, I think what people, consumers remember is the coal ash debacle, too, and where the shifting of who paid for that and who paid for coal ash cleanup.

So I have -- I think the governor is right to say, look, this is great.

Let's -- if you don't have a problem with it, let's put it in writing.

And I think consumers want to know that, too, because a lot can happen between you going to Washington and saying it and what happens at home.

- The last word goes to you, Patrick.

Great job.

You hung in there with this group of chatty folks.

E-mail us your opinions.

I will share it with this crowd.

StateLines@pbsnc.org I'm Kelly McCullen.

And thanks for watching.

See you next time.

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