- State lawmakers are returning to Raleigh next week with an agenda still being decided.

And close congressional races see one U.S.

House race flip to the Democrats and one poised to.

This is State Lines.

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♪ - Welcome back to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Mr.

Chris Sinclair of the Sinclair Agency.

Former North Carolina State Senator Mike Woodard and Maggie Barlow to his right of Maven Strategies.

Mitch Kokai is in seat four, as always, with the John Locke Foundation.

Hello everyone.

- Hello.

- Hello there.

- Another week past the election.

Now we can look forward to lawmakers returning to Raleigh.

It will happen next week for a legislative session.

Now this was a session that was scheduled prior to the campaign season.

House and Senate Republican leaders said earlier this week they didn't know the agenda for sure for this coming week.

But Senate Democratic leader Sidney Batch told WUNC News she had some concerns Republicans may try to spin down the state reserve funds ahead of Democrats taking the House and breaking that Republican Senate super majority.

Not much there, Mike.

I took what I could glean from my research.

Democrats are worried about what could happen in a so-called lame duck era of the legislature.

- Having survived a few of those lame duck sessions that stretched into December a few years, we'll remember, I understand the concern.

And while the Republican leadership and even rank and file members say they don't know, there's a long agenda, or I should say a menu, and it's a matter of what items they pull off the menu for consideration.

I'm thinking about the things I think that could and maybe should come up.

The gas tax.

Do we continue the moratorium on the gas tax?

That's scheduled to end at the end of this month, November.

You have three constitutional amendments that are gonna need statutory language before they can take effect or they just remain words in the Constitution as we've seen before.

Will we see the text for those statutes?

Because in this lame duck session, it'll be the last vestige of a super majority in the Republican-controlled Senate, and it's the last time that the Republicans, I shouldn't say last time, like forever and ever, but the Republicans lose their majority in the House.

So, what's on the Republican list that they could push through either this week or when they come back after Thanksgiving?

- Chris, how much juice is left in the Republican caucus tank on each side?

I mean, it's one thing to have a bad election year, and it's another thing to watch your super majority in the House or near it just go exactly 180 to the Democrats.

I mean, do you keep your mojo?

- I mean, I certainly think that you have a last hurrah as you leave Raleigh on the House side to leave the majority and have a very slim majority in the Senate.

Look, they announced this months ago that they were gonna come back, and they had some unfinished business.

I think the agenda does change a little bit based on what happened in the elections.

It might be good just to let everybody know why they're coming back, but they're not going to, I don't think so.

But I think to your point, the constitutional amendments, those three amendments were conservative amendments.

And to me, it was one of the sort of like messages that I read through in the election was, look, we had these big changes in terms of DNR and in the control of the General Assembly, but the voters said, we like all those things that the Republicans put on the ballot, and we like it by 60%.

So I think that's probably a really good place for them to sort of wrap up and get their last bit of how we implement those constitutional amendments.

I bet that's on the list.

- Maggie, how would you advise House Democrats and Senate Democrats to, what should they watch out for?

What should they plan for this November?

And then I think there's one more in December to officially adjourn the session.

- That's right.

Well, I really think that when these special sessions were called, as Chris said, they were just concerned about losing their super majorities.

And then now there has been a huge shift in the electorate.

And I just think that it's time for everybody to go back home, take a nice Thanksgiving holiday break, and not try to pass a bunch of stuff at the end.

Republicans are gonna have to work with Democrats next year.

It's a divided legislature.

And I think this just sets a really bad tone if they go in and do that.

- Mitch, what do you expect them to do?

Put on your old reporter hat from back in the day all the way through now that you're an analyst.

Should the Republicans go aggressive with their final weeks in office with the majorities they enjoy?

- I think if they tackle stuff that was on the plate during this session and sort of clear that out, that's probably fair game.

Doing a whole lot more beyond that could come back to bite them.

There's already been discussion about concern among the Democratic side.

We've heard it from folks who've been talking to the Republicans as well about them wanting to spend a whole lot of money just so Democrats can't spend it the next year, which doesn't sound very Republican, to just spend money so someone else can't spend it.

Well, why don't you just save it or give it back to the taxpayers instead if you've got that option?

On the constitutional amendments, two of the three I think do not require them to do much of anything because they've already lowered the tax rate below what the new cap is.

And the voter ID amendment matches what's already in state law.

So I don't think they're gonna have to do that.

But the third amendment really does require work because all it said was you're gonna pass a law that's gonna set some sort of limit on property tax increases, and there can be exceptions.

And they had not come up with any law before putting that on the ballot.

So if nothing happens on that front, that'll just sit in the Constitution with nothing to implement it.

- Mike, on the property tax debate this amendment.

Democrats are on this show, they like that amendment too.

I mean, I didn't hear anyone up really against it except some county commissions and some city council.

- Who was gonna sit here and tell you they didn't like it?

- An honest politician.

- And then Chris is absolutely right.

Voters spoke in 10, 12, 14 point victory margins.

At the same time, they were flipping red districts very blue.

So it was against it.

But to Mitch's point, if they don't need much work, why did we even need constitutional amendments to do these things?

But we all know it was intended to drive turnout, but it didn't drive turnout.

But we're gonna see what that language is gonna be and what is the impact gonna be on local revenues.

And that's why you heard from county commissioners and city council.

- We must have something to discuss in 2027, Chris.

- Absolutely.

- Something.

- Oh, I think you'll have plenty.

- 2027 legislative session is expected to convene with Democratic Representative Robert Reeves as North Carolina's new house speaker.

Senate Republicans are facing an election internally to choose their Senate president.

The Republican caucus will negotiate among its members for that role.

We know that Senators Brent Jackson, Todd Johnson, and Jim Burgin are seeking the role of Senate President pro tem to replace Phil Berger.

The Senate will feature a 26-24 Republican majority.

If Britt holds on, the canvas happens, it's expected.

So it's a one vote margin that protects the Republican majority in '27.

Maggie, Robert Reeves as a candidate is on team Barlow with you and Ms.

Kimberly at Maven Strategies.

So we'll put that out there as a matter of transparency.

He's your house speaker.

What do you coach him on heading into '27?

- Well I think Leader Reeves has been preparing for this a long time and he's gonna be in a really good position to do it.

And I think it was interesting this week to listen to his press conference about how he's planning to do things a lot differently.

Have a lot more transparency, not put non-budget items in the budget.

So I think that's gonna be good.

And then on the Senate side, with these three or four Senators wanting to be in charge, I think the real winner here is each individual Republican Senate member, right?

They now have a lot more power.

And I think that also gives a lot of power to Leader Batch as an opportunity to try to figure out how they can work together to come up with some bipartisan solutions.

It's not gonna be just about who the powerful Senate pro tem leader is.

It's gonna be a much different day than how Senator Berger led it.

- Mitch, walk us through the Senate process of selecting a leader, 26-24.

Effectively if they lose one Republican vote, the chamber ties, but then the Lieutenant Governor, the Democrat breaks the tie.

So a tied Senate is a Democratic Senate.

- Right, that's exactly right.

And that's gonna be a challenge for whoever emerges as the leader of the Republicans in the State Senate.

It was a very good point made that it's probably going to be a different operating Senate than we've seen in the past, not just under Phil Berger, but previously under Mark Bassnight.

Basically, whoever the leader was said what was gonna happen and everyone else said, "Okay," and went along with it, basically from both parties.

And we saw in the last session, you mentioned Sidney Batch, Senator Batch, after Dan Blue was kind of forced out of that role, the Senate Democrats decided to be a little bit more feisty, a little bit more vocal when they didn't like what was going on, which will make things a little bit interesting now with this new session, because had it been a Dan Blue-like character who really kind of got along with the majority even when he disagreed, that might make it easier for him to pull some Republicans over to block stuff they don't like.

I don't know if Senator Batch is going to have that same opportunity, although she certainly will try, because you're gonna have Governor Stein, a Democratic House, and the Democrats in the Senate probably generally on the same page on most things.

And if they could pick off a few Republicans, that could be good for what they wanna do.

Republicans are gonna have to stand firm if they wanna block what Governor Stein and the Democratic House wanna do, but that means that, as Maggie was saying, you have to make sure that all 26 of your Republicans agree, and if they don't, you're gonna have to find some way to get 'em to agree, or they're gonna be losing a lot of these debates.

- Chris, the Speaker-elect, he's not quite there yet.

Robert Reeves says he's gonna do things above politics, but 49 Republicans, and now Speaker Hall's really wanting to work with the Democrats with his 49 to 71 deficit.

What plays out here in realism?

It's time, wouldn't the House Democrats move their agenda?

- You know, I think it's gonna take the Speaker-elect Reeves some time to figure out all of how he's going to govern.

That's gonna take a chunk of time for the Democrats.

There's a little bit of a learning curve for them, and what's gonna happen with the rules, they're gonna rewrite the rules, all those sorts of things, right?

You have to deal with that.

But what's fascinating about post-election, particularly when the margins are this close and you have a flip of power and everybody's gotta work together, what's interesting is that everybody talks about bipartisanship in this sort of honeymoon period, and then it quickly falls apart traditionally.

My sincere hope is it doesn't for the state of North Carolina, 'cause we got a lot of big issues out there that we have to deal with.

And so I hope that as Speaker Reeves has said, "Look, I wanna work with Republicans," you know, you may have a Dan Blue or, I don't know about Sidney Batch, but a Dan Blue says, "I want to work with the Republicans and get some things done."

I mean, you know this as well as I do, politics is a combat sport at times.

But I think the voters sent a really clear message in this last cycle with this big swing.

They're not as, their time frame, their patience level for solving big problems is getting thinner and thinner.

I don't see that changing in the next couple cycles.

Whoever is in this time, if they don't produce something, they're gonna be right back out in the next election, and I truly believe that.

- Mike, back to the Senate.

For every candidate that, Democrat that won, they won by just a little, that means there's an opponent that just lost by just a few votes here and there.

Is there a mandate for the Democrats, and from your Senate experience, should they follow the progressive lean of a Sidney Batch or a pro-business, moderate lean of a Dan Blue?

- They're gonna have to focus on each issue.

I think one of the things the voters told them is that they wanted to fix the affordability.

That was the word of this election, nationally and at the state level.

So I think that's the mandate for whether it's the slim majority in the Republican Senate or the bigger majority in the Democratic House is to fix this economy and the affordability.

But you know, I love history.

As a student of history, I love to go back.

We've seen this model before.

In 1995, Harold Brubaker led the Republican majority in the House.

Basnight was still there in the Senate, and Jim Hunt and the three of them formed a governing coalition and got a lot of incredible things done in this state in the mid '90s.

I was even there when Democrats broke the supermajority in 2019, and we were able to pass a lot of great legislation in 1920, '21, and '22, '23 sessions, even when we didn't have supermajorities, and it forced everybody to work together.

And one of the things I think we should keep our eye on, keeping our eye on '27, is the role of Governor Stein.

Because all of a sudden, he becomes an even more important player in this split General Assembly.

- And it bears repeating, it's already been mentioned, but this idea that the Speaker Designate Robert Reeves has mentioned of having increased transparency, I think that's gonna get a lot of buy-in.

There were a number of Republicans who didn't like the fact that they didn't see the big bills until it plopped in front of them right before they were supposed to vote.

If you have more transparency in the budget process and have time between the time a bill is first introduced and you get to vote on it, if that can be done, I think there will be a lot of support for it.

The problem is that legislators on both sides, doesn't matter if it's D or R, they'll get to the end and there's stuff they really wanna pass, and they just say, "Okay, we gotta pass it."

- And on the Senate side, all three of the candidates, and including Senator Heiss, who's also expressed interest, have all said they wanna do the same thing on the Senate side, 'cause I know we would always joke about the bill would come in and it was still hot off the press, literally, it was warm in our hands, and Republicans complained about that.

So all the potential pro-temp candidates have said they would like to have that same kind of process that Leader Reeves has talked about.

- Do you roll in the emails and the legislators don't have to release their public emails like any other state employee or public employee?

Is that part of the transparency game?

Are we only talking legislation, Mitch?

Sunshine, sunshine can shine.

- No, taking away that budget provision that allowed them to decide what a public record is and throw 'em away if they wanted to, that should go, and hopefully that's something that they'll take up.

- Well, it's the media, we're the media, we have to discuss the sunshine laws there.

North Carolina's congressional races are nearing certification with provisional ballots flipping one race at least, seemingly locking in a Democratic gain in another, Chris.

Democrat Chuck Hubbard's 99 vote lead grew during the provisional ballot review, but it looks like Representative Virginia Fox will seek that recount as the margin is within one percentage point.

Over in the third congressional district, incumbent Republican Greg Murphy conceded to Democrat Raymond Smith after provisional ballots in Sampson County flipped that race to a Smith lead.

Democrats could end up controlling 11 of North Carolina's 14 congressional districts.

Not could, it looks like it, Chris.

- Yes, and I think that's one of the bigger moments of election night for probably everyone at this table.

And there may be some people that knew it was gonna be bad, but at the end of the day, if you had told me that Virginia Foxx, who is an institution in Congress, who's been there governing for 20 years, would be fighting for her political life, I would say, "What are you drinking?"

And to see that sheer flip from the maps being drawn a certain way and having the ability to have the maps as a backstop, or at least the assumption that the maps were gonna be a good backstop, I think that's what happened with a lot of these congressional folks who got flat-footed and maybe said, "Hey, I've got this protection built in with these maps."

But voters had another idea about those maps, didn't they?

And I think that if you're a Democrat and you're thinking, "Hey, we need to go back into the general assembly and redraw those maps," is that gonna be ultimately a protection in sort of these wild swings?

Or are these wild swings some sort of new normal for politics?

Because the electorate has changed so much, that unaffiliated voter, the young adult who's coming up, who has come up in age, in the age of COVID, how are they thinking about government?

They're thinking about how are our politicians making our lives a little better?

Not as what is government doing for me necessarily and spending money or whatnot, but the electorate has changed so much.

I just think that there are no, in my mind, there are no real key assumptions about maps, key assumptions about strong Republican districts or Democrat districts.

It's how am I gonna get to the voters and really message them and get them out, fundamentals of running a good campaign.

And I wanna say this about all the folks who woke up in, like Virginia Foxx, like a Greg Murphy, were they listening early on?

Were they paying attention early on when the voters were expressing frustration?

Did they really look at that first couple of days of early vote and say, "I don't think we can come back from this"?

Run the numbers, look at that.

Did they really work as hard as they needed to?

I mean, we're talking about a couple hundred votes to get out.

And so those sorts of things, Republicans have to really work really hard to make sure that they can't rely on anything to get them into office and rest on their laurels.

- Mike, 30 years ago, Fred Heineman, the old Raleigh chief, I think, defeated David Price in a race that Representative Price could not lose and the, was it the contract with America took him out.

So if you're Chuck Hubbard, you're Richard Ojeda, you're Raymond Smith, who won based off higher turnout of unaffiliateds, but Republicans not showing up.

How do they avoid the one term trap of falling back into, you just lost in a Republican district.

- Yeah, the notion of they're gonna rent the seat for two years only to see Greg Murphy or a Tim Moore come back and recapture that seat.

Chris touched on it.

Are you listening to the voters?

Are you responding to the issues that I think drove this election nationally and at the state level?

It's affordability, it's accountability, and we can add a number of other issues.

I heard from some state colleagues that in their districts, people were upset that there was not a state budget.

And when you think about some of the entities that rely on having a state budget and some of the constituents, they looked at that, in many cases, a Republican legislator and said your one job was to pass a state budget and you didn't do it for two years.

That I think played into some of these districts as well.

- Maggie, would voters be more forgiving of a Democratic House and a Republican Senate not reaching a budget deal?

'Cause we can expect that versus two Republican chambers with near super majorities not agreeing to anything for a couple of years.

- I think it's really gonna depend on how the Senate and the House work together, whether or not they're able to come to consensus.

And I think there's a real strong opportunity for that and I hope that's the case.

I do think the pendulum swung really hard.

We were not expecting it to go that far.

And just keep in mind that I don't think this idea of these people just renting a seat for two years, I think if they get up there and they do what they're supposed to do, that pendulum is still swung a long ways and there's a long way for it to go back.

So it's on everybody to, now that they have the elected ability, to do what they can.

- With Maven Strategies working with Raymond Smith, did you see, he knew he was an underdog going in, everyone knew that.

When did you start seeing that he has a message that might resonate?

If not get more Democrats to turn out, it might persuade Republicans not to vote for Murphy.

- I think it was just seeing what we saw in the early vote and just what the environment was like out there.

And Democrats did a good job of sticking to the messages that people were really concerned about.

- Chris.

- Yeah, I was gonna say the Democrats did a really good job, but it's not like the Democrats said, "Vote for us, we're better, we have a better plan."

There wasn't a ton of that out there in terms of messaging, in terms of campaigns.

They didn't have to.

They didn't have to, they just had to say, "It's so bad and the other guy or gal is not doing what they need to do."

I think Democrats can fall into that same trap in the next election cycle, if they go rogue, if they go extreme, and they're gonna find and face an unforgiving electorate that exists today.

And I think that electorate is much different than '94, much different than '95 in the makeup of it.

So Democrats have to be careful.

That pendulum may, if they're smart, they'll go in and do some normal things.

They won't go rogue or go extreme, and then they don't have to worry about that pendulum.

But if they go rogue, that thing's coming back fast.

That's my theory.

I don't know if it's, you know, some people, I talked to someone and they said, "Oh, well, it's just gonna go automatically back to the Republicans.

Oh, Tim Moore's gonna be back in.

Oh, you know, Greg Murphy's gonna be back in."

I don't know if that's the case.

- Yeah, I don't think that's true.

But one thing that does happen in a wave election like this, and I'm not gonna say this about the North Carolina candidates because I don't know them well enough, but certainly a number of these candidates across the country were candidates who were just the sacrificial lamb, and they ended up winning.

And now they have to be the person who actually works in Congress, does a good job.

So they're going to have to do that, or some of these folks might fall by the wayside if it turns out that, "Oh, yeah, we didn't want that Republican, but we really don't want you either."

- And one thing for us to keep our eye on in these next two years, but moving forward, is the changing demographics of the state and some of these districts.

For instance, Cabarrus County, I think we've seen as Charlotte grows up into Cabarrus County, that's changing the politics of that county.

Johnston County, we're seeing that it'd been reliably Republican, is changing quite a bit.

You know, down east, I think we're seeing some counties that are starting to go different ways.

Not necessarily Republican or Democrat, because as Chris pointed out, I think correctly, it's the growing number of unaffiliated voters who are moving in and making some of those choices.

- Chris, Don Davis, they tried to get him twice and even tried to draw a district to beat him.

They couldn't do it.

Republicans couldn't get it done.

They take Murphy away.

Is he locked in now as that moderate Democrat?

Do you think there'll still be a bullseye on him?

- I mean, I don't know that he's locked in.

Again, I go back, I don't think anybody's locked in.

And I think everybody has to run and has to work to work on big problems, because it's been decades, both at the federal level and at the local level, where you can't even get in a room with someone across the aisle or be seen in public with someone across the aisle to get something done, because that's bad.

Again, I think the electorates kind of fed up with that, and they're showing that.

So I would say if Don Davis does what he says he's gonna do, if he solves some problems and goes into Congress, if he goes into Congress and the Democrats, all they do is investigate the president, investigate folks and don't get anything done, could he pay a price?

I think so.

- But he also, Don Davis, has been pretty good about voting with his district and against the Democrats.

And I assume he will stick with that, that if he thinks his district is way against what the party wants, that he's not gonna go for that.

The other thing that I think is probably worth mentioning, it's already been brought up a couple times, but maps.

If there's thought about redrawing maps, remember right now, with a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, they have to pass each other's maps.

In the past, it's always been the same party, and there's been a gentlemen's, gentlewoman's agreement that the House will get to do its own map, the Senate will get to do its own map, and they'll just pass each other's.

That's not gonna happen if Democrats pass a map that the Republicans of the other chamber don't like.

- Maggie, last word.

- And vice versa.

- Yeah, and I don't know that that's gonna be a concern with this current legislature, but what I would say is let's get some nonpartisan redistricting.

- Yeah.

- And Maggie, one more thing, less 30 seconds.

We interviewed several of the candidates.

Military veterans did very well.

O'Hade is a Democrat.

Pat Harrigan won.

He's a military veteran.

Raymond Smith was a veteran.

Something about that has transcended partisan politics.

- Well, Democrats serve in the military just like Republicans, and I think it's just, you know, we got some great candidates out there who were in those positions, and you're gonna see more of that.

- Well, keep your eyes on Raleigh, folks.

Next week we'll be discussing what happened or didn't happen at the legislative session.

Chris, thank you for being on.

Mike, Maggie, Mitch, always good.

More importantly, you're our important thought on our mind.

Email us, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll read that email.

Have a great weekend.

See you soon.

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