North Carolina voters will help decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Join Meghna Chakrabarti for a special — and spicy — conversation live from Greensboro, N.C.

Guests

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.

George Simpson, North Carolina GOP. Civil trial lawyer.

Michael Bitzer, director of the North Carolina Center for Politics and Public Service. Professor of politics and history at Catawba College.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: The midterms are just a week and a half away, so we recently visited North Carolina to see how things were playing out in one of the most closely and evenly divided states in the country. North Carolina has a Democratic governor, but a powerful Republican-controlled legislature.

A third of voters say they’re Democrats, a third Republican, a third independent. And while Democrat Roy Cooper could flip one of North Carolina’s Senate seats from red to blue, on the other hand, the state has one of the most partisan gerrymandered congressional maps in the nation. So yes, the Tar Heel State is a powerful microcosm of America.

We went to Greensboro, North Carolina, and had a spirited conversation in front of a live audience. My guests were Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, George Simpson, who’s with the North Carolina Republican Party on its Judicial Victory Fund, and Michael Bitzer, history professor at Catawba College and director of the North Carolina Center for Politics and Public Service.

He’s also author of Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battle Lines in the Tar Heel State. I kicked off the night by asking them what’s surprised them the most in the midterms so far. Here’s Anderson Clayton.

ANDERSON CLAYTON: That we’re looking at the opportunity to take the State House this year in North Carolina, even though Republicans have gerrymandered us into oblivion in this state, and also our state Supreme Court has upheld that gerrymander in every way, shape, and form.

But because of the fact that we’ve got such an unpopular president right now, that Republicans in our state legislature have consistently backed up and gotten behind on the ballot this year in every way, shape, and form, along with his U.S. Senate candidate, I do believe that we’re seeing an opportunity across North Carolina this year in both rural and urban areas to be able to do something that Democrats have not had a swing at since 2011.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I got some questions about counting eggs before they hatch here for you in a couple of minutes here. But George, what about you? What’s surprised you the most so far?

SIMPSON: I’ve been surprised to see the strength that the Republicans have had in running their campaigns and hopefully taking over the Court of Appeals, all 15 seats.

The three judges up for election are all Democrats, and we’re hoping that we can knock all of them off. And then on the Supreme Court, we have a very strong candidate in Sarah Stephens, who is taking on Anita Earls, who’s got a lot of backing from the Democrats, but Sarah’s doing very well, and we’re hoping she’ll pull it out in the end.

CHAKRABARTI: And Professor Bitzer, what’s surprised you the most so far?

BITZER: I’d describe this year as kind of a classic midterm, but also a confusing midterm. The classic is that midterms are always referendums on the president, and the confusing part is we are seeing such levels right now towards the Democrats that I would have said North Carolina’s going to be in the mix, but the dynamics have shifted and the mood has shifted so greatly that I’m not sure we have seen a midterm environment like this before.

CHAKRABARTI: Tell me more, because it doesn’t actually make sense to me how it’s both classic in terms of as a referendum on the president and confusing the Democrats may have more energy right now. Because the president’s polling in North Carolina mirrors that of the rest of the country. He’s underwater by 17 points here in North Carolina.

So a referendum on the president would be not confusing.

BITZER: But the critical states that we’re looking at as now battleground states —

CHAKRABARIT: Weren’t battleground states —

BITZER: Were not battleground states. The states that President Trump won by double digits, like a Kansas, like an Iowa, that kind of dynamic is really pushing the envelope in terms of what we might see come November 3rd.

CHAKRABARTI: I actually want to talk about money on the Republican side for just a second here, because earlier this month, we’re recording this on October 15th and there was additional news yesterday that even more Republican donors are actually pulling their money out of the state, essentially, and we’ve had the Senate Leadership Fund also basically exiting from North Carolina on the Republican side, and that’s effectively disinvesting millions of dollars, especially from Republican Michael Whatley’s Senate campaign.

So actually, Professor, what is that telling you?

BITZER: It looks like, and particularly with the polling that Cooper has over Whatley right now, typically in North Carolina by this point, you start to see the polling get really tight. The way that I typically tend to describe North Carolina elections is the margin of victory is typically within the margin of error of most of the polls by the time November rolls around.

We’re not seeing that right now, and it’s still a very high single digits, low double digits lead for Cooper. If he is pulling in other Democrats down the ballot, does this race get written off to then shift to other races that Democrats are targeting and seeing as important?

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so George then, speaking of other races on the ballot, do you see the Senate race having an impact on the judicial races that you’re especially watching?

SIMPSON: I think this year, like any midterm election, is going to be a challenge for the party that has control of the White House, and so I think that’s definitely going to trickle down to the Cooper-Whatley race, and also to judicial elections. I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the Democrats nationally.

I know for instance that Anita Earls, the incumbent Supreme Court justice up for election this year, had something on the order of 2,000 donations in the second quarter of this year, and hundreds of those were from out of state, places like California, Massachusetts, and New York. Am I wrong, Anderson?

CLAYTON: At least none are from a sexual predator like Harvey West that Sarah Stevens likes to take money from. And I don’t know about y’all, but I would much rather have someone that is going to stand up for our judicial system than someone that has not, or has stood beside somebody like that.

SIMPSON: Okay, fine. Fine. I, like probably most everyone in this room, had never heard of Harvey West until about three months ago when advertisements started coming out, and Sarah Stevens —

CLAYTON: And that’s what it involves running for statewide office, ain’t it, George?

CHAKRABARTI: She says she’s only met him that one time and didn’t know anything about him.

SIMPSON: Yeah, Sarah Stevens has come out and said she did not know who this fellow was, and I’m not here to defend Harvey West at all. Let me be very clear, and I would not attend a fundraiser if I knew what he had pled guilty to. But Sarah Stevens has said she was unfamiliar with him. And look, I attend, and probably a lot of us attend, all kinds of fundraisers, political fundraisers all over the state.

I meet new people at every one of these fundraisers. I have not done criminal background checks on the 2,000 donors to Anita Earl’s campaign in the second quarter. I’d be interested to know, has the Democratic Party done criminal background checks on all of her donors?

CLAYTON: Get to Googling, George.

SIMPSON: You’re saying Sarah Stevens should have done that. Why don’t you check the —

CLAYTON: Because I have proof that she has taken money from a sexual predator, and again, is running to be on the highest court in North Carolina that right now already has a five to two majority for the Republican Party in the state, and has held up at every chance that they possibly could voter disenfranchisement for Black and brown voters across North Carolina.

They made it so that voter ID was legalized again in the state, making it harder for young people to be able to get to a ballot box, older folks that may not have a license anymore to be able to get to a ballot box, and also allow for Duke Energy to raise your rates this year. Am I right, Greensboro?

CHAKRABARTI: I have to say, this is way more fun than any conversation I’ve had in Boston, Massachusetts.

CLAYTON: You gotta kick it with the Down South a little bit more.

CHAKRABARTI: I’m serious. Yeah. This is spicy down here. I love it. But we were talking about money, and actually, here’s another way of putting it, George.

Because as I think Americans, and there’s polling that shows this, they are very concerned about corruption in government at all, all levels, but especially at the federal level. The judiciary is not immune to that concern. And so when you’re saying that most of the donors for Ms. Stevens have been from in-state, but you’re not saying that if a flood of out-of-state money came to her campaign, that she should or would refuse that.

SIMPSON: No, I’m not saying she should refuse it, but it’s something to keep in mind as you consider who to vote for and who’s backing these candidates.

Do we want a judge on the Supreme Court who’s supported by New York and Massachusetts or folks, or a judge who’s supported by North Carolinians? Someone who grew up in small town North Carolina, had her own law practice, and spent 17 years in the House of Representatives here in North Carolina.

And I can go– All right, Anderson.

CLAYTON: I’m just saying, which by the way, voted on and passed 15 bills that were deemed unconstitutional by the bench that she wants to go and sit on. Y’all, come on right now.

CHAKRABARTI: All right. Don’t you think for a second that I’m letting the Democrats off the hook here, okay? Fact: a Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades.

CLAYTON: And they call us the Great White Whale nationally.

CHAKRABARTI: What makes you think it’s going to be any different this time? Because you know what the Democrats often do, I think, is they feel a surge of energy during the campaign season, right? Because campaigning is exciting. People come out to see the candidates, you kind of … you get this momentum going. But then whether it’s early voting, absentee voting, or on Election Day, people don’t show up.

We know that in a sense that’s what happened to Vice President Harris. So what makes you think the Democrats who might be, like, excited right now are actually going to show up, especially when, as the professor said, it’s always so close here.

All you need is a handful of people to not show up.

CLAYTON: Data, and I’ll let Professor check me on this one. We had 200,000 more Democrats that came out and voted in this year’s primary election than Republicans. The last time that happened was back in 2022, and you know what the numbers were?

Reversed in that sense. 200,000 more Republicans came out than Democrats and voted. And you know what happened in 2022? We lost a U.S. Senate election, everybody. And so North Carolina, I think just by the data alone, it shows us from the primary elections that we’re going to have a good year. But we don’t just want to have a good year at the top of the ticket.

To the point that we just made, our state supreme court elections in North Carolina are going to determine the future fate of not just this state, but this country. And they already have, because in 2022, Democrats controlled the North Carolina State Supreme Court, and they ruled that partisan and racial gerrymandering was illegal in North Carolina.

And instead of making sure that decision stood, Republicans came back in when they took control of that court in 2022, and they, in January of that year, came back in, or in March, re-gerrymandered North Carolina, ignored a previous court’s decision. So you decide, voters of this state right now and across the country, who would you like to sit in a position of power?

Someone that George just talked about, or a 35-year civil rights attorney that’s been defending the human rights that Republicans are trying to strip away from people right now? You’re voting for the rest of us.

CHAKRABARTI: Go ahead, George. Yeah.

SIMPSON: Defending human rights is all well and good, but complying with the state and federal constitution is very important as well.

And the reason that the Harper v. Hall case, which is what you’re referring to, was reversed. But once the 2022 judicial elections took place and the Republicans took control of the Supreme Court was because the opinion that was, the Harper v. Hall opinion that had been written by Anita Earls was reversed because it was unconstitutional.

And it’s great, all well, and good to say Justice Earls is for human rights. We all want people to have human rights, but the reality is we need to follow the laws and the Constitution as they’re written, and that’s why Justice Newby and his fellow conservative justices overturned the Harper v. Hall decision.

CLAYTON: True or false though, George. And we’re being respectful to our panel and stuff here, folks, every step of the way. But true or false, right? We, you have, you want to have a court that upholds a previous court’s decision. True or false, it was the first time in 200 years of a court precedent that we had a court come in and overturn a previous court’s decision?

SIMPSON: It was that bad of a decision and that much of —

CLAYTON: True or false, George? Just true or false.

SIMPSON: I’m answering the question. The original opinion that was reversed was so out of tune with our Constitution that it needed to be revisited. You can’t just leave a blatantly unconstitutional opinion on the books if it’s unconstitutional.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI:  I appreciate the campaign energy. Trust me, I do. But I do actually want to get back down to mechanics because we’ve all acknowledged here that North Carolina is a 50/50 state, and I keep going back to this fact that statewide federal office, Democrats haven’t won in 20 years, right? And so that means that repeatedly, cycle after cycle, North Carolina Democrats are doing something wrong.

They’re falling short for statewide federal office. There’s no other way to explain it because the candidates haven’t been winning. What evidence do you– could you point to that it would be any different this time around?

CLAYTON: I don’t think that you can negate the fact that the reason why we are the Great White Whale is because we have been severely underfunded in the South.

And you’re not just talking about North Carolina, you’re talking about states like Georgia and Texas and Florida, and everywhere else in between, because we know that the map of national Democrats are moving here and have been. But the fact is that, yes, you have got a candidate, a once-in-a-lifetime candidate like Roy Cooper, who has never lost an election in the great state of North Carolina, everybody. Who is now going to be our next U.S. senator because of the fact that people know him across this state as someone that has stood up for the people of North Carolina, not a political party, and he is going to continue to do that in Washington, D.C.

Somebody that is from a rural small town out there in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, right? Eastern North Carolina. A large part of the place that’s been impacted by the federal cuts that we have seen come down from this administration that Republicans are so proud of, that have made it so that health care deserts are more predominantly found in rural places in North Carolina right now.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor, let me go back to you. Because I want to help Americans nationwide understand. So when we say 50/50 here I was looking at some numbers out of UNC from January of this year. It’s really more like 30, 30, 30, right? Because according to UNC, 30.24% of registered voters in this state, 30.24 are Republicans, 30.21 are Democrats, and 38.89 are unaffiliated.

So what I want to know is, the conventional wisdom is that late in a race, it’s really the independents who start breaking either way. In the North Carolina local press, DJ Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. Whatley, who’s running on the Senate race, he says that undecided voters who break late in elections in North Carolina tend to typically go Republican.

That’s what he says. I’m just wondering what your analysis is on that.

BITZER: I describe the state in a very lovingly way as bipolar. If you take all the federal races from 2008 to 2024, we are a 51/49 Republican state. You take all of the Council of State, the state executive offices, 10 of those. We are a 51-49 Democratic state, and that has been a very long political history in North Carolina, voting Republican at the federal level, voting Democratic at the state level.

The way that I look at North Carolina’s electorate, there are solid bases, 45, 46% of the electorate locked into the Ds, to the Rs. That last 10%, and it shrinks as we get closer to election day, are the swing voters that can either split their tickets or move one way or the other. And generally in midterms, they tend to move, in most part, in one direction.

So we’ll have to wait and see what the polls as we get closer to November 3rd are like.

SIMPSON: Have the polls in North Carolina historically been very accurate?

BITZER: They have been typically within the margin of error. And that’s what I think everybody looks at polls and says, “These numbers are accurate.” No.

Political scientists will say think of the number and then think of a bandwidth. Think of a window. That is the margin of error, and if the margin of error overlaps each other, you cannot say with statistical assurance that the one person is up, the other person is down.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So we have mentioned the president.

It can be fairly said that he’s the most important name that’s not on the ballot. I was quoting some numbers from Carolina Forward. It’s an independent group here who just put out a recent poll. 58% of North Carolinians, according to this poll, disapprove of the job the president’s doing, while only 41% approve.

That echoes numbers across the country, and this is having, the president himself has been saying, Act as if I’m on the ballot. That’s how you should cast your votes. So and it must be having an effect on every single race in North Carolina. So George, let me turn to you since the judiciary is your focus, and the president has had a huge impact on the federal judiciary.

Is that something that you think is on the minds of voters for the supreme, the State Supreme Court race?

SIMPSON: That’s a great question. Certainly, the United States Supreme Court has issued a bunch of big decisions in recent years that have caused a lot of controversy, obviously. But the United States Supreme Court’s completely different from the State Supreme Court or the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and so Trump’s influence on the State Supreme Court is negligible.

CHAKRABARTI: Over to you, Anderson.

SIMPSON: Anderson may disagree.

CLAYTON: Look, I think a president that comes to a state, he was in Gastonia a couple of weeks ago. But also stood up on a stage and basically said he was not going to allow for any Hurricane Helene relief funding to come back to North Carolina if Michael Whatley was not elected to the U.S. Senate.

And I don’t know about y’all either, but I don’t think that I want someone as vindictive as that who would hurt people who also were in an area of the state that had a majority vote for him in some of these counties like Haywood and Cherokee and the counties to the far western part of the state.

And so I don’t know about you, but I think a Donald Trump visit, I’m excited to see what’s going to come out of his mouth because I think every single time he does, he says something that buries his candidates in this state even more and so I don’t think the president’s endorsement this year is really going to help anybody.

CHAKRABARTI: George, can I follow up on that with you? Because at the federal level, we recently have had, members of Congress, Republican members of Congress even going so far as to say that the president is sinking campaigns. In North Carolina, are you hearing that?

SIMPSON: Actually, if I can bring it back to the judges, from 2000 until 2024, Republicans won something like 17 out of 18 statewide judicial elections

CLAYTON: They also made our judicial races partisan when they realized Democrats kept winning them statewide in North Carolina. So if you wanna have nonpartisan judicial races like we should in this state, you got Republicans in the state legislature to blame, don’t you, George?

SIMPSON: No, not at all. So here’s the deal. From roughly going back at least to 1900, and I haven’t looked beyond back to the 19th century, but the judicial races have always been partisan.

You know what happened … in the 1990s? Republicans started winning some statewide judicial races, but the Democrats still had control of the legislature. And who sets the rules for whether judicial elections are partisan or not partisan? It’s the legislature. So the Democrats had control of the state legislature, and they started losing statewide appellate races.

And so guess what? They said, it’s been partisan for 100 years, we’re gonna make it nonpartisan. And then when the Republicans won in 2011 and took over the legislature, they changed them back to partisan, which is exactly what the Democrats had done for 100 years before that.

CLAYTON: And don’t we not wanna repeat the same mistakes of the past, everybody, in every way, shape, and form? I don’t know if I think we took a poll today of North Carolinians.

They would want most races to be nonpartisan because they’re tired of the political back and forth and the hullabaloo like that we see with infighting when it should just be, to your point earlier, George, standing up for our state constitution in every way, shape, and form that our state Supreme Court has refused to do when they also denied the Leandro decision in North Carolina earlier this year. And did not fully fund our public schools because our state constitution clearly states that every child in North Carolina is guaranteed a sound, basic education, and we have yet to see our state legislature or our state Supreme Court fully uphold that constitution.

CHAKRABARTI: So there’s a lot going on here that … I guess what I was going to say is that there is a lot going on here that I have heard in conversations that I’ve had with people in lots of other states Americans right now, I think, are feeling quite disillusioned with their governments, federal, state, local.

Put that into context here in North Carolina. Do you get a sense that North Carolinians, we were talking about Hurricane Helene. I’m thinking about people in the western part of the state. Do they feel that their elected officials, the government, the whole system of representation that we’re supposed to have as a democracy has failed them?

It’s let them down, it has not provided the services that North Carolinians put people into office to do.

BITZER: I look to a survey that we did last year of North Carolinians, and we talked about the principles of American democracy, the rule of law over the rule of men, that separation of powers. Over 70% of North Carolinians said 48 out of 51 principles were very important to our system of government.

North Carolinians, by far, want to see government work. They want good people, because if you get good government, you’ve got to have good people in it. I think there needs to be a renewal of a kind of civic dynamic that we are lacking for several years, decades.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let me follow up. Two quick things.

What were the two principles that people didn’t agree on?

BITZER: There were actually three that fell below 70%. Every one of them had to do with the notion of who can be an American. Birthright citizenship, the principle of all persons in the 14th Amendment. And what we saw in that poll was the gap, the partisan gap between how Democrats looked at that principle and how Republicans looked at that principle.

It stunned me, and all three of them were wrapped around who can be an American.

CHAKRABARTI: Gerrymandering has come up in this conversation already a couple of times. You’re just waiting for it. But, so in 2022, Republicans won control of the State Supreme Court, and it was at that time that the state legislature returned the question of districting to the courts and asked the State Supreme Court to look at if the court-created map, which was the one of the most fair in the country, if that violated the state constitution.

And at that point, that five-two majority Republican court said, “No, it does violate the state constitution.” Then they rewrote the map, and it became one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country. So if I’m an unaffiliated North Carolinian and I look at that, I’m like it looks like those two groups were in cahoots.”

But that seems like a source of a lack of trust.

SIMPSON: That’s the Harper v. Hall case, and we talked about it briefly a little while ago. But that had to do with the issue of political gerrymandering, and political gerrymandering has been around since the, you know, beginning of the country.

And the Democrats gerrymandered the heck out of North Carolina for generations in the 20th century, and now the Republicans have finally got control, and they have exercised some of their power to do some political gerrymandering. There’s nothing wrong about that. That’s exactly how the process is supposed to work.

CHAKRABARTI: … So look, the word gerrymandering comes from Massachusetts, so I know a little bit. And Democrats also have been, maybe not here but in other states. But what I’m saying is fundamentally, if we’re talking about belief in government, and we’re gonna focus on North Carolina right now, which has a Republican-controlled legislature, it has a Republican-controlled state senate state Supreme Court, excuse me.

If we’re gonna talk about trust, and voters see that a fair map is being thrown out in favor of a radically gerrymandered map, doesn’t matter what party is doing it, the concept of fairness, I think, is what’s getting lost here. And that, I think that does corrode people’s belief in government.

SIMPSON: Okay.

It depends on the people you’re talking to.

CHAKRABARTI: Same, but same thing when … I’m saying I have had this conversation in states where historically it was the Democrats, right? Who created weird donut-shaped districts so that they could basically box out every Republican voter in. So I’m not actually seeing this from a party point of view.

I’m seeing this from an American civic governance point of view. We gotta fix this, don’t we?

SIMPSON: That would be great in a perfect world. I don’t disagree with you. If the problem is loss of trust from the voters, it’s not just the Republicans. Both parties are terribly partisan.

And I feel the Democrats have done it for generations in North Carolina.

CHAKRABARTI: And I agree with you on that, but what I’m saying is gerrymandering as a practice, it’s intentional to disenfranchise people, right? And it depends. Again, Democrats have done it.

Republicans do it. I do not care which party does it. The point is that in order to win lopsided elections, congressional maps are being built so that actually quite a significant number of voters, their voices do not count. Now, that cannot be … I just do not see how that works for American democracy.

SIMPSON: I agree. In a perfect world, there would be no gerrymandering and no, none of that at all, but it’s always happened throughout our history. Whichever party’s in power does it, and I’m not saying that’s good. I’m not saying that’s the way it should be.

But I’m just saying that undisputedly, that is the way it always has been.

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s have North Carolina be the place where two wrongs do not make a right anymore.

SIMPSON: I would not object to that. I would support that. I just don’t know how to make that happen.

CLAYTON: You elect Democrats to the North Carolina State Supreme Court, which you’re doing the opposite of with Sarah Stevens right now.

But I also think if we could pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act nationally, everybody, we would also not be in this situation because we need a national ban on gerrymandering because just because we’ve done it before, again, don’t mean it’s right to do now.

SIMPSON: Okay. I don’t necessarily disagree with you on that.

I just don’t know how you put that into practice. It’s never been able to be —

CLAYTON: We’re gonna, you’re gonna go check Justice Earls on your ballot box this year, George.

SIMPSON: I respect Justice Earls, but she will not be getting my vote. Can we pull you over on the stage?

CHAKRABARTI: That I would like to see. Professor, you’ve been patiently waiting here.

BITZER: The we’re entering a new phase, I think, in this election cycle where it’s not just gerrymandering, it’s gerrymaxxing. It’s states really using the power of loyalty in voter behavior and the lines by which they can be drawn to craft these districts that are one way or the other. The key thing that I would point out for this year is, yes, we’ve had a switch in the first congressional district and the third congressional district in the eastern part of the state.

Republicans heeded the call from the president, redrew, the only competitive, not just in North Carolina congressional district, but in the entire South. The first congressional district was the most competitive. It now has shifted to an R plus five. That took away some Republican votes in the third congressional district, which dropped it to a R5, R6.

The issue this year is if there is a Democratic wave, let’s say a D plus six, D plus eight, that wall of an R plus five that’s built up, think of it as a dune. The ocean wave, if it’s higher than an R plus five, can breach over it, and Democrats could potentially not just pick up the first congressional district, but the 11th congressional district in the western part of the state, another R plus five.

So while gerrymandering has a powerful influence, a lot of it is thanks to us because we live in like-minded communities. We self-segregate politically ourselves. It makes it real easy to create a district based on voter behavior, and you can’t take into account until you get to it the mood of the electorate, and that’s the dimension that a lot of this is playing itself out on.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: I’m going to switch gears here a little bit, because one of the things that we as a program have become very focused on, other than the issue of people’s pocketbooks and the struggles that everyone’s having with not just affordability, but it’s long-term economic security.

That has to be an issue here in North Carolina as well. Yes?

CLAYTON: I agree. I think that North Carolina, though, has a rich economic history. And still to this day, agriculture is the number one economic driver in North Carolina. It is not AI, right? And that is why North Carolina, to this day, has the second-highest rural population of any other state in the country other than Texas, is because of the fact that our infrastructure created by legacy Democratic governors like Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford, people … North Carolina used to be known nationally as the education state, because we had a party that understood the reason why that you have a strong economy is because you have the foundational principles of that economic prosperity. And what that looks like is a good education system, a good health care system, and a good opportunity to bring jobs to the state, which requires both of those other two pillars.

And what we’ve seen Republicans in our state legislature in North Carolina do since 2010 is take money out of public schools in North Carolina and put it into private school vouchers. We have the most unaccountable private school voucher program in the entire country. And if you’re listening to this from across the country, let me just tell you what.

If you move to North Carolina and you make a million dollars in a year, you can go get a little buck from your state legislature to take your kids out of public school and put them into private school right now. And instead of saying that places like rural North Carolina, that the number one economic driver in those communities, which is education, and it’s oftentimes the county is the largest employer in those communities, we’ve had a legislature that decided they want to defund and deprioritize the number one economic driver in most of our areas of the state right now.

Does that sound responsible to y’all?

SIMPSON: … It’s hard to follow Anderson, I’ll grant you. But I’m a lawyer, not an economist, but I do just anecdotally sense that there’s still a lot of concern about the economy and prices at the grocery store and elsewhere.

It’s been going on for years and years. From 2000 to 2024, North Carolina had a Democratic governor, and we had Joe Biden in the office in Washington. And so I don’t think that’s something that can be laid at s- solely at the feet of the Republicans.

CLAYTON: I don’t know. I think the economy was the best it had probably been under Joe Biden for a lot of folks when it’s coming out of a post-pandemic era where you have just seen a lot of folks at home and restless about the fact that they didn’t have the opportunities that they needed to.

If you had a stock in the stock market, or if you were making a living right now, in Joe Biden’s economy, you were able to at least make ends meet. And right now we’ve seen prices at the pump stay at the exact same price that they have been at the time in which Donald Trump took office.

And I don’t know about y’all, but I do believe that things have gotten worse under this administration when they promised it would get better.

SIMPSON: All I’ll say to that is that in 2024, the voters of North Carolina made it very clear that they did not think the economy was great here in North Carolina.

So the voters are the ones who make that decision, and they spoke very loudly.

CLAYTON: I also think, though, that we’re missing the historic precedent of saying that this was an anti-incumbency era, though. When you look, and I think history books will write it this way. And when you look at the 2020 or 2024 election cycle, every major world leader that was an incumbent in charge of their country or whatnot lost their office.

We are dealing with the fact of right now, to your point, people feel disengaged with politics, and they feel angry about who’s in charge because their lives are not getting any better. And again, redistricting and gerrymandering, when you are taking away and when you’re changing every two years the person that is elected to represent you, you don’t feel like you know anywhere to get help for.

And I think that we have alienated voters, not just in North Carolina, but this is happening in states across the country right now, where voters do not feel like they actually get to choose who represents them. And until we’re able to fix that problem, we’re not gonna be able to fix people’s belief in government.

CHAKRABARTI: Are we in an anti-incumbency era?

BITZER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think duh. That’s a political science term. Use it frequently in Austin. We go these two years cycles, and we say, “All right, we don’t like these bums. Let’s throw those bums out and put in these bums.” And then two years later we hate these bums, so let’s put these bums in.”

It is very much a we can’t figure out what we want because society, I think, is fundamentally shifting in ways that for some people they are scared of, for others they see it as opportunities. But I think the dimensions that our society is undergoing as a 250-year grand experiment in self-governance, we are always bouncing back and forth.

We want to create this more perfect union. Notice I didn’t say perfect union. And by more, we’re going to sometimes stumble, but we’re going to pursue something that we try and get a general consensus on, but we’ve never had true consensus in a lot of things unless something monumental, world wars, come to our doorstep, then we gather, but after that consensus falls, then it’s, “Okay, who’s out for number one?”

That’s the dynamic that I look at in terms of a lot of political history of America.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Okay. So as interesting as the races for public office are, truthfully, the nerdy part of me likes the ballot questions even more. You look like I’ve just said something completely bizarre. If you don’t mind, I’d love to hear from you guys on these three, ’cause money has come up over and over again.

You were talking about public funding, and one of the questions, it would create a constitutional amendment that would cap the income tax in this state at 3.5%. I think the current cap legally, constitutionally, is 7%, but that’s not what the actual current rate is. The current rate’s what?

4%? 3.99%, something like that. But anyway, it would essentially cut that cap in half. Anderson, thoughts?

CLAYTON: I think that when a party who has got a majority has to put constitutional amendments on the ballot, each and every single one of us should be worried about why they’re not going ahead and passing legislation in the building that they control right now.

In every way, shape, and form because to be honest, the only thing that’s gonna happen is that you’re gonna see billionaires in this state or millionaires in this state, the people that have the most amount of money in this state paying the exact same amount of income tax as a teacher in North Carolina right now.

Do y’all think that a teacher in North Carolina should be paying the same percentage in income tax as somebody who makes three to four times the amount of money that they do? No, everybody. Not at all. And the state legislature should figure out a better way to make that happen than eliminating that line item right now.

And also, the other side to that is that they’re trying to control the amount of property taxes that a city or county is able to enact on constituents. And I know that everybody right now hates property taxes. I wish y’all would go tell the state legislature then they need to fully fund public schools in the counties in North Carolina to do their jobs then. Because they are raising property taxes due to the fact that they are not getting the money that they need to out of the state legislature in order to be able to sufficiently represent communities.

The money has to come from somewhere, and Republicans are trying to utilize these constitutional amendments to drive up their voters and their supporters at the ballot because they know that their candidates are not gonna be able to do that for them this year.

SIMPSO: Anderson you expressed some criticism of putting initiatives on the ballot for constitutional amendments, but isn’t that the highest form of democracy when every voter in the state gets to vote on these laws instead of just the legislators in Raleigh?

CLAYTON: Did every voter in the state not vote on the legislators?

SIMPSON: Yes, but every one —

CLAYTON: So why can they not take their majority and go do their majority thing?

SIMPSON: I don’t understand your objection to allowing millions of North Carolinians to vote themselves individually on these important issues. A lot of people would say that they’d rather decide these issues themselves than let some guy in Raleigh make the decision for them.

CLAYTON: And I think that’s what local governments are saying, too, about whether or not they should be able to raise property taxes for their own cities.

That they should be able to have local control, which, and if I’m not mistaken, I thought the Republican Party used to be for small government in North Carolina at some point in time and local control in the cities. And I don’t see that coming out of the state legislature when they’re trying to dictate to your backyard how you should be able to spend that money, or whether or not your city council or your county commission should have the right to be able to do that with.

And every local elected official, even Republicans that I’ve been talking to in rural North Carolina, are pissed off about that constitutional amendment.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor, you wanna talk about these potential constitutional amendments?

CLAYTON: Make it make sense, Professor. Take me to the classroom.

CHAKRABARTI: : Yeah. I agree with you. It doesn’t make sense, so help us understand.

CLAYTON: Or George, come on.

BITZER: George, you wanna —

SIMPSON: No. I just, I don’t have anything new to say other than something that everyone gets to vote on sounds much better to me. Wouldn’t you guys rather be able to vote on things yourselves than have some Republican in Raleigh vote on it for you?

CLAYTON: That part you can clap for.

SIMPSON: There we go. See? I got a few converts there, Anderson.

BITZER: I think the issue of money is going to be ultimately at the heart of both of these. Because North Carolina has benefited so much from migration, people moving into the state, that has created more and more tax revenue certainly for the state.

I think the issue becomes, again, concerns about local control, where people are moving to, if they are moving to urban areas like Greensboro, if they’re moving to suburban areas. Those are whole new dynamics, but then you’ve also got rural communities that are struggling to be able to afford basic, fundamental governmental services. That if their tax limits are imposed on them, they may have to make some really hard decisions in communities that have small populations that couldn’t potentially support the dynamics of government services that they need.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. But let me ask something. Because and again, please correct me if I’m wrong because on ballot questions, polling can be sometimes, I think a little challenging to nail down. But I think I’ve seen data that shows that some of these questions are actually quite popular. So your polling indicates that?

BITZER: Our polling found that well into the high 60s, 70% across all three.

CHAKRABARTI: In that case, then the voters themselves are acting against their own best interests, right?

BITZER: There’s the issue of how is the language of the constitutional amendment being framed. And also the dynamic of what could be the consequences of this particular constitutional requirement and condition, and how will government respond to those potential constraints.

CLAYTON: Also, just a fun fact about North Carolina. They said that the state legislature voted to bring the corporate sales tax down to zero by 2030.

They didn’t put that on the amendment this year. Why not? Were they afraid of how voters were gonna vote on that one, right? Do you think that corporations should pay 0% in taxes in this state? No, right? Because you know what? That’s why it’s got robbing Peter to pay Paul somewhere in there in some form or fashion, right?

SIMPSON: So are you saying you wanted that to be on the ballot?

CLAYTON: I’m saying … your argument, right? And you seem to be taking both sides. You’re sitting up here, George, trying to defend it, and I’m just like, “Okay if your argument stands of that you wanna give the voters the opportunity, why couldn’t you give them that on a constitutional amendment like that, too?

SIMPSON: Isn’t the reverse true as well?

CLAYTON: Like corporate sales tax. Why not?

SIMPSON: If you don’t want, if you don’t want the property tax cap on the ballot this time —

CLAYTON: Absolutely … but I’m just asking you to explain yours.

SIMPSON: I think we’re both in kind of a quandary here.

CLAYTON: Are we?

SIMPSON: You’re suggesting that one of these should be on the ballot and the others should not.

CLAYTON: No, I’m saying none of them should be on the ballot. I don’t think that any of them should. I’m saying none of them should be on the ballot. But you’re saying that these three should be on the ballot, but the corporate sales tax should not be. Why?

SIMPSON: No I’m not saying that. I’d be fine with that on the ballot.

CLAYTON: But so Republicans in the state legislature were not, though, everybody.

Make that, note that in your pocketbooks when you’re leaving here, right?

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I actually find this really interesting because I use that word a lot, but this is genuinely interesting because what we’re getting to here are fundamental differences in the belief in terms of how people should self-govern.

And I think that really matters when thinking about, then, how do we make decisions that will have impacts on each other? I can’t say that I have a particular opinion on that, but this is the core, it’s one of the core debates that’s happening in this country right now. I do wanna take a second to talk about that third question, because it’s about photo ID for voting, and it looks like the proposed amendment would require photo ID for all forms of voting. Not just in-person voting, but also mail-in voting, et cetera. But state statute already has that requirement. Can anyone explain to me why it’s on the ballot then?

BITZER: It’s to enshrine in the Constitution that becomes the highest law of North Carolina. So if you put something into our governing document, that is the paramount law that must be abided by, rather than a state statute that could be changed by the legislature into the future.

SIMPSON: The voter ID amendment is almost certain to pass. The fact of the matter is it’s overwhelmingly popular, and if the Democrats want to take the position to be opposed to voter ID, I think that’s gonna be a loser in North Carolina.

CLAYTON: You know what, George? Sometimes the fight’s worth fighting, even if you’re gonna lose it.

CHAKRABARTI: The conversation here has been obviously very energetic. Very different points of view. We have different philosophies, right? About what it means to govern in America. And yet we had it. We had this conversation. And I’m very Pollyanna-ish about this, but I think if Americans were able to even passionately but talk with each other more across differences, that might be an important part of rebuilding trust in each other.

BITZER: We asked a series of questions about, do you want to have conversations with the other side?

70% of North Carolinians said, ‘Yes.’ We then asked a follow-up question, how easy or difficult is it to have that conversation? Only 20% of North Carolinians said it was easy to have that conversation. We have disregarded the power of having civic dialogue, civic conversation, civic knowledge to be able to have these kinds of conversations to our detriment.

70% of North Carolinians said, ‘Yes.’ Michael Bitzer

We then asked a follow-up question, how easy or difficult is it to have that conversation? Only 20% of North Carolinians said it was easy to have that conversation. We have disregarded the power of having civic dialogue, civic conversation, civic knowledge to be able to have these kinds of conversations to our detriment.

And if we, the people, are going to continue this grand experiment, but it’s about hearing from the other side and understanding, hey, you know what? There may be actually something I agree with you on. Let’s work on that.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.