Welcome in to a Friday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. North Carolina's Senate seat has been a hot-button discussion over the last two weeks and officially yesterday. Former head of the North Carolina Republican Party, now head, or I guess formerly head of the RNC, Michael Watley, has officially announced his bid into the North Carolina Senate race.
That will be coming up in November of 2026 to walk us through some of those details this morning. The managing editor over at CarolinaJournal.com, David Larson, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. David, I don't think you had the last week of July two Senate announcements on your bingo card, but here we are as we're in the first day of August. What do you make of the announcement yesterday?
Well, I thought it was um I guess, you know, it was presumed that this was about to happen.
So I guess, you know, both Cooper and Wally's announcements were rumored before they. They were made official, but Watley is officially in the race, and I think it'll be. Definitely, he is the presumed frontrunner and the primary, if not presumed, nominee for the Republicans. Just Um Because, you know, coming along with that Trump endorsement and with his time, both in the North Carolina GOP and the. The RNC, I mean, it's pretty hard to find somebody either on the MAGA side or the establishment side that can.
kind of uh trump either of those His position on those two wings of the party. I also think it's You know, interesting to take a look at some of his background because a lot of people know him as the chair. Of the North Carolina GOP, and then as the RNC, but he's actually had kind of a long history in. Republican politics, um never being elected to any positions, but um He uh well, other than you know, chairmanship, but You know, he had been with George W. Bush's.
Um, energy, you know, department of energy, he was the chief of staff for. Senator Elizabeth Dahl. when she was a senator.
So he does have some experience. working you know in the US Senate uh as a chief of staff so I'm sure he He learned quite a lot doing that. Um And also he ran um Yeah. Trump's first term, his transition team, he was the lead of. the energy and agriculture part of that so he Um it seems like he has a lot of Energy background because that was also what he worked with George W.
Bush.
So that's a little bit about his background, but you know. It'll be interesting to see how he's received as he introduces himself to Um a lot of people who don't have quite the same name ID for him as they do for Cooper. Yeah, I want to talk about that name ID part of it. There was a poll that came out Thursday, and again, all of these polls are, this is still very early into the whole contest, but it showed Watley around a mid-50-something-ish percent name ID compared to Roy Cooper, who was in the low 90s. Really, I guess, no surprise there, David.
You've got a former sitting governor. Most people in the state know who he is. But as you mentioned, and when we talked about the Cooper announcement earlier this week, Michael Watley has gone all around the state of North Carolina when he was the head of the Republican Party, albeit probably smaller meetings at local GOP offices and fundraiser events. But he has truly been all around the state of North Carolina.
So I would suspect that a lot of folks already know who he is and have a good idea of what his name is and are probably going to jump back and support him. Yes, I I do think, you know, within the Republican Party he has you know, wide support. He has different parts of the state. You know, he spent a lot of time here in Raleigh, but also he's from the the far west in the Boone area, Blowing Rock. And then he lives now in the Charlotte area and you know, Gaston County.
So he has, you know, he's been all over the state, he's lived all over the state. And I think those connections will. Will help them a lot.
Now, whether that 50% name ID, you know, that's even a little higher than I thought it would be, to be honest, because. Um You know, there's a lot of people who vote but don't particularly know A lot of the players beneath The big, big names.
So actually, that's somewhat decent to get 50%. Uh name ID. You know, maybe that's From being RNC chair.
So that would be interesting to see. I guess, as I also said last time, with Name ID, it's kind of a race to see who can define. um the person before the other side can so You know, it can be harder to redefine somebody that the public has already made their mind up on, like a Trump or a Cooper. where people think they know what they think of that person. But with Wiley, it'll be a bit more a rush to Um Define that.
define that person in people's mind.
Well, one of the big ways that you go about defining somebody is through advertising. And as we have talked about and has been speculated, this will be likely the most expensive United States Senate race in history. For former Governor Roy Cooper, he had an impressive haul after in the first 24 hours of his announcement, pulling in more than $2.5 million, David, which is remarkable in a 24-hour period. Not sure that Watley will be able to meet that number again in the first 24 hours. I guess that just goes to show you how quick probably both of these candidates are going to try and get out of the gate and really start defining the other and start running advertising and trying to promote their message.
Yes, and just the fact that we are already speaking of it as Cooper's doing this and Wiley's doing that, it is basically right up the gates. It's sort of a general election focus from both of them where they're probably going to be running ads against each other and kind of looking past the primary. But the money that's going to be spent, as you said, on advertising and organization and everything is going to be astronomical so that that. haul that Cooper was able to get there if not you know, up to that level, Wiley will still be after his announcement, trying to get a big haul. And then, you know, there'll be independent expenditures, there'll be just From here until a year and a couple months, until next November, there will just be massive spending, ads that you're going to get tired of.
And uh As we said last time, the most expensive US Senate race. In history, was in Ohio last. election cycle, and that was four hundred and four million dollars. And I've heard some people say, oh, they think this one would be more like 500 million, which would break the record.
Some So I don't know how seriously to take this, but someone even said $750 million, was there someone else's guess that? It's kind of in the know.
So we you know, I don't even know how they would spend that much money, but You know, it's definitely uh All airwaves are going to be booked out for the foreseeable future. You mentioned earlier the Trump endorsement. Even before the announcement when it was first reported last week that Michael Watley would be getting into the race, President Donald Trump put out a post on his Truth Social, not only endorsing Watley, but endorsing his successor at the RNC. Donald Trump has won this state three times, 2016, 2020, and 2024. How big do you think the Trump impact will be for Michael Watley?
Does this help him, hurt him? Where do we stand right now? Or is it one of those situations where it remains kind of unseen as we get closer to the midterms, which typically do not favor the party that is in charge, which is, of course, the Republicans and Donald Trump? That is to be seen, but I do think the endorsement in the primary. Might seal the deal because there's a lot of times when Trump has kind of arranged behind the scenes who he thinks the person should be and then.
puts that name out there, whether it's a Bo Hines. You know, uh when he ran for US Congress, whether it's Addison McDowell or there's been a number of times where, you know, okay, I'll Mark Walker's going to get. This uh You know, a job offer, and he's going to bow out, and we're going to name Madison McDowell as the person for this congressional seat.
So that has a lot of impact. In the primary.
Now, what that will do in the general As you said, that could depend more on how Trump is viewed. in the midterms often The party that's in power doesn't do well in the midterms, but you know, there's a chance if somebody's being seen as doing very well at that point, that that it actually it could It could still be a benefit in a general election for Watley to be seen as sort of. You know, hand in glove with Trump, but if things are not going well for Trump, let's say if the tariff policy starts to hurt the economy, if people think he's being too harsh on immigration or whatever other issues people are talking about if those are wearing on Trump, then that would also likely Um be a negative side for being hand in glove with Trump, for Wiley. As we kick off the month of August, both of these candidates now officially declared they're in the race, they're fundraising, they're sending out emails and text messages. Do you think that this continues all the way through the rest of the summer and into the fall leading up to the March primary early next year?
Or now that the announcements are out there, things maybe slow down a little bit as people are getting their kids back into school, so on and so forth? Or do you think we're pedaled to the metal from now all the way until November of next year? You know, that's a good question. I don't know just how. How intense they're going to make it throughout this whole time.
If they really see that they want to get the edge on the other one, they might just look past the primary. Entirely and not build gradually, but just you know, shoot out the gate with strong. spending and immediately go as I said, that maybe the biggest priority for both sides is to define Watley because it might be harder to define Cooper and make a lot of movement.
So that might be something that if you were the Watley campaign, you would want to do a lot of early spending But sadly, for them, you know, often negative ads have more effect than positive ads.
So if the Cooper campaign wants to counter that, you know, that could be.
Something that they try to do early.
So it really depends, I guess, on their strategies. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if they just continue the momentum and continue. Um you know, kind of looking towards next November already. We'll be keeping an eye on a lot of different things, fundraising, advertising, spends, polling. We'll keep all that coverage up to date on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
We appreciate the details this morning. David Larson joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. This is the story of the one. As a quality technician in a food processing center, she knows that making the right call is the best way to avoid a recall. That's why she trusts Granger's world-class supply chain to deliver the high-quality supplies she needs to help keep her production line, her equipment, and her customers happy and healthy.
Call 1-800-GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. Good Friday morning to you. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993WBT. 10 months after Hurricane Helene tore through the southeast, the recovery process in many areas is just beginning.
As communities rebuild their lives in towns, the Carolina Journal is continuing its coverage by revisiting some of the state's hardest hit areas to assess what recovery looks like, what's still missing, and how much work there still is to complete. The initial damage assessment of Maggie Valley post-Hurricane Helene estimated costs of about $4.7 million. Most of the initial damage was sewer-related or damage to parks near Jonathan Creek. Several creeks that flow into the valley are also overflowed, causing damage that required cleanup, which also accounted for some of that initial damage costs. Maggie Valley currently has a contract with a company that handles everything related to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, on their behalf.
Mayor Mike Evlin told the Carolina Journal, it's a ton for a small town. We're not set up for this. When you look at the amount of paperwork and the amount of money as well as the amount of time, as of right now, we've expended about $539,000 out of pocket. And the amount of paperwork that goes into just making sure you're getting to any kind of reimbursement from anybody is huge. It's very expensive.
We were fortunate to have some idea of what some of the things were going on to be required from day one. We had a big initial cleanup area where people had to go out. We had to record everything from the time on a machine to the amount of fuel, et cetera.
So we've been working pretty hard. With estimated initial damage at $4.7 million and the town of Maggie Valley only having an annual budget of $5.4 million, that has been a pretty sizable and significant amount of money. Maggie Valley still has a long road to recovery in front of it. Mayor Evelin said, a lot of this is sewer related and along the creeks. Our first initial few weeks was to get all of the sewer lines at least repaired.
We've also been very blessed because there were a lot of people within the region that lost their sewer plants. Fortunately, we did not. Evelyn credits the sewer plant's survival to repairs done on a levee project just about a year ago, a couple of months before the storm. He said likely without those repairs the town may have also lost its sewer plant, similar to many other towns that saw so much devastation and destruction from Hurricane Repairing Maggie Valley Carpet Golf, a local mini golf business, is one of the most significant projects that have been undertaken and completed thus far, with the floodwaters eroding approximately 25 feet of land, destroying three holes of the mini golf course, and stripping away a 20-foot-wide area of native vegetation. According to the mayor and Seth Boyd, the interim public works director for the town of Maggie Valley.
And to address this, a complete creek bank stabilization project was undertaken to restore the area to its original condition. That was necessary to reinstall the sewer infrastructure. Given the urgency and the risk of further erosion from subsequent storms, as was demonstrated by heavy rain that fell in the area of the state back in February, the recovery teams opted to complete permanent repairs immediately rather than executing a temporary fix and returning months later to put in a more permanent repair. This approach protected the sewer line and helped safeguard the impacted local business from further loss. In addition, roughly 250 feet of sewer line and two manholes sustained significant damage close to the Maggie Valley mini golf attraction.
On top of these utility losses, a 20-foot-wide section of vegetation and adjacent land was completely washed away. That required substantial restoration work to get that piece of property in that area of the town back and operational.
However, the Mini Gulf attraction was not Maggie Valley's only loss due to Hurricane Helene. The flooding resulted in a loss of four aerial creek crossings. According to Mayor Eveland and Boyd, among the most critical losses was the destruction of a major bridge located on Highway 276. The storm heavily impacted this key infrastructure, underscoring the scale of flooding and its threat to transportation routes. Although the levee system at the sewer plant had been reinforced the previous year and remained intact during the storm, it was still not without need for further attention.
Repair assessments estimate that approximately $200,000 will be required to restore the levee to its optimal operating condition. Temporary bridges fortunately have been installed to maintain access, but full reconstruction, including replacement for damaged sewer lines and bridges, is still pending final approval and coordination with the State Department of Transportation. Mayor Evelin told the Carolina Journal, I can tell you as of right now, we've spent $539,000 and we have not gotten a dime back from FEMA yet. We're awaiting initial damages of $20,000, including debris pickup of $15,000. Hopeful that we'll see that in the next 60 days.
That's the only money we've gotten that the team even suggested that we will get paid for. We're hoping that that starts to change here soon. The cash flow loan program was created by the Disaster Recovery Act of 2024 in North Carolina. Mayor Evelin said that Maggie Valley's cash flow situation, fortunately, is currently stable. That's thanks to the state's financial assistance.
The town of Maggie Valley received a low interest loan from the Department of Environmental Quality for $2.57 million, which must be repaid over the next five years. Evelyn said the state of North Carolina did a 0% interest loan for folks like us. Financially, Maggie Bally was blessed. We've done a great job over the years of taking care of our businesses, and we had the money in the bank. And I'll tell you that I've been on the board for 15 years now and we've done a lot of stuff, but we've always made sure that we've got money in the bank for rainy days.
Maggie Valley also received a $200,000 grant from DEQ to support engineering work.
However, that amount only covered a single project and it's already been fully expended. Still, while limited, town leaders say the grant was incredibly helpful. They said that the key benefit of the state support, especially the cash flow loan program, is that it enables Maggie Valley to receive federal reimbursement over time without draining existing funds or seeking additional loans. Mayor Evelin said that this dramatically improves the town's ability to operate and sustain its town functions. While the state has mentioned various other aid programs, Maggie Valley has yet to see evidence of how those may benefit the town, with officials there hoping to be reimbursed for some of that money that they have spent on Helene recovery projects by a combination of both FEMA and state dollars.
The mayor rounded out his conversation with Carolina Journal by saying: long term, we're all taxpayers and we're all going to pay for it. whether at the federal level, a state level, or the local level. But anything from FEMA and the state would be great. It helps the taxpayers here in the valley, and we're one of the bigger towns in terms of local tourism. Katie Zender of CarolinaJournal.com has done a phenomenal job with these Helene stories over the last couple of weeks.
You can read this story on Maggie Valley and some of the other communities this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT recapping what has been a busy week in North Carolina politics. Two major Senate announcements this week. Earlier on Monday, former Democrat Governor Roy Cooper announced his intentions to run for the United States Senate. That seat, of course, will be vacant later next year.
After current U.S. Senator Tom Tillis announced his intentions to not seek reelection, yesterday afternoon in Gastonia, former NCGOP chairman, current head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Watley, announced he would be seeking the same seat, obviously on the opposite side of the political aisle, running as a Republican. And many political analysts that we have spoken to throughout the week seem to indicate that both of these major players jumping into the race this early, both of those happening in the month of July, that it is going to Make it incredibly tough for any other candidate to potentially win a primary against the likes of Cooper or Watley. It is set to be a major battle in North Carolina. Rumor has it, the most expensive United States Senate race in history as we go through the latter parts of this year and run that election out all the way until November of 2026.
We will continue with our coverage of this highly influential and important North Carolina Senate race over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, and right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. There's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of weeks about Medicaid. Of course, up at the federal level with Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill here in North Carolina with some focus on Medicaid expansion and the future of that program.
However, this morning we turned to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and an audit by state auditor Dave Bollock about North Carolina's Medicaid plan. To walk us through those details, Teresa Opaca, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the news hour. Teresa, a lot of Medicaid news over the last couple of weeks. What are you learning? Sure, good morning, Nick.
Thanks for having me.
So, yeah, there was this audit released late last week by Auditor Bolick. He said that there were many factors in this audit that pointed to a threat to patients' safety. Among them, how the DHHS allowed. Physicians and providers with license limitations, suspensions or other credential issues to remain in the program and still give people treatment. We do break some of that down in the article, but that was among the huge issues that this audit did point out.
Yeah, I mean, you look at that, I mean, the headline is failure to remove problematic providers, which inherently, Teresa, when you're talking about medical coverage, especially that that is almost exclusively or 100% exclusively funded by taxpayers across the United States, that's a big-time problem if you've got individuals that are not supposed to be dealing with certain things, not only providing the service, maybe not to par, but then also billing the state or federal government for that as well. Right, and getting paid for it. And there's numerous instances that they have in this report. There was one doctor I remember reading about, he needed a chaperone with him for previous sexual misconduct, if you will. I mean, there's some pretty big stuff that was in this.
And the reason why they did this audit is they wanted to follow up on a 2021 audit because there were similar issues back then with the Health Department, North Carolina, conducting the same. same practices, letting letting these doctors and physicians, you know, practice or or get paid reimbursed from the Medicaid program when they shouldn't have been. And there was maybe one item I believe was fixed, but Majority of them weren't, and there were all different reasons given. DHHS said, Well, there was, you know, no law requiring it for this, or you know, we didn't deem this, or you know, so it's like Auditor Bola shot back, well, no, that's not right, and you know, it just wanted to, they wanted to go through all of this, which I certainly don't blame them because you want the best care possible when you are going to a doctor. You know, Teresa, I'm glad you bring up this previous 2021 audit.
You and I have discussed a variety of audits of a variety of state agencies over the last year or so. This is unfortunately a common thread. It seems regardless of what entity we're talking about, these audits take place sometimes every year, every couple of years. And oftentimes we come back to the same drawing board every time. It's the same list of issues over and over again.
That, I guess, is not an exception here with the audit of Medicaid. No, absolutely. You're right. I mean, we've had those issues come up in audits. It seems like year after year after year.
I don't know if the General Assembly could get involved in this at this point, like they did with ENCORE, with the hurricane relief out in eastern North Carolina, where if some agency is not doing what they're supposed to be doing, maybe have a hearing on it. That's a possibility. Again, I don't know, but yeah, you're right. It seems like there's always the same issues with the same departments year after year or every couple of years when they do do these audits.
So I don't know what thinking is on the departments. Their part, but you think they would really, if they pointed this out in an audit, you'd want to fix it.
Well, before we get into some more of the details, I just want to make this last point. I mean, I have a lot of respect for what goes on in the state auditor's office. I think they do a lot of work. But, Teresa, you're eventually getting towards diminishing returns if you're paying state employees to do audits every year and find the same results every time. It's almost a waste of that department's time if the agency truly is not going to make any changes and just let the same things come out every year.
Oh yes, yes, absolutely. Agree with you. You know, they could be using that time for other things that need to shed light on something that's going in wrong in the state that's totally different from the same old, same old with all the same departments every year. Like I said, maybe that you need to have a hearing at this point. I'm not sure that that could happen.
But yeah, it is a waste of the time of the employees of the auditor's office and taxpayer money, if you will. Looking at some of the other issues, we've got license limitations. Those were ignored. We touched a little bit on that. Incomplete credential checks, unverified ownership of information.
These are some pretty serious things that are in this report. You read through the entire thing, and our audience can do so over at CarolinaJournal.com. These are serious issues, correct? Oh, absolutely correct. I mean, you know, it's just another one, too.
Briefly, they didn't fully implement recommendations to strengthen provider credential verification.
So they didn't actually go through the whole process of verifying. Credentials. And I think some of that was included for pharmacy. Um Um Related propositions, and they and I think they believe that DHHS said, well, we required them, we thought that they were going to self-report. I believe that's what one of the answers was given.
So, yeah, it just, they're all very serious issues. There's nothing that's really minor in this report. As we look at a typical audit and ones like we've talked about in the past, typically the auditor, in this case, Dave Bullock, gives some recommendations to the entity that he's conducting it on. Do you have an overview of what some of those look like? Sure.
So for that last one that I mentioned, they obviously say they should verify the providers to possess the certifications that they should have. Other recommendations that they have is Just to make sure everything is being followed through on and being correct. Policies and procedures for, say, continued enrollment of providers with license limitations should describe those types of limitations that the division finds acceptable. And obviously, the policy should also require adequate documentation to support those decisions to either enroll or deny enrollment.
So they're all really, really good recommendations. We have a full listing in the article on our website. But yeah, definitely nothing to sneeze at at this report. Teresa, we appreciate the update. Teresa Opeka from the Carolina Journal joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
News Talk 1110-993WBT, welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour. You may or may not be aware of some hunting regulations and restrictions that exist in North Carolina on Sundays. This is a pretty interesting story this morning. To walk us through the details, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, reading through your story over at CarolinaJournal.com.
I didn't know many of the background and history on a lot of this. What are the details that you're following this morning?
Well, people who are longtime hunters in North Carolina will know that for years and years the state banned. Hunting with any armed weapons on Sundays. It was something that was just a commonplace thing to ban hunting on Sunday, along with other things that were banned. But in 2017, the General Assembly opened up the door on hunting on Sunday, but still kept some restrictions. There were time and place restrictions.
There were some restrictions on the types of animals that you could hunt. There were some restrictions on the use of dogs for hunting.
So while hunting was opened up to some extent in 2017, there still were a number of restrictions on Sundays. The following year, voters across North Carolina approved a new amendment to the state constitution that That codified our right to hunt and fish. And so, a couple of years after that, in 2020, a plaintiff named Tim Oates filed suit and said, Wait a minute, we have a constitutional right now in North Carolina to hunt and fish. It's written there right in our state's governing document.
So these Sunday hunting restrictions are unconstitutional. Basically, what he was saying was you shouldn't have just opened it up a little bit. You should have gotten rid of the restrictions completely based on this constitutional amendment. This week, the State Court of Appeals, in a unanimous opinion, said no, those hunting restrictions are fine. And basically, this came down to whether the General Assembly still had a right or authority to pass laws that would restrict hunting, given that the voters put this constitutional right to hunt and fish in the Constitution.
And the State Court of Appeals said the answer was yes. If you actually look at the Constitutional Amendment itself, which now sits in our Declaration of Rights, it's a fairly long amendment. And one of the things that it says is that we have this right to hunt and fish subject to laws approved by the General Assembly and to rules based on legislative authority. And so the State Court of Appeals. In an opinion written by Judge John Arrowwood, said this is a grant of power within the Constitution that gives the General Assembly the right to make these restrictions.
And since that right is in there for the General Assembly or that grant of power, you would look at the laws that are passed and give them what's called a rational basis review rather than a strict scrutiny review. For people who don't follow court cases very closely, strict scrutiny says you are passing a law that deals with a fundamental right. And so we're going to look really closely here to see whether this is something that should be allowed to stand. And because it's a fundamental right, you have to pass a really high hurdle. In a rational basis review, basically the General Assembly just has to have some.
Acceptable reason that would make sense to a rational person about why they would want to do this. And Judge Arrowwood and his colleagues said there's definitely a rational basis for doing this. You might want to protect people going to church with some of those time restrictions. You might want to protect other people who would go onto land that might be hunted for other purposes.
So there are a number of rational reasons why you would want to ban hunting or at least restrict hunting on Sunday. And so this law can stand.
So basically, the fact that we have the constitutional right now to hunt and fish as guaranteed by the amendment in 2018 doesn't mean that the General Assembly can't place some limits on Sunday hunting.
Well, and I guess maybe a similar thing to bring up would be that there are current seasons for hunting certain animals with certain kinds of weapons across the state of North Carolina and many other states as well. That's pretty common. You've got specific seasons. I guess, Mitch, that would fall under this same thing as well, even though there is that constitutional right, as you noted it, there are still restrictions as to when you can do certain things in certain places. Yes, and I think if the plaintiff had won this case and said that there and the courts had said, well, no, that constitutional amendment says that you can't have these Sunday hunting restrictions, then I think other Suits could have challenged hunting seasons or any other types of hunting regulation saying, hey, our state constitution now says we have the right to hunt and fish.
You can't. General Assembly put in place restrictions on that right because it's a fundamental right.
So I think had the court ruled in the other way, it really would have opened the door for other legal action challenging hunting seasons and challenging other hunting regulations. But since the court ruled the way that it did, I think the current regime of hunting regulations and hunting laws. Probably remains intact.
Now, if the General Assembly passes a law that restricts hunting that doesn't seem to be reasonable, then there would be the opportunity for a lawsuit. And I think that's really what that constitutional amendment was designed to do. It was designed to say: if a General Assembly that's less inclined to support hunting in the future comes along and tries to restrict hunting, this constitutional amendment will be an obstacle blocking the General Assembly. But it's not designed to stop the General Assembly from passing some sort of reasonable or rational restrictions. You mentioned this was in the state's second highest court system, the appeals court.
It was a unanimous decision, as you already mentioned to us this morning. Mitch, do you think something like this gets appealed? Or is it essentially dead on the vine as we talk about it this morning? It really depends on whether the plaintiff in the case, who's a single individual, a fellow named Tim Oates, wants to go any further. He filed suit in 2020.
So basically, he's been going through this court process now for five years. At this point, he might decide: well, you know, it looks like the deck is stacked against me, or he might say, I've been working at this for five years. Why stop now? I might as well try to get it to the state Supreme Court.
Now, because it was a unanimous ruling and basically looked at the Constitutional Amendment and said the General Assembly has the power to do this, it's not entirely clear that the state Supreme Court would even want to take this up. The state Supreme Court might just say, if there is an appeal, that it wouldn't bother taking the case. There's nothing that would force the state's highest court to review this decision. It's a very interesting story. We've got some background and some other things as it relates to details on this story up on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com.
We appreciate the time. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. And that's going to do it for a Friday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you Monday morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3, WBT.
