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Book in minutes at vaccassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Thursday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you.
Well, early voting kicks off in all 100 counties across the state of North Carolina today ahead of the March 3rd primary. We'll walk through all the details, all the information you need to know if you are deciding to vote today or sometime over the next almost three weeks with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation. He'll join us coming up here in just a little bit on the Carolina Journal News Hour. In some other statewide news this morning, North Carolina is expanding its apprenticeship programs with some federal workforce funds building on being named the best state for business, economic development, and workforce development.
Some pretty high labels for the state. North Carolina is allocating funds to a state program that will connect high school students with career opportunities through pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships programs. Democrat Governor Josh Stein announced on Tuesday that funds from the United States Department of Labor's Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act will be dedicated to launch North Carolina. Carolina's career launch, or as the program will be acronymed, the NCCL, which will be used to grow youth apprenticeships across the state in a variety of industries and provide financial support for both employers and students, with a specific focus on supporting youth apprenticeships in Western North Carolina. The governor said during the press conference this week, apprenticeships are one of the best ways to support students, businesses, and communities across the state.
11th and 12th graders have important decisions to make about their futures. It's our job to provide them with real options and real opportunities that offer meaningful career paths right in their home communities. One of those young people is Dylan Clark, an apprentice at Machine Specialist Inc., which is in Guilford County, North Carolina. He started his apprenticeship through Guilford County Schools last month, and the governor met with Clark, who told him that it was his dream to own his own car and home. And he said, thanks to this career path in advanced manufacturing, he is already purchased and is going to purchase both.
Stein said the promise of North Carolina is simple, that if you work hard where you come from, you should never limit how far you can go. Industries in the program will include automobile, culinary arts, manufacturing, aerospace, childcare, health care, among other fields, and with students being able to learn a skill for free while earning a paycheck as they launch their future careers. The governor said that the Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships has set a goal to double the number of apprenticeships within the next three years across the state and is grateful to public schools, community college, apprenticeship North Carolina's Workforce Development Board, and the North Carolina Business Committee for Education, all for partnering with the state and figuring out how to get this program spun up. In addition, he said that employers are critical to the success of the program, highlighting another company known as Caramont Health in Gastonia, that of course in Gaston County. With the hospital, the hospital system has significantly reduced its dependence on travel nurses, which can be costly through the apprenticeship program.
And as a result, they now have a retention rate of up to 34% higher than traditional recruitment models. Caramont Health launched its first CNA apprenticeship program back in 2019. According to Janice Hill, who is the director of the World Health Center, Workforce Transition Program says, we've looked internally and recognized that we had employees who had the motivation to go back to school. We recognized that we had employees who couldn't academically be very successful, but they were without financial support or environmental support. And that's where we stepped in with a hand up and not to be confused with a handout.
The CNA1 program was developed and the first class was made up entirely of housekeepers and people who delivered our food trays.
Some of those individuals have gone on to become nurses. She said that the hospital system now has 11 program cohorts across two community colleges, all focused on the critical needs currently ongoing within the healthcare industry's current staffing shortages. And they have expanded to include several healthcare disciplines and work with Gaston Community College, Gaston College, and Gaston County School Systems, both of those entities, to develop. Their pre-apprenticeship program for high school juniors and seniors. Four high school students graduates were hired in 2025 after completing their pre-apprenticeship program and are now working as CNAs in their positions at Caramont Health and are currently working on some of the prerequisites that are required towards choosing their career paths.
Upon graduation, Caramont plans to offer scholarships to help those five students complete their BSN program of choice. Currently, there are 11 juniors and 11 seniors in the program, and that's just one small area, as I mentioned, in Gastonia in North Carolina. Also during Tuesday's press conference, the governor mentioned a new launch of a dashboard that North Carolinians can check to see how each county and the state is doing, including in terms of investment in communities, new jobs that have been announced, as well as some other information. That new website is 100strong, 100strong.nc.gov. A lot of interesting information statewide that you can view on that dashboard, 100strong.nc.gov, with Governor Stein saying, as leaders, we owe transparency on the progress we're making.
So I encourage everyone to check out the dashboard and hold us accountable for delivering your community. That dashboard is set to update on a somewhat of a level, a periodic update schedule. We've also got the link to it over on our website this morning. Carolina Journal. With the story's headline: NC expands apprenticeships with federal workforce funds.
In some other statewide news this morning, Union County Public Schools is championing a high-dosage math tutoring model that has demonstrated positive and robust academic growth and gains in fourth and seventh graders. This is according to a recent presentation in front of the North Carolina Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee. The success of the model has led to calls for a state-level funding program to spread it more broadly to other public schools. The Union County School model centers on a whole-grade approach where all students receive daily 30-minute math tutoring sessions during the traditional school day. These scenarios occur in a format, which is a strict three-to-one student-to-tutor ratio.
Union County Schools personnel developed their own curriculum for the tutoring and recruited tutors at a pay of $25 an hour, which is significantly higher. than other tutoring rates across the state of North Carolina. The tutors are non-certified personnel who must pass a math assessment and receive monthly training. The model mandates dedication to dedicated tutoring spaces, consistent use of curriculum binders, and the appointment of a school-based champion to support the initiative. The tutoring sessions are built into the core instructional block, ensuring that they do not distract from other critical learnings that may be outside of the field of mathematics.
The tutoring program, which actually began quite some time ago, back in 2017, it has expanded significantly post-pandemic and recently underwent an evaluation by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Education. Pre-pandemic, fourth grade students experienced a 10% proficiency gain as a result of the tutoring program, while seventh graders saw an even larger 26% proficiency gain. Pandemic, the gains were 10% for fourth graders and 11% for seventh graders. According to the superintendent of the Union County Public Schools, he said, what we've learned was that over time, no matter if you're identified as an exceptional child or not, if you're academically gifted, if you're a multicultural learner, all of them are benefiting from this approach. Noting that the tutoring approach, quote, has become a part of ingrained culture of the building that has been really a blessing from us from a cultural standpoint.
The analysis from UNC Chapel Hill also found that the tutoring program is pretty cost-effective with the annual cost ranging from $750 to about $2,500 per pupil. That cost-effectiveness ratios are in line with or superior to many highly regarded educational interventions, including lengthening the school day, increasing teacher salary, and things like class size reduction. Union County has already trained over 50 school systems nationwide on its approach.
So it's not only being attempted to replicate here in North Carolina, but going elsewhere with the superintendent proposed as a lead district partnership model where the Union County schools would collaborate with other interested districts, facilitated by recruiting state funds either through competitiveness grants or a dedicated program managed by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The estimated annual cost for the Union County school system to run its current program across all participating schools is approximately $2.75 million for a statewide partnership. The school system envisions that the majority would need to go to the districts to hire tutors with the Union County schools requiring minimal funding to support training and partnership management. You can read some additional coverage about this. An interesting model.
It's cool to see these pilot programs get picked up and be used. not only in other school districts across North Carolina, but even across the nation, you can read those details at CarolinaJournal.com. That story's headline, Union County Math Tutoring Seen as a Possible Model for the State. You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving. You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age.
That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need. Book in minutes at vaxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer.
Yeah. It's 5:22. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good Thursday morning to you.
Early voting for the 2026 midterm elections. The primary kicks off later today across the state of North Carolina. All 100 counties casting ballots to walk us through what we can expect if you are heading out to the polls over the next couple of weeks. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Andy, we've got a lot to deal with in early voting. Maybe some new folks that have just recently moved to the state of North Carolina, don't live in a municipality, so they couldn't vote last year. What should voters expect if they're heading out later today or over the rest of the month of February?
Okay. There's going to be a bit of a rush. Today, and when you get later on in the period, there's going to be a secondary rush at the end. Usually, it's a little backloaded. The last couple of days of early voting are usually the busiest, although there is this kind of influx on the first day.
So, if you're a little worried about avoiding lines, maybe don't go today, go tomorrow. And you will definitely avoid the lines because this is a primary and a non-presidential election year. Turnout's going to be really low. And so, it's going to be a pretty easy time for you to get in, cast your vote, and get out. And probably any day, really, but except for the last Saturday morning.
Let's break this down. We're talking about a primary, meaning that there are two, in most cases, at least two different ballots available to voters. There may be different contests available depending on if there's a primary.
So, Andy, based on if you're a Republican, a Democrat, or of course our largest voting bloc, an unaffiliated voter, who are you eligible to vote for in these primaries?
Well, Republicans can vote in Republican primaries. Democrats can vote in Democratic primaries. If you're unaffiliated, your choices are broader. You can decide to vote in either one of those primaries. And there's going to be a small subset of unaffiliated voters who will request an unaffiliated ballot.
Now, that's going to Be premised on two conditions. One, that there's an unaffiliated ballot available. Usually, those are local races, local non-partisan races that have been folded into the primary date. It saves the county money if you don't have to have a separate race for, say, your county commission or school board at that time. And if that county is offering that.
And the person chooses it. There's always a handful of those folks that do the unaffiliated ballots.
So if you look at Vote Tracker, which is a data product that the John Locke Foundation puts out, you'll see some people requesting unaffiliated ballots. There is no unaffiliated party. They're not choosing the unaffiliated nominees. They're choosing nonpartisan races that are being voted on on primary day. And Andy, it's interesting.
If you go back in North Carolina about over the last 30 or 40 years, there were a lot more of those local races that you're talking about-county commission and school board-that were nonpartisan, like what many people saw in the municipal elections back last year in 2025. But it seems like that trend is continuing to go downwards, and more and more of these races-school board, county commission, things of that nature-are now partisan with Rs and Ds maybe running against each other in the general or a contested primary election within their own party. Right. And that has been a general trend in North Carolina. And, you know, some people think that's a terrible idea that you shouldn't introduce this level of partisan politics into local races.
But it also gives an important clue to voters because a lot of times, especially for these local races, people aren't doing a whole lot of research. But if you see that R or that D by your name for somebody, say, voting for, you know, running for county commission or school board, you have at least a rough idea of what that person is representing. And so that helps you make that decision. That's a heuristic that voters can use. And without that, then you really have to bear down and maybe even just vote on name whose name is at the top of the list or even skip it because we do know that unaffiliated races tend to have a lot of roll-off, a lot lower voter participation than partisan races.
Yes, somebody doesn't want to make the quote unquote wrong choice and they're not familiar with the candidates. There's no party affiliation, so they may just leave that blank. Andy, voter ID has been a hot topic of conversation in North Carolina now for nearly a decade. Walk us through the process for voter ID for individuals, again, showing up either sometime later today over the next couple of weeks. What can they expect when they show up to their early voting location and try and vote in either a Republican or Democrat primary?
Well, it's, you know, we've done this a couple of times.
So the local officials have that experience under their belt. It should be a pretty smooth process. You go, you check in after maybe a very brief period in line, especially for early voting as opposed to primary day voting. They confirm the ID, make sure that it's an accepted ID, that it's out of date. And then once you do that, they hand your ballot and you vote.
It hardly adds any time to the process of checking in because they still have to go through that verification process, check against the books anyhow. And so most people who come in with their IDs aren't really going to notice a difference between their voting experience when they didn't have an ID. There's a small proportion of folks who forgot to bring their ID or don't have an ID. There's a couple of options. One is you can come back later with your ID.
That's an advantage of early voting. If you forget once, you can say, oh, well, let me just come by again. Later on, I'm away home from work and I'll bring my ID then. Or you can fill out an affidavit. If you don't have one and you can't get one, there is an affidavit form where you basically list your excuse why you don't have an ID.
You get a provisional ballot. And if the board believes that there's no reason to think that you are lying by that reason and it's a legitimate reason, then that ballot will be counted as well. Yeah, we've seen now, as you mentioned at the top there, Andy, a couple of elections now that have gone through with full voter ID in place, regardless of what each political party says about it. Those elections have happened. And for the most part, we haven't seen any crazy, outrageous claims, no crazy seven-hour lines to stand in because it's taken too long to check IDs.
However, one thing that might be new this cycle for individuals is something that you and I have talked about a couple of times. And we've chatted with some of our other friends over at CarolinaJournal.com about is the registration repair project. There was a couple hundred thousand voters, Andy, that had some problems with their voter registration. Those individuals show up during early voting. They might have a couple of extra steps, correct?
Correct.
Well, really, one extracept. They're going to be asked to provide either their driver's license number or the last four digits of their social security number.
Now, that's pretty convenient. And all the local election officials are going to have their list of people in their county since in early voting sites, no matter where you vote, they have a full list of all the voters in the whole county at the early voting sites. When you get to election day, they're going to be just looking at voters in the precinct.
So those election officials are going to have a list. If your name comes up that you're on this list of people that need to have their registration repaired, then they're going to ask for that. It's pretty convenient because what most people submit are either their driver's license or their state ID. That's going to have their number that they need to submit.
So it's kind of a two-for-one. If you're submitting some other kind of ID or and you don't have a driver's license or driver's license number, then you're going to use the last four of your social. They will reference that, check that out, everything is smooth, then the ballot will be counted.
So that might add a little bit of time to the process as they're getting that information written down. But once again, you're not going to see, I think, a huge increase in lines or any real problems for most voters in that regard. We'll continue the conversation with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation coming up after this. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour.
You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving. You still got it. But your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19.
Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need. Book in minutes at vaxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. Yeah. It's 5.38.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. Continuing our conversation this morning with Dr. Andy Jackson, he from the John Locke Foundation as early voting kicks off in all 100 counties across the state of North Carolina today ahead of the March the 3rd primary election. Andy, let's talk about voter turnout. These are primary elections.
As you noted, because they are primaries in most cases, the county Republican Party, the County Democrat Party is obligated not to be involved, or maybe there's no primary at all. What does voter turnout typically look like in one of these midterm election cycles here in North Carolina?
Well, if you're somebody that believes that the legitimacy of election is based on the turnout, you're going to be sorely disappointed. You're really looking in the teens, especially since this is a non-presidential midterm primary. It was possible that the U.S. Senate race might draw some people in, but those are starting to look like. Kind of snooze fests, especially on the Democratic side.
Republicans, there's a belief that there might be some challenge to Michael Watley, the frontrunner, but that. Odds have been looking increasingly distant at this point.
So there's not a major draw for people. What really brings people out to vote is how interesting are the races. And in primaries where it's just Republicans against Republicans, Democrats against Democrats, it doesn't have that same level of drama that gets people out to the polls.
So yeah, it's going to be low. And if we have a couple of secondary primaries, as we call them, or runoff primaries, it's going to be even lower. Then you get into the single digits. Yeah, and there are a couple of those pretty important primaries that we will be keeping an eye on. One of them, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff Democrat primary, a couple candidates there.
Senate leader Phil Berger is being challenged for his seat as the leader, longest-serving leader of the North Carolina Senate. There's a pretty interesting congressional primary taking place in the northeast half of the state.
So, Andy, you might have these maybe more pockets of areas where voters are a little bit more engaged, where there may be some door knocking going on, mail being sent, maybe even some TV and radio advertising, but in the vast majority of the state, Unless you're actively searching this stuff out, you may blink and the primary is already said and done. You may have not even heard about it. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's definitely very, very much targeting going on. There is a small set of voters who are kind of reliable primary voters.
They come out every year, rain or shine. And everybody that has access to the data knows who those people are. They're sending their folks to knock on those doors. There's kind of this, you know. U-shaped effect here, like really local candidates that have access to those lists are knocking on doors.
And then folks at the top, your Senate, your congressional races, those folks are working hard and they've got the money to kind of hit you on ads and whatnot, especially targeted ads on the internet for those folks. But some of these candidates in the middle, these larger countywide offices, don't have either the money or the volunteer base to really reach all of those targeted voters. And so, and surprisingly, I'll bring this up real quick. There's a few incumbents who don't have access to their party's data. Like Carla Cunningham, for example, in Mecklenburg County, the Democratic Party has cut her off.
Now, she's run enough that she probably knows her district and probably has some residual data.
So she'll probably be okay in that regard. But if you don't have access to that kind of minute detail and information, you're at a real disadvantage, especially against an incumbent. Yeah, no question about that. Andy, before we let you go, we appreciate all the information this morning. Tell us a little bit about the Carolina election tracker.
For those that are political nerds and nuts and want to track this day in and day out as the early voting period continues to tick through as we get towards the end of the month, tell us a little bit about that project. You're the man responsible. You're the one behind it. What can folks see there and what should they be looking for?
Well, this is called Vote Tracker. It's at Carolinaelections.com. This is a website that we maintain, and every time votes start coming in, we keep up with them. And we, you know, the nice thing about this is if you want to see what are the demographics of the fourth district. Democratic primary, for example, you can do that.
You get into our page once again, Carolinaelections.com, click on vote tracker. You can click on the fourth district, you can and then scroll down and see all of the information about that race. If you're just interested in data about one county, like what does the turnout in Mecklenburg County look like? Once again, if you're interested in that sheriff's race, you know, who's voting in the Democrats, at least what kind of people are voting in the Democratic primary in Mecklenburg County, you can do that. It's a very flexible system, and you know, we only have a little over 2,000 votes right now because it's just been mail voting.
But starting later today and with tomorrow's upload, we're going to get today's data, and you're really going to be able to start digging into kind of beefy amounts of data and see what the trends are. Not the vote totals, we won't know that until the evening of March 3rd, but what kinds of folks are voting and what kind of of folks are not voting by implication. Yeah, it's a great resource at Carolinaelections.com. Andy, we'll be catching up with you pretty frequently over the next couple of weeks. You'll be digging through this data, bringing us some of the trends.
We greatly appreciate it. This morning, Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. One, oh. You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving.
You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need. Book in minutes at vaxassist.com.
Sponsored by Pfizer. The John Locke Foundation's Carolina Liberty Conference is headed to Raleigh February the 27th and 28th. The event brings together policymakers, scholars, community leaders, and citizens from across the Tar Hill State to explore the challenges and opportunities of advancing freedom in today's political and cultural climate. Takes place February the 27th and 28th at the Starview Hotel in Raleigh. And this year, we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
We've got some great guest speakers like Chief Justice Paul Newby. He is the head, the top man over at the North Carolina Supreme Court, State Auditor Dave Bollock, and more. Register for and get your tickets for the 2026 Carolina Liberty Conference today by visiting johnlocke.org. That's j-o-h-n-l-o-c-k.org. Look forward to seeing you at the 2026 Carolina Liberty Conference.
It's now 552 on the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. In some other statewide news, this morning, Democrat Governor Josh Stein announced at a press conference this week that there will be an expansion of the North Carolina Energy Saver Program to all 100 counties in the state. This is a federally funded program through the Department of Energy, and it is designed to make utility bills more affordable by offering two rebates to eligible households who are at between 80 to 150 percent of the area's median income. The first rebate offers up to $16,000 for making whole home efficiency upgrades, such as installing energy-efficient HVAC units, with the second rebate program offering up to $14,000 for a new, more energy-efficient appliance, such as an electric stove. The first rebate is projected to save an average of nearly $1,000 a year.
Which the governor said they don't have the numbers just on yet for the second rebate. Governor Stein said during the press conference: it's a win for families who participate because they get significant savings for upgrading their appliances and HVAC systems. And then they save thousands of dollars a year on their utility bills over time. It's a win for contractors because we're keeping them working and supporting roughly 2,300 jobs. It's a win for our environment and our health.
Reducing energy use also reduces carbon emissions, and it's a win for our energy grid. The more families who participate, the less strain that there will be on the state's power grid. The program launched just a little over a year ago, January of 2025, in two counties, and it finished its expansion last month with Mecklenburg and Wake counties, the state's two largest. The program has received a little over 4,800 applications, of which 1,700 have been approved, and an estimated $770,000 in projects have been completed in some 51 households, resulting in an estimated 293 kilowatt hours saved over the last year. The deadline for this one-time use program is 2031.
The governor said that he's eagerly awaiting the recommendations of his Energy Policy Task Force, which he created by executive order in August of this year. They will issue their first report next week, including guidance on managing the new energy demand from data centers and North Carolina's continued growth and population. With the governor saying there's no question that the demand for energy is growing rapidly, and it's in part because North Carolina is the number one state where people from other states are moving to. We're growing extremely fast, but we're also seeing new types of businesses like server farms and data centers that are consuming incredible amounts of power. One data center farm could consume as much as an entire city, for example, like Charlotte.
That's just an incredible addition to load demands that is without precedent in the state's history.
So we've got to figure out how to, how do we? Respond to this. How do we deal with these data centers? While he said that the rising costs of power should not be passed on to the consumers, he did not agree with Senate Bill 266 that was passed by the North Carolina General Assembly. It was called the aptly named Power Bill Reduction Act.
However, the governor not necessarily practicing what he preaches, he vetoed it. Fortunately, the General Assembly overrode his veto, and with that override, the North Carolina, the state's interim 2030 carbon reduction mandate, which is projected to save consumers nearly $15 billion, was passed into law and cutting out some of these interim goals.
However, in August, Stein said it will mean higher costs for families and threaten up to 50,000 future jobs.
So a little bit of politicking going on as it relates to the Power Bill Reduction Act. John Sanders, who is the director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the John Locke Foundation, said that while he would welcome The governor joining Locke's push to keep North Carolina's electrical grid reliable while at the same time keeping electricity costs low, the governor is going about it in the wrong way. Saying, first, you don't keep down costs by shifting them from the electrical company to the taxpayers. And secondly, as we learned during the Soviet Union, you don't put the economy under the direction of an executive government committee and expect growth. Third, even if the governor worries about fuels costs, he should know that there are many costs to electrical generating facilities other than fuel, including capital costs, operation, maintenance, and utility profits.
You can read some additional details on this story this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Thursday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning, BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving.
You still got it. But your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need.
Book in minutes at vaxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. Mm-hmm.
