It's 5.05, a good Friday morning to you, and welcome into the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. We are just a couple of days away from the Republican and Democrat primaries taking place here across the state of North Carolina. Election Day coming up on Tuesday. And we've got some very interesting information to pass along to you here this morning on the Carolina Journal News Hour to walk us through our most recent Carolina Journal poll looking at the Republican primary just a couple of days here ahead of Election Day.
It's my pleasure to welcome David Larson to the Carolina Journal News Hour this morning. David, before we get into anything, I want to just lay out for our audience here today that this is a poll of 600 likely Republican primary voters. In most of our other Carolina Journal polls, we ask Republicans and Democrats, unaffiliated voters, a litany of questions.
However, as we're just digging in on this Republican primary, these are predominantly Republican conservative individuals that we were asking questions.
So, David, let's take it from the top. The race that has generated at least what I thought was a lot of buzz across the state of North Carolina maybe is not the case. What does our poll show for this very interesting Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat?
Well, believe it or not, I think that having about 50% of people of primary voters knowing who these candidates are is actually not bad. You look further down on the poll and there's other prominent politicians who you would think everybody would know who they were, but they don't.
So this one shows that Michael Wiley, he has 38%. uh support among uh these these republican primary voters About 50% say they are unsure. um and you know that's that's an improvement uh for for michael wiley i think in that the the number of people um Percentage-wise, who are backing him, but still, yeah, 50% do not know.
However, it's important to note that. To beat a runoff, he only needs to be the top vote getter and have above 30%.
So, unless that other 50% comes in as all for Down Brown or all for Michelle Morrow, if it breaks down like this, like the first 50% did, which is 38% to him and then you know, nobody under 10%. Then he's fine. Because, like I said, all he has to do is. Just get above 30% and be the top vote getter, and he can not have a have a uh a runoff. But the the the only other you know person that um kind of stands above the the rest, I guess, among that pack under ten percent would be Don Brown.
He got seven and a half percent. Still nowhere close to you know, to the the front runner, Michael Watley, but you know, maybe noteworthy that For that last 50% that are still deciding, maybe that would be the only one you might keep an eye on to see if he can edge closer.
Well, let me ask you about Don Brown, David. He has been running a pretty lengthy campaign. He's been running for this position for practically almost a year at this point, is doing more of a grassroots-style effort across the state of North Carolina. If you're following Brown on Facebook, Instagram, or any of those other social media platforms, you see that he's predominantly speaking to Republican Party GOP groups across the state of North Carolina. I'm pretty shocked that he's pretty much stalled out there at 7.5% for at least as much chatter as there is online.
I guess maybe the echo, the echo chamber that is social media platforms doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. What do you say? Yeah, I think that's the case. Because online we all have our little corners of things that we're really into. And the kind of people that are really into North Carolina politics and would have heard of all these people, they know who Don Brown is.
And a lot of them, he's been making waves in their circles. But for those who start paying attention closer to when the elections are decided, they see, okay, Trump. Endorsed Michael Wiley. They might not have even known, a lot of people didn't know who Michael Wiley was even before all of this, even though he ran both the North Carolina and the national GOP. He was RNC chair and GOP NC.
North Carolina GOP Chair as well. you know, you would think he'd be fairly well known, um, but it does show, yeah, that That not everybody is aware of all the effort you can make and also. Just a couple big factors. For example, how well connected Michael Wiley is to donors not only across the state but nationally, and then also the second one being. You know, getting that endorsement from Trump, those can be, you know, pretty hard to overcome, even with a lot of great grassroots effort and a lot of.
you know, reach out reaching out to different local GOP groups. David, let me ask you and a little challenge you on something you mentioned at the beginning. You said you thought it was pretty in line that about 50% of voters knew who they were voting for when you add up all of the candidates. That means that 50% don't. Why is that not surprising to you in a Republican primary?
Again, we're talking about those that are likely to vote in primaries. I think some of the anecdotal evidence would say these are the more political 1%. They're involved, they're in tune, they're going to maybe their local GOP meetings, they're actively involved in some level of civic engagement. Why does that number not jump off the page for you?
Well, a good example of why.
Well, in past polls, you would see major leaders in the state, Republican leaders like Phil Berger or Tim Moore. And you would see barely anybody has heard of them, which is surprising, like I said, for people who pay a lot of attention. that you think Republicans would know these people. Um but you know in in question uh twelve when it says Who have you? Favorable opinion, not favorable.
And no opinion. There's a lot of these Republican figures that, you know, like Chief Justice Paul Newby. 29% say they they have no opinion of them. um or never heard of So Add those two together, and that's nearing 80% or so of people that have either never heard of, or maybe they know, have heard the name, but don't have an opinion. And same thing with state auditor Dave Bullock, same with state treasurer Brad Breiner, who has.
Uh forty-seven percent never heard of him. And then Another 33 and a half don't have an opinion.
So, the reason I was saying it doesn't surprise me is. Those are huge numbers and the 80%-ish of people who are like, oh, a newbie, I Maybe you heard of it, maybe not, and I don't know. And same thing for the other major figures. Um the only one that the ones that are exceptions would be US Senator Tom Tillis, only three percent had never heard of him, and Ted Budd, another US Senator, nine percent had never heard of him.
So maybe those really prominent ones, eventually the US Senators from North Carolina, Those break through the noise. But has that happened yet for Michael Watley? I'd say after he's been elected, hopefully, that we'd come back and do a poll of how many have never heard of him, and hopefully that number would go down. But it's a sad thing about state politics nowadays is people do pay a lot more attention to national politics. And they often are not aware, and they're going to figure these things out.
Maybe when they're headed to the polls and say, oh, Trump endorsed this guy, okay, I'll go with that guy. Yeah, no question about that. And we'll get to some of those national questions here in just a couple of minutes. But I'm glad you brought up some of these statewide officials. David, what I find surprising is you look at state auditor Dave Bollock, state treasurer Brad Bryiner, and Labor Commissioner Luke Farley.
They are all in their first terms, but many of these individuals who say they've never heard of them, David, they just voted for them back in November of 2024.
So it wasn't that long ago that they were presumably as Republicans casting ballots for these three Republican Council of State members. Luke Farley's picture is in every single elevator across the state of North Carolina. Yet 44.6% say, eh, never heard of the guy. Yep, that's just the reality of state politics. It's even worse.
um in local politics where you ask you know who's the mayor of your town you know who's People don't know these things. And I do wonder if that was more If that was different back in the day, you know, you did have local news. A lot of times, people had local newspapers and they would read them, and that's how they got a lot of information.
Now we just have so many options. You know, you can. You can pay mostly attention to national things and you can have your lane that you really things you're really interested in and the local paper that would have told you who your congressperson is and And you know, that kind of thing and who your mayor is. You know, that a lot of those have gone away and or people just aren't that interested, to be honest. Yeah, we'll take a look at where individuals are consuming their media.
We've got an interesting question on that coming up here in just a couple of minutes. Before that, we'll dive into President Donald Trump's approval rating as we continue with coverage of our most recent Carolina Journal poll with David Larson from CarolinaJournal.com. It's 5:18. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig.
Good Friday morning to you. Continuing our coverage of our most recent Carolina Journal poll here, just a couple of days before primary elections in the state of North Carolina, David Larson from CarolinaJournal.com joins us. Let's get into some of the national stuff. A big week for President Donald Trump, a state of the union on Tuesday. Obviously, the president is very good at getting cameras in front of him, David.
He tends to suck the air out of the room politically when he's speaking. What do the Republican primary voters, again, laying that out, these 600-ish or so Republican primary voters, do they approve or disapprove of the job that President Donald Trump is doing? Pretty overwhelmingly approved. I think Trump has remained pretty popular, you know, very popular within the GOP base.
So he has 81% support and about 17. 17% disapproval really isn't that great. If you look at other presidents, sometimes they can maintain more support within their party than that. And maybe the unfortunate part about For Trump, often is that he can be kind of polarizing.
So, people who disapprove often very disapprove, you know, are strongly disapproved.
So, you see that out of those 17%, over 13%. strongly disapprove of him within the GOP.
So there there is a segment, but I feel like in an election, those people aren't likely to vote Democrat. They just might have an issue or two that has really made them dissatisfied with him. But eighty one percent support is still fairly strong. I'm glad you highlighted that strongly disapproved number because it is the largest plurality of the overall disapproval. Do you attribute that to still the never Trump crowd?
Does that group still pretty strong, at least percentage-wise, in some areas across the country, particularly here more in North Carolina? It's difficult to say because there's a few issues. Like he's clashed at one point, he clashed with the gun rights people where he was talking about. Certain laws on bump stocks or red flag laws and one point he upset some pro-life people saying he's gonna Um Not mess with money going to Planned Parenthood, or he's said, you know, being IVF, making that a big thing, or he's. Um, with people more the free marketer kind of people, they get upset with the tariffs.
So, I'd say there's quite a few, you know, I guess some of the foreign policy people they really like NATO and want him to be a little. Not as making it splash as much splash there with Greenland.
So it could be tough to know who exactly it is because I think a lot of Republicans. As Donald Bryson, the CEO of John Locke says, they take Trump a la carte so they might. Really like. Eight things he does and then two just drives him crazy. And so I think that's a how a lot of Republicans look at him is, you know, there there are he might step on the toes a little bit with the gun people, the pro-life people, all these different crowds.
But in the end, all those people I'd say mostly would be like, Yeah, we still we still overall support them. Um so it's it's tough to know yeah if that's the Never Trumper people or Just a mishmash of People who got their feelings hurt on one of those many issues and didn't come back around. Yeah, the president does have a pretty large likelihood of upsetting your feelings or hurting your feelings at some point in time on a variety of different factors, as David noted. All right, how about this, David? I found this interesting.
The opinion of the GOP, again, these are Republican primary voters. They only have a 74% favorable view of the GOP, the Grand Old Party, the Republican establishment across not only the RNC nationally, but maybe some Republican politics ongoing in North Carolina. And as you noted, the president's got an 81% approval rating. Does this number mean anything to you? There is a sort of anti-institutional mood in our culture.
I think right now people don't join clubs as much. And you look at unaffiliated voters, it's like seven out of ten of new voters are unaffiliated. I think there's just a sense of You know, we're independent people, and we're not going to really get on board 100% with any institution.
So I think some of it's just that. you know, maybe they they like a version of the GOP, the Trump version, or they like a version that's the, you know, maybe the old traditional Republican party that it before Trump, or who knows? But in their mind when they think of it, maybe they're thinking of the version they don't like. And so they they say, uh, I mean, it's still 70%, what was it, 77% or 74%.
So three out of four are still. still like it. It's just I think some of them have you know, had their feelings hurt maybe on an issue or two, as we said. Let's move down the poll a couple of questions over to enthusiasm for the GOP primary. That is what is taking place right now across North Carolina.
Also a similar primary happening on the Democrat side as well. Only 68, I say only, but 68.7% are enthusiastic about the primary.
However, Dave, you've got about one in four that say, meh, not really. We don't really have a race in this fight. We don't have a horse we're backing here.
So, yeah, it's going to come and go. And I guess we'll just deal with it as we approach November. Yes, I did see in the twenty twenty four numbers, Democrats had gotten up near eight out of ten being enthusiastic.
So if you're getting towards seven out of ten, like in this, that's pretty good. But there are times when When you get up to higher numbers and you would prefer especially not to have about a quarter people shrugging and also when you say enthusiastic and then slightly more of those that are enthusiastic are only somewhat. you know, thirty-six percent or so.
So that's You would like to see that higher, but maybe as the primary turns to the general, that's maybe more when the party will care because this is picking the candidates, whereas You know, you'd want your partisans to be more enthusiastic when it's against the other party later on.
So they'd hope that it would rise by then. Yeah, finally on this, another interesting question, again, trying to figure out exactly where this electorate is. Do you think that there is a difference between MAGA Republicans, as you noted earlier, and the traditional Republican base? There's pretty strong thoughts on that as well. 63% say yes.
There's a very clear difference between what Trump brings to the Republican Party versus previous GOPs. Look at other presidential nominees, Mitt Romney's and the likes of that nature. Was that surprising for you to see? Um Yeah, so I mean, there's a couple things there, I guess. One is, do you see a difference?
Was you know, question 14, and a lot of people did see a difference, 63%. And then, you know, right above that, the question 13 was: you know, do you identify with MAGA? And that was 77%.
So they interestingly. I guess they not only see a difference, but they like the most some people liked the change toward you know, away from whatever they saw as traditional towards a the new branding.
So that's interesting to know. It might say something about what the GOP will look like after Trump is that people still have in their mind sort of MAGA having a few key differences. Um what those are when they really get hashed out. You know, I think there's There's a little bit of cult personality with Trump, and you know that he's just popular, he's good at speaking, he's good at getting people together.
So when he's not there, how will that get hashed out? And here's what it means to be. MAGA rather than traditional? Is it going to be more. Um Protectionism on global trade or something?
Is that the main thing? Or is it yeah, there there's a few issues that maybe there's there's a little difference. You know, law and order and and the border especially, I think. Republicans had been the more strong Border Party, but maybe it's one of those things like they weren't really implementing it as strongly. They weren't really putting their money where their mouth was after they were elected.
So that's something definitely to keep an eye on as Trump, I don't think, can run again. I think he suggested he might want to. But I think as things move on beyond him. And I'm glad you kind of compared and contrasted those two different questions. And David, without getting into a full-on debate over previous presidential elections, you had a lot of Republicans that were very upset with what they had seen the GOP put forward, a first against Obama in 2008, then the campaign in 2012.
Many of them found themselves frustrated with the GOP and their lack of enthusiasm for these national candidates. In the early days of Trump 2015 and into early 2016, he highlighted that a lot and clearly has still won a lot of people over on that based on our most recent polling. Yeah, I think it's Trump is somebody that they feel they can identify with, in a sense. Part of it is the shift. When the Republican Party started winning some in the South, it was mostly upper-income people in the suburbs.
And then gradually that moved out, and now they're very dominant in the rural areas. But some of the candidates that they've run Like you said, maybe the Romneys or McCain's or the Bushes or Bob Dole, that kind of vision is sort of a still kind of a proper upper crust sort of country club kind of feel to them.
So I think in terms of branding, a lot of the people in the rural areas don't feel like that really connects with them. And even though Donald Trump came from a wealthy background, he talks. in a certain way that they feel like that's I can understand what he's getting at. He's talking straightforward.
So I think moving forward, even if the policies don't necessarily shift a ton, they're still the more conservative of the parties. They will probably have somebody who can speak that language of a blue collar. Voter, maybe a rural voter. Because that was the dominant area of Democrats for forever. Is they the rural blue-collar, often union member, that was their wheelhouse.
But they really have lost that over to the Republicans.
So the Republicans maybe are trying to learn the new language, how to speak to them. We will take a look at some North Carolina-specific questions coming up as we continue the coverage of our most recent Carolina Journal poll with David Larson. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Yeah. It's 5:36.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT. Good Friday morning to you. I'm Nick Craig. Continuing coverage of our most recent poll over at CarolinaJournal.com with David Larson. Let's turn our attention back to the state of North Carolina.
One of the things that we've been tracking over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, has been the lack of a budget here across the state of North Carolina. We've written dozens of stories about that. We've chatted with many folks here on the news hour about it. David, we asked question the question, do you approve or disapprove of how the state legislature handled the recent tax and budget negotiations? First of all, not a lot of people really knew, but the ones that did know, they did not necessarily approve of the fact that North Carolina remains the only state of the nation that did not pass a budget in 2025.
Yeah, but you know, strongly disapproved was only 16.7. I feel like if they knew, they might have a stronger opinion, maybe. But yeah, it was another one of those that the biggest answer At 40% was, I don't know.
So, you know, I think that's it's a local or it's a state politics. question that you really have to be plugged into state politics to to understand what's going on. Uh and and you know, like with some of the other ones, it's just not really a lot of people's interest. It it impacts them, but it's not necessarily something that they tune in for the the negotiations and all that. Maybe they trust the people they vote for to Take care of that thing for him and and and I Get the money where it needs to be, and all of that.
But yeah, that's my main takeaway from that. I don't think you can really strongly say That there's a message there other than we haven't really been paying attention.
Well, and I think part of the reason maybe they're not paying attention is unlike what we saw in the federal government late last year, where things were shut down for 40 some odd days. David, things are continuing to chug along here in North Carolina. Teachers are still getting paid. State Highway Patrol is getting paychecks as well. Retirees are still receiving their health care benefits, even though no budget has been passed.
Previous year funding levels remain in place. And if it's not affecting your bank account, I would argue most people probably don't care. And I think our poll backs some of that up. That's the fortunate thing is that as you said, we have the previous year's level, the biennium budget from the previous session, just continues on because we North Carolina passed a law not long ago that says if the level we don't have shutdowns because if you have X amount of dollars going to, say, schools, and then you don't pass a new budget. You still have that same level going to schools.
So it's actually, I think, a pretty good. Tool in the toolbox for Republicans going into a situation where I think they're probably not going to hold on to their supermajorities in either houses. I mean, they already lost one of them. Uh this the What my assumption is, they probably will lose the other one. They'll keep majorities, and then they have a Democrat in the governor's mansion.
And so having that tool, if the Democrats try to play hardball, like we need to add all these things. In order to have a budget that passes that Republicans can just say, okay, we'll just stay with the current spending then, because that's the default if nothing gets done.
So that it might actually be a strategic victory. This time, I don't think it was anything. intentional, they just couldn't get together on it. We asked individuals what their thoughts were on North Carolina's taxes that were specifically talking about income, sales, and property taxes. The options were is too high about right or too low.
I don't think, again, a surprise here when you're asking likely Republican, likely conservative primary voters, they say that the taxes are a little bit too high, David. 74.5% say, yeah, just a little bit too high for me. Yeah, taxes being too low would be an interesting only 2% snip that, but I don't think you're ever going to get that answer of. I just need to pay more taxes. Yeah, I think that's what you're going to get.
Even if we had... no income tax and no business tax, and let's say somehow we're getting by with no taxes, you probably most people probably would say too high. But I do think there's a couple taxes that we've discussed. John Locke Foundation has discussed Um that would be good good to Um, reduce. Uh, oh, what am I thinking about?
The uh, the business franchise, the franchise. The franchise tax that that could. Be one to cut or to eliminate. And then income taxes have been slowly coming down after meeting benchmarks. Um which I think might stall out based on the negotiations between the House and the Senate.
But then, people, I think one they're more concerned about right now is the county taxes through their. their property taxes. Yeah. And I guess the issue with that Isn't that they're raising the rates, it's just they're required to revaluate the value of your house every eight years according to state statute. And they're also required to say what a revenue neutral A mat would be.
But they they don't have to do anything with it. They just have to come up with the number. But in theory, they could say, okay, everybody's values went up a lot. But To keep revenue neutral, we'll lower the rates so that everything will come out even. But by keeping the rates the same, What ends up happening is, oh, all the values are way higher, the rates are the same.
That means we bring in a bunch more revenue, and that means a lot of individuals. See their tax r um They'll go way up even though the rates haven't changed, if that makes sense. Yeah, and this is a major problem, especially in areas that have seen bigger growth over the last couple of years. Many areas, again, it depends on where you are. As you noted, Dave, it's mandated every eight years to do the reval and general statute, but some places do it on either two or even four-year schedules so that the jump is not so high.
You can imagine purchasing a house prior to 2020 for, you know, I don't know, maybe $130,000. Six, seven, eight years go by.
Now the house is worth four or five hundred grand, and you see your tax bill go from a couple of hundred dollars a year to a couple of thousand. I mean, that's a major shock to the budget. Absolutely. I think Americans for Prosperity and others wanted to take that revenue-neutral rate. revenue neutral number and kind of implement it as You have to if you're gonna not adopt that.
Then you would need to have either a referenda or at least public hearings or something to let the public know.
Now, as we showed, the public might not be aware that any of that was going on based on. The amount they're paying attention. And I apologize to the public at large for suggesting that you guys don't pay attention. Those listening to this do pay attention, so you guys are doing well. But that that could be a good thing to get people to discuss locally before Almost the decision to do nothing is a decision for your bills to go up.
So before that, Happens just to at least discuss it because, as you said, it might have been eight years since you bought the house and. You assumed your bill would never rise to the level it did. Yeah, no question about that. And David, let's go into this larger discussion about talking about politics, talking about do people know candidates? Do they know what's going on?
That a lot of it comes down to media. Where are individuals consuming the news that they are? And I found it interesting when we broke this down, we asked the question: what are your primary sources for news? We found out that cable news was pretty strong, about 43.7% of individuals. That would be things like Fox News, MS Now, CNN.
But then, as we continue to go down, 39.5% of people said that they're primarily getting their news from social media, followed by local broadcast television at about 30%. National networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS at 24%, radio and podcasts, YouTube are all listed in there. This is a very wide gambit of individuals consuming their news from all over the spectrum. Yeah, I do think that's a strength of our media environment: we have so many options, but it could also be, I guess, a weakness too, in that, you know, you're not given. Kind of the top lines that maybe everybody should know, but you can kind of, here's, I'm interested in Joe Rogan, and so that's my main source of information.
He came up pretty high, I think, in the other next question we can get to. But what surprised me, maybe, about the mediums, media, whatever the proper plural is of that, I guess, media, is that TV was so high because there was like, Maybe four of the top five were a variety of TV because I personally don't get my news from TV. I haven't in a very long time. But, you know, you have. National broadcast TV, local broadcast, cable news.
Um those are three Yeah, three of the top four. And so, yeah, I mean, that all TV together equals maybe 70 or so percent. Um Maybe, let's see. I don't want to do math on here, but maybe up towards like. 70 or 80% of people get their news from some form of T V.
So that that kind of surprised me, I guess. Because I guess people, younger generations, I feel like they go to websites, they go to podcasts, probably YouTube. Um You as a radio guy, I'm curious what you think about uh about, you know, where radio shook out on that poll. Yeah, well, and that's where I was going to take it is predominantly talk radio is a format that tends to be controlled by conservatives and Republicans. Yes, NPR exists, but that's a much different audience.
And it's safe to assume, David, that the vast majority of these 600 likely Republican primary voters are not avid NPR listeners.
So with that aside, talk radio came in at about 16%. Podcasting also came in around 13%. I'm surprised with as much control as conservatives have. If you look at the top podcasts across the nation, you've got the Dan Bongino show and many of these other very prominent Megan Kelly, prominent conservative podcasts towards the top of those lists. Yet on our survey, those two mediums, talk radio and podcasting, are pretty low down, as you noted, compared to traditional legacy media like TV News.
Yeah, that was pretty interesting. I think in a way podcasting and YouTube Podcasting maybe especially. is almost a An air to the radio world, and that it's just taking the voice, the audio broadcast, and making it more maybe somewhat more uh accessible too by having it in a form that can be listened to at any time. And I know a lot of the on air radio people take that same content and making it make it a podcast that can be acc accessed At other times.
So I do just think it's almost the air podcasting is the air to radio, and they merge a little bit in the fact that they are. the same content uh oftentimes. Um but maybe the talk radio is Um It definitely leans towards current news where some of the other stuff can be more evergreen or. That kind of thing where you don't have to talk about what's going on today. But I mean, you still do.
I mean, there's a lot of podcasts that. They might not be on any radio stations, but they'll still be Current news. And if it had a if somebody offered them a radio contract, they probably wouldn't have to change a lot about their format or anything. All right, David, we went through a lot of numbers, a lot of different data points this morning. Folks may want to go and pull some of this up themselves, maybe share it out on social media.
Where can they find all those details this morning? You can go to Carolinajournal.com where we have all kinds of news and opinion on North Carolina public policy and politics.
So you can find us there. Always something new on there. We appreciate the rundown of this most recent Carolina Journal poll. David Larson joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Good morning again.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT. Turning our attention to some statewide news as we round out the program on this Friday morning, North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Breiner is hopeful that recent changes made to how North Carolina's retirement system makes investment decisions will bring benefits not only to the retirees, but to the state as a whole at the same time. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, the North Carolina Investment Authority Board of Directors voted on some of those changes. And according to Breiner, out of a press release, he says these were the final steps in the construction of North Carolina's newest state agency, the North Carolina Investment Authority. We now have approved the investment policy statement and the incentive compensation plan.
The board approved a new strategic asset allocation, a long-term plan that Seeks a mix of investment classes and risk conditions. According to the press release, it is supposed to add flexibility as well as including some new performance benchmarks for those state investments. The board also updated other components of the investment policy statement, which lists investment guidelines and some of the required processes that they have put in place as this continues to play out. The treasurer noted in a statement that the North Carolina Investment Authority's sole purpose is to deliver superior risk-adjusted investment returns on over $200 billion worth of taxpayer, employee, and retiree assets that we manage on behalf of all North Carolinians. These two important actions will allow the team to do just that.
If the team increases historical returns by just 1% a year, the state will soon be able to increase retiree payouts while at the same time reducing the annual pension contribution costs to the state budget. The treasurer noted back in June of last year that even a 1% increase in returns could add as much as $2 billion to the state budget each and every year. House Bill 506, which was named the 2025 State Investment Modernization Act, was signed into law during the legislative long session last year, creating this Investment Authority Board, which is a brand new independent state agency that has a board of directors instead of what is previously known as a sole fiduciary model, with the treasurer overseeing the nearly $139 billion pension fund, along with other public officials dedicated to retirement, education, and transportation. A recent report highlighted investment performances and recent investment transactions. Those were also presented during the meeting as well.
The investment authority had $208.23 billion in assets under its management as of December 31st of 2025, including nearly $141 billion in the state pension plan. You can read some additional details on that story this morning by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Friday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. Have a great weekend.
We're back with you Monday morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT.
