It's 5.05 and welcome in to the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good Thursday morning to you. This morning of what was an incredibly busy Tuesday night into the early hours of Wednesday morning across the state of North Carolina, primary election day rolling through the Tar Hill State for 2026. A lot of information to get into this morning.
Before we get into anything specific, it is my pleasure to welcome the editor-in-chief of CarolinaJournal.com, Donna King, to the news hour. Donna, give me your overall reaction of what we saw Tuesday night. A wild primary night in North Carolina. It really was. I mean, usually I feel like these midterm primaries are kind of sleepy.
This time, very much not. I think, you know, you were probably up for 24 hours straight. I know we were working hard in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday morning at Carolina Journal. It was really interesting to see, I think we had something like eight. Incumbents lose their primary Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina.
And some of them are folks who have served our state in the state legislature for quite a long time. And certainly, I imagine that there is some sadness that this phase of their life is over.
So, certainly, some relief from their families because it is not easy to serve in the General Assembly. You make nothing hardly, and you're traveling constantly, and the stress level has got to be through the roof. But I just think one of the biggest takeaways that I've had is how many people are surprised. At how some of these results happened because social media really created a bubble for folks that they may not, if they didn't really read the polls, they didn't know exactly, or they didn't believe the polls, that they may have been surprised. I think what we saw was pretty high turnout for, you know, still only like one in one in four, one in five folks turned out.
We're at like 19.5% turnout. But I think a lot of that's driven by social media, not a real understanding of how civics education works, how civics works and how we need to improve civic education to make things work more smoothly. Yeah, I mean, and I'll even say I fell maybe a little bit prey to this, especially with the United States Senate race. Donna, you spend a lot of time on social media as well. I mean, all of the Dom Brown shatter was legitimate.
You thought, and I think a lot of people thought, okay, this could be close, probably not a tie or within recount territory, but it would be a close race. It's not. It was a 40-point margin victory for Michael Watley. By any stretch of the imagination, that is a political bloodbath. No, of course.
Yeah, yeah, no. I was really surprised only in that it was as close as it was. Like our polling numbers had Don Brown like around 8%.
So he actually outperformed our polls. But I do think that there was some surprise in that. And it's not that we don't need a robust discussion. It's important to have lots of candidates because it forces the issues of real good government, good policy to the surface.
So, but again, you know, it is one of those things that people Parties, regardless, Republican or Democrat, have their candidate, or if they don't right now, they will soon.
So they have to decide what they are going to do in November. Are they going to support that candidate? Are they going to try and learn more about the policy positions of those candidates and move the ball forward?
So, you know, there's going to be some anger. There's going to be some bad blood in some of these cases. Hopefully, not. But, you know, take a look at what happened to Shelly Willingham and Carla Cunningham and the Democrats. They decided to vote when they were in the General Assembly.
They decided to vote their conscience and their district when it came to things like ICE law enforcement bills and veto overrides. And they were punished for it by the party. Governor Stein endorsed Carla Cunningham's primary candidate, and she lost handedly. And it is one of those things that politics is a big part of this, that game of politics.
So it's important that voters spend from now till November 3rd. Really learning about the policy positions of these candidates and how important turnout is. Yeah, I spend a decent amount of time out at early voting and on election day, just kind of hanging around the polls, listening to the conversations between candidates and voters, Donna. And the repeating theme, and I've seen this in every election I've watched here in North Carolina, very little information. Oh, I'm not really sure who I'm voting for.
Yeah, I'm voting straight party Democrat or straight party Republican. The candidate would say, well, hey, they're all Democrats or they're all Republicans. This is the primary election. There's a lot of that, and these individuals are making pretty serious decisions. In the case of the Senate race in Senate District 26, two votes.
I mean, you're talking about a very, very thin margin. Two votes. That is startling to me. I mean, I've been around this a long time. You have too.
I've not seen something separated by two votes that is so consequential for North Carolina. Phil Berger is arguably the most powerful person in North Carolina's government, growing that role over the last time he served, really shaping a lot of what we've seen change in the last decade with lower taxes and more economic, more of an economic magnet in the country.
So I think that that policy is where I think that he really viewed his strengths and his supporters viewed his strengths. But again, all politics is local, right?
So, you know, Sam Page, the sheriff, Rockingham County Sheriff, you know, found the weak points in the community there and really made a good showing. We have not seen the end of this. I think that we're going to see, of course, we've got a canvas coming in 10 days. We're going to have lots of provisional ballots that get counted, military ballots. And ultimately, this could end up in.
Court. Yeah, no question about that. We'll continue to track that over at CarolinaJournal.com and talk to our experts like Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation about that. Donna, I want to ask you another interesting question.
You mentioned some of the incumbents that lost, some of them longtime serving in the North Carolina General Assembly. This is not the first election cycle that we've seen this where relatively new political newcomers tend to be younger individuals, just barely or in some cases still in college, outseating longtime members of the General Assembly. That's a very interesting thing that takes place. It is. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
You know, this is what we're supposed to be doing, right? Is rotating those representatives in. You know, you put down the plow and you go serve. But I think what we are also seeing is younger candidates who perhaps have a more robust understanding of how influential social media is. And they have a desire to serve.
That's not a bad thing. I think it's good to have folks coming in and out, maybe not making a career of it and going to serve. But you also want some institutional knowledge in the General Assembly because that's an important piece of the puzzle as they go about the business of governing. And so I think it's exciting to have new faces and folks in there, but you also have to remember that when we have this churn in the General Assembly, you won, you know, for Republicans, it could be risking a majority or super majority in the churn process, but you also have lobbyists who have been there for 30 or 40 years. That makes them even more powerful because they're providing some of that institutional knowledge.
That newcomers on the floor of the House and Senate may not have. Yeah, no question about that. Donna, the primary is now said and done. As you mentioned, the county canvas will take place next Friday. We'll, of course, keep our eye on this race in North Carolina's 26th Senate District, maybe a couple of other races across North Carolina as well that are close.
But for the most part, everything is pretty much said and done.
Now we turn the page and we look towards November. Do you think this is going to be a slow burn political cycle or do you think we're going to be shot right out of a cannon here starting potentially in just the next couple of weeks? Oh, I think it started yesterday, right? I mean, it's going to be chaos and expensive, particularly when we look down at the Senate race. I'm hearing numbers thrown around like $750 million.
That's crazy for a Senate race. But I think what we're seeing is Michael Watley has the challenge of introducing himself to North Carolina. A lot of those primary voters already knew who he was, knew he had a Trump endorsement. And I think that's why you saw him emerge victorious on Tuesday night. And there were some opponents who said, okay, maybe he's too much of the party line.
Look at the party. I mean, the party is very much. Much in step with the Trump administration.
So, I think that you're going to see that message carried through to November. But we want to hear more about where he stands on specific issues. And I think that's what he's going to be doing. That's going to be the challenge that he has: to appeal to those unaffiliated voters because they're the largest bloc we have in North Carolina. They're going to decide who represents North Carolina in the U.S.
Senate. Governor Cooper, certainly, most folks know who he is. He was popular as a governor, but he's also got some baggage. He shut down the state government, shut down schools during COVID. He's got what has become kind of an albatross of NCORE, North Carolina Office of Resilience and Recovery, and poor management of Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Matthew, folks living in hotels for a decade after that.
So he's got that problem. Certainly, the untested rape kits from when he was attorney general and governor. All of these things are going to be things I would expect the Watley campaign to focus on, but both of them need to be. To tell voters where they stand on these critical policy issues, on education, on taxes, on our deficit, on where they stand on trade, on where they stand on entitlements. All of these things are important, not just the political gamesmanship.
You're talking about talking and reaching to some of those unaffiliated voters, which will be incredibly important as we approach November. And more and more of those individuals who don't bother to vote in the primaries because they're, frankly, not interested, Donna, they will likely show up and vote, or at least a large portion of them in November. Let me ask you quickly about party unity. Roy Cooper won with about 92% of the vote on the Democrat side of the aisle. He seems to have pretty strong control over the Democrat Party.
No surprise there, just serving eight years in the governor's mansion. And while Michael Watley did have a very handed election night victory, there was some fracturing within the party. Do you think that's going to be an issue, particularly for the GOP as we approach later this year? I just don't think so. I envision the GOP probably coalescing around Michael Watley because the options are Roy Cooper.
And there's a lot of anger still about COVID and about shutting down the government, shutting down schools.
So I think that they will, you know, he's going to have some lift in bringing them on board, but I anticipate that he'll be able to do that. The real challenge is going to be introducing himself to unaffiliated voters and moderates who perhaps were not happy with the way COVID was managed, but they don't have a bad taste in their mouth about Roy Cooper.
So he's got to explain that he's interested in good governance and low taxes and a government philosophy of more freedom and moving power to the states, to parents in education, things like that. Donna, the team over at Carolina Journal has been working around the clock over the last couple of days. We've got dozens of stories about some of these impactful races across North Carolina. Where could folks go and read those details? Absolutely.
Head over to CarolinaJournal.com, and we're really in the weeds on some of these local races.
So there's a lot to really explore as you head into November. We appreciate the information this morning. Donna King joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Uh It's 21 minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM.
WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. It was a very interesting Tuesday evening in North Carolina's 26th Senate District as current Senate leader Phil Berger and the Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page battled it out in a very heated Republican primary with the unofficial tallies still standing right now. Sam Page does lead the Senate leader by two votes to walk us through what is expected in the coming days. Our guiding star here, Dr.
Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation. Andy, there's a lot of social media opining going on as to what is going to happen here. You're the expert in this. What is going to take place over the next couple of days? Are there still outstanding ballasts?
What's going on here? Yeah, we've got a couple of sets of different outstanding ballots that are going on.
Now, I will say, real quick, is that there's fewer now than there would have been under old rules. The General Assembly saw what happened with a lot of late-breaking ballots in the 2024 elections. They changed the rules to kind of speed up the process a little bit. And so we have two batches here. The bigger one, probably, is that tomorrow the county boards are going to have to either certify or reject.
Provisional ballots. These are ballots for people that have come in to vote in person and for whatever reason they can't vote a regular ballot. They have to, you know, something has to be verified. Like, for example, somebody who comes into a location, they're not in the books, and they say, well, this is where I've always voted. And so maybe they're going to get a provisional ballot anyhow.
And if it's discovered, yes, they do live in that precinct, then that ballot will count. If not, then it won't count.
So they're going to go through provisionals tomorrow. Another batch is going to be absentee ballots that need to be cured. And the curing process usually, like if a voter forgets to sign their absentee ballot container envelope, they'll be contacted by the board and say, hey, you have until Friday to come in and sign this. And so they can do that by noon tomorrow. And if they do that, if the ballot is cured from this or some other problems, then those ballots will count.
So that's what we're going to see tomorrow across those two counties, Guilford and Rockingham, along with all the other counties with their races. And then after that, the only thing that should be outstanding are a handful of military and overseas ballots. Military and overseas ballots, as long as they mail them by election day. They you know by mail. With a stamp, all that good stuff.
They'll come in and they have until the day before the canvas, which is a week from today, is next Thursday. And then if that comes in, they'll be counted in the final count, which is during the Canvas, which is next Friday.
So, Andy, with those two different groups of voters, you talk about those provisional ballots and maybe some issues with those, and then the much smaller number of overseas or military folks that have voted, decided to vote on paper and not use some of the electronic systems available, especially for our overseas service members. How many ballots do you think are outstanding in this race right now? Are we talking about maybe a couple hundred or potentially thousands? It's definitely not going to be in the thousands. I've heard a number that maybe there was 50, at least in the Guilford portion of it, of provisionals.
Provisionals traditionally are somewhere around a half a percent to 1%.
So scaling that to that race, you're looking at maybe 100, maybe 200 provisional ballots. You'll have probably a little bit less, or actually quite a bit less of absentee ballots that need to be cured. There, you're looking at maybe a couple of dozen, perhaps. I haven't seen the actual numbers, but that's the range that you would expect. And then you're looking at, I mean, a handful, perhaps even single digits of military and overseas ballots that will come in next week.
Andy, with so few ballots still withstanding here in this race, it seems pretty likely that there will be a recount or the threshold for a recount, which as I understand it is 1% here in North Carolina, unless Phil Berger Sampage literally picks up every single one of these outstanding votes, it will be close enough to that threshold. What would that process begin to look like?
Well, they'll do the recount. They'll have the county workers come in. They'll run all of those. They'll do a machine recount first. And if there is a significant change in there, and I forget what the exact number is, but if it's a large enough change between the first machine count and the second machine count results, then they'll go over to a hand recount.
They call it a hand eye recount and go through that. You know, these kind of recounts very rarely change a lot.
Now, when you only have a two-vote difference, Obviously, not a lot can be enough in this case, but you remember if you remember when we had this recount, statewide recount four or was it four years ago with Paul Newby and Sherry Beasley for Supreme Court, you were looking at in aggregates, you know, some places had newbie with a little gain, some places had beasley with a little gain, but in aggregate, you were looking at just in the tens. Change. It goes like less than 20. And so you're not going to see a huge change. But once again, with you only have two votes, it doesn't take much change to make this thing a tie or to even flip it.
Let me ask you about that. Is there the possibility that this ends in a tie? And I've seen some speculation on social media, a duel, a coin flip. What exactly would happen if we get through this county canvas process late next week and both of these candidates have the exact same vote total? Yeah, that's a really interesting case.
Under North Carolina law, and this is a century-old law, so I'm thinking maybe the legislature might want to revisit this. This law is over a century old. If this were in one county, if this were just inside one county, then the county would just. Do a recount automatically. But because This district is in two counties, Rockingham and Guilford.
It doesn't trigger a recount, it triggers an automatic second primary.
So essentially, they would go again in a date. And I don't remember what the date is, but in a couple of months, they would have to run again.
So they would have to go through this process all over again. I think a lot of people would consider that a nightmare scenario. And so They'll avoid it if they can, but if it's a tie, they can't avoid it. Let me ask you. I want to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying here.
So once the county canvas is done, next Friday, they'll get all of the outstanding ballots, the ones that you just went over. If the race is ending in a tie, neither side would have the ability to request a recount, and it would automatically go to essentially a runoff or a redo of that primary election? Yes, it would. It is automatic. And there's a reason for that.
When this was written over a century ago, it would be hard to coordinate recounts between the two different county boards. I mean, this wasn't exactly, of course, in early automobile days, and making sure the recount was done properly would have been a bit of a logistical task there. And so the idea is that, okay, if we do have a tie after the full canvas from both counties, then we'll go ahead and run it again. Once again, I think this might be a law that is ripe for fixing. In the age of modern communications, I think they should be able to handle something like this and so that we could go ahead and have a coordinated recount between these counties.
But that's not what we have now. And it's too late to change for this election. Yeah, you thought North Carolina politics was interesting. Imagine that situation unfolding. Andy, thanks for walking us through the logistical side of it.
Let me ask you to kind of get your opinion on all of this. You follow elections across the board here in North Carolina. Give us your overall impression of this race. It was a wild contest, nearly $9 million spent by Phil Berger and his team and affiliated groups and non-affiliated groups.
Meanwhile, Sam Page only raised $81,000. Yet here we are talking about a two-vote difference, and Sam Page is leading. Yeah, I mean, it definitely shows that money, while very important in politics, does have its limits. There were a lot of local issues going on there with attempts to have a casino built in the county, other conflicts between the burgers and local politicians. And there's a reason that Sam Page was basically two to one in Rockingham County, whereas Berger was ahead a little over two to one in Guilford County, because Guilford County, they knew Berger, they didn't know Page.
And so you didn't have that same dynamic. But there's definitely an important message there about the importance of local politics. As Tip O'Neill used to say, all politics is local. And that seems to be reflected in this race. One final question for you.
You walked us and me and our audience last year through this major back and forth between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin. Andy, that turned into a legal fight that went on for months and months. You joined us almost every week to talk about that. Is there a possibility that this race as well gets into some long, drawn-out litigation? I think there's definitely a possibility for this.
What you're going to have is the campaigns are going to be challenging voters that they believe would have gone for the other side.
Now, they have to guess this. They don't know, you know, when they're challenging a voter or they're trying to say, hey, this provisional ballot should be counted, they don't know how that person voted when they make that challenge. It's not like, you know, because everybody's either an unaffiliated or a Republican in this race. And so they could do that. Then this could get taken up to the State Board of Elections.
And then if one of the parties is still not satisfied, then you go into the court process. I think. With the amount of money involved, with the stakes involved, I think you could definitely see this going into the courts. It is going to be an interesting about a week and a half here in the state of North Carolina. We'll keep you up to date with the latest as soon as we get it.
We appreciate the insight and information this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. At Verbo, we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support, so we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our Verbo care guarantee, giving you confidence from the very start.
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WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. As all eyes in North Carolina remain on a very tight race between Senate leader Phil Berger and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, that's up in the northeastern part or northern part, I should say, of North Carolina, portions of Rockingham and Guilford County. This is not the first time that we've had razor-close election results across the state of North Carolina. To walk us through a story going all the way back to 2023 in an election that happened in the off-year cycle in the small town of town of Pembroke in North Carolina, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us with details this morning.
Mitch, am I understanding this correctly? A May Orio race from 2023 is still being disputed here in North Carolina? That's right. I mean, the fact that this happened in 2023 is probably not as exciting as the fact that it happened in 2023, and the election still has not been resolved. What happened was the incumbent mayor, a Republican named Gregory Cummings, ran against a Democrat named Alan Dial, and these two were familiar with each other.
They had run against each other in the past. And when they faced each other in 2015, there were so many election irregularities that the State Board of Elections ordered a new election.
So this time in 2023, in their matchup, Dial, the Democrat, beat Cummings, the Republican, by 19 votes. But Cummings didn't take that loss sitting down. He actually filed a complaint and identified as many as 16 people who he said couldn't prove that they actually lived in Pembroke and that the addresses that they gave as their addresses for the purposes of voting were commercial properties. owned by Dial. And as it turned out, as there was an investigation of what was happening, Dial admitted, hey, these are people who don't have a permitted address.
You might say homeless or non-traditional housing or itinerant, but they do live in Pembroke.
Some of them have said they lived in Pembroke for 20 years. And he allowed them to live on his properties. He actually transported them to the polls at times, told them about the election. He said he did not pay them or tell them who to vote for. But that was what was alleged in this court case.
And Gregory Cummings, while waging this battle, has remained as the mayor.
So even though election officials say Alan Dial won the election by 19 votes, Cummings has remained the mayor while this dispute has gone forward. The latest development, the State Court of Appeals, in a unanimous opinion this week. said that there is no reason for Cummings to be able to win. He hasn't proved that the Conditions that he identified that could have caused a problem were enough to have changed the outcome. Apparently, he identified 16 people with questionable residency, but that would not be enough to overcome the 19-vote deficit.
So, even if all of those 16 were thrown out, you would be seeing dial win by three votes. Which, for those of us following what's going on today, would say, hey, that's very close to what we're seeing in that Senate District 26. Yeah, you could say close. You could say 50% more votes, Mitch, than the race that we're watching between up in Rockingham County. All right, odd question for you.
We're talking about the small town of Pembroke.
Now, this mayor has been serving, as you said, since the election in 2023. Presumably, the Court of Appeals will eventually rule in favor of his opponent. What happens, Mitch? Do we jump back in a time machine and go to early 2024 when this new mayor would have been sworn in? What exactly would go on here?
Well, there are a couple of things that could happen. One is that the election actually does get certified. Alan Dial becomes the mayor. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't get to start the full term from that time. He actually would only get to serve out the rest of the term, and then there will be another election.
So Dial has already lost more than half of his term if he ends up being ultimately declared the winner and would be able to serve out the rest of his term and then have to run for re-election after serving that truncated term. One of the things that He, Dial, the apparent winner in the election who has been waiting to serve, one of the things that he wrote in one of his court filings some months ago was that not only has he lost out on the time of being able to serve as the mayor and implement policies and work with the town council and that sort of thing, he also hasn't been paid. I mean, the mayor is supposed to get paid a salary, and Dial has lost out on that.
So, my guess is any sort of court ruling in his favor, while it could not extend the time and give him a full term, he might be able to get some of the back pay that he lost out on by not being able to serve as mayor. The most interesting thing to me is that this has been able to drag on so long, and that the person who presumably lost. was able to continue serving because he was the incumbent and just kept his office. And so without even ever winning his court case, he's actually won more than two extra years in office by waging this court battle. Yeah, and of course, depending on, I don't know exactly what Pembroke's election cycle is, depending on when this election will take place, presumably in the next couple of years, maybe you'll see this battle again.
Who knows exactly what would how that race would exactly shake out. Mitch, is this an opportunity? They're definitely going to have another election in 2027.
So it's coming up again. Even if Dial gets to be serving as mayor, he'll only get a little bit of time in office and he'll have to crank things right back up again. And I would be shocked if Gregory Cummings. Don't run for it again. As I said, they have faced each other before, including way back in 2015.
It was these same two people running against each other.
So if you wanted to put money on this race, you would probably say the 2027 race would likely be Gregory Cummings against Allen Dial. Mitch, is this a situation that is ripe for state lawmakers? I don't even know where they'd go with this, but to put something in state law to deal with a situation like this, where you have an unconfirmed and unofficial election result from multiple years ago, I'll note in a very small town, right? We're not talking about a statewide election with millions of votes across all 100 counties. This is a geographically very small area with a very few amount of votes, and this thing has dragged on for years.
I mean, there's got to be some sort of resolution here for state lawmakers. Yes, and I'm glad you brought up the state lawmakers because there are a couple of things they could deal with. One is this issue of Not getting the election resolved and having the person who's the apparent loser of the election, because he was the incumbent, continue to serve in office for a couple of years as this plays out in the courts. There may be something the General Assembly could do on that.
Now, I think had they wanted to intervene, they possibly could have come in and passed a law just declaring a winner and done it that way. They have not done that at this point, but they could set up some sort of system that would deal with this kind of situation in the future, saying that, you know, if the If the system, if the election is not resolved by a certain point, then even if the incumbent was involved, you throw it out and you say the person who was the winner is the winner. There could be some way to deal with that, but There is another issue that one of the appeals court judges has asked the General Assembly and the State Board of Elections to deal with, and that is this issue of. People who live in non-traditional housing and the rules regarding them. Donna Stroud, who wrote a concurring opinion.
All three judges agreed on the main opinion, but Donna Stroud wrote a separate opinion saying, Look, this is an issue, and this is good. Guidebook for someone who wants to try to win an election in a little town that might have a very close election is you find the homeless or non-traditional housing people, find a place for them to live, and then you don't have to. Pay them to vote. You don't have to tell them who to vote for, but you've helped them out. That might be a certain number of votes in your favor.
She didn't accuse Allen Dial of doing anything that would be illegal, but she said this certainly is something that ought to be addressed because you had somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 or more people who don't have a permitted address. They were allowed to live on Allen Dial's property. There's also some other evidence about folks from Allen Dial's family helping them out in other ways. And she said they didn't have to tell them how to vote. They knew where their bread was buttered.
The person giving them housing, the person taking them to and from the polls was one of the candidates in the race. Nothing about that is against the law, but Judge Donestroud said maybe the state board of elections and the general assembly ought to do something about that situation. Yeah, you are getting into very murky water with the situation and the facts that you just laid out there.
Well, Mitch, very interesting story this morning. Thanks for the details. I guess we'll keep an eye on it. And if not, we'll look towards the municipal elections coming up in 2027. Appreciate the details this morning.
Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Uh It's 556. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9, WBT. Tracking some statewide news this morning, Cecil Brockman, the former representative for North Carolina's 60th House District, has been officially indicted on child sex charges by a grand jury, according to recent court documents as of yesterday. Those documents indicate that Brockman's indictment was issued by the grand jury for felony statutory sex offenses with a child, indecent liberties with a child, and first-degree sexual exploitation with a minor.
This is all according to WXII Television, who obtained those records. A little background, Brockman was arrested on October the 8th, 2025, and charged with statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with a child. In the wake of these allegations, Brockman resigned from the North Carolina House after both Democrat and the Republican Party. Party leaders called for his resignation, and that officially happened on October the 31st. Democrats look to Amanda Cook to fill Brockman's seat after he resigned.
And for Cook, she did have a four-way Democrat primary on Tuesday for this seat that she has currently been holding, and she was successful winning 42.46% of that vote. She will now move on to the November general election. Where she will face off against a Republican challenger.
However, this House's 60th district is a strong Democrat district, so it is unlikely that the Republican would win in the general election.
Well, 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.
