It's 5.05 and welcome into the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good Tuesday morning to you. It has now been one week since voters from across the state of North Carolina made their way out to various voting locations to take part in the 2026 primary elections. To walk through some additional details on that this morning, it's my pleasure to welcome Dr.
Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation back to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, as always, I greatly appreciate your time. We talked a lot about voter turnout before early voting and during the early voting period. Turns out that voter turnout was the highest ever, but I guess in the grand scheme of things, still pretty low for a primary election. Yeah, it was over 700,000.
And those are pretty good numbers. But once again, as you mentioned, this is a primary. Folks are generally not that interested.
So you're looking at about three times more votes, maybe even more than that, when we get to the general election. And this is a midterm primary, which tends to be even lower than the presidential primaries.
So, yeah, there's interest. It's relatively high, but relatively is carrying a lot of weight here. Yeah, no, no question about that. We've talked about this before, but I want to ask you again, what makes these midterm primaries, I guess midterms in general, but more specifically the primaries, what makes them so low in terms of turnout? Is it just a general lack of enthusiasm from voters across party lines?
I don't think it's so much that, but what drives people to want to vote. Is essentially knowing what who they're going to vote for. And that is easiest done when you have the biggest thing on the ticket, the presidential race.
So the presidential race is a big driver. What's on the top of the ticket? When we have primaries that don't have either a presidential race or a Senate race, and we get those once in a while, those tend to have the lowest turnout because there's no big ticket statewide office president, governor, U.S. Senate that's driving turnout.
So, you know, those big races, those big names are what get people in. And for those more local races, or even state legislative races, or even congressional races, a lot of those are for people that really pay close attention. And those are folks that will tend to vote no matter what. Yeah, those are more your like hardcore political types, the ones that are kind of in the weeds on that stuff. We are talking still at the end of the day about record turnout.
Do you think that the U.S. Senate primaries on both the Republican and Democrat side of the aisle that we saw last week, do you think that was a factor in causing some of those record numbers? I think that was part of it. It's always nice to have something at the top of the ticket that draws people. The thing is, though, at least on the Democratic side, nobody had any thought that this would be anything other than a Roy Cooper win.
There was maybe a little bit more of a question on the Republican side, but Michael Whiteley came out and won that pretty handily as well. Usually, when you have that relative lack of drama, that tends to drive downturnout. But I think there's just a lot of interest because. President Trump has been so active and his supporters and especially the people that are against him are activated by all this. And I think that helps drive things out because people think the stakes are higher.
Well, I'm glad you bring that up. Obviously, for folks that follow politics, midterm elections are typically always brutal for the party that is in charge. If you look up at Washington, D.C. right now, it is the Republicans. And even largely here in North Carolina, you look at the General Assembly and certain members of the council of the state, it is Republicans as well.
That seemingly would vote itself well for Democrats as we go through the remainder of 2026. Yeah, if if you're a betting person, then And you're in a district that's close. Yeah, the Democrat certainly has an advantage at this point. I mean, if things continue this year like they do in other previous midterm primaries.
So I would not be surprised if Democrats prevail in a lot of seats that we at the John Locke Foundation with our Civitas Partisan Index have rated. even lean Republican, like an R plus three, R plus four. And we see that every time when there is a Democrat in the White House, Republicans tend to pick up a couple of leaning Democratic seats. Go back to 2018, Democrats picked up a few Republican-leaning seats. And so that's kind of the norm.
The question is, is that going to be enough for them to maybe get a majority in the General Assembly, or at least on the House side? That might be a bit of a stretch. But I think we're in for a long night this coming November.
Well, and I think we're in for a long next six or seven months as well, Andy. We'll be keeping a close eye on those details. For folks that have looked at election results online, whether they're using the State Board of Elections dashboard or maybe looking at it on a local news website, one of the things plastered across the top of all of those pages, Andy, is unofficial.
Well, here we are, seven days removed from Election Day. How much longer will those results remain unofficial and what makes them official coming up here in the next couple of days?
Well, we're looking at just a few days before those unofficial results magically transform into being official results.
Now, I will say though, even though these results are unofficial, if there is any kind of large variance between the unofficial results and the official results, that exposes a problem in the counting process. And then you're looking at potentially new elections. Point. Usually, especially now that they've introduced some reforms from the General Assembly on the counting process, like getting those provisional ballots and those mail ballots completely processed during the first week, we shouldn't see these kinds of Second week after election day flips, like we saw in the Supreme Court race a couple of years ago with Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin. Right now, the only Ballots that are outstanding are a relative handful of military and overseas mailed ballots that will come in.
I mean, you're looking at maybe a few dozen across the entire state over the next couple of days. They have to be in by Thursday. Then we have the county canvas on that Friday where the county basically approves all of these things that the board had been counting up to that point. And at that point, there are official results. Andy, for this county canvas process, which I'll note is open to the public.
In most cases, you can either watch it online or no matter what, you're typically allowed to go in person and view some of these canvas procedures that are taking place. They're not re-tabulating anything, are they? They're just kind of essentially going over the results that we got on election night and making sure that everything is in line there. Right. And they do have to do the final check on those handful of ballots that came in.
They've already processed and approved or not approved a lot of ballots that you used to wait until the canvas.
So a lot of this is not a rubber stamp, but a lot of this is them just doing a final check of their own work and then saying, yes, these are the official numbers and sending that up to the State Board of Elections. Once that county canvas process happens on Friday, I shouldn't say any election, certain elections that are within a 1% margin have the ability for a recount. There will likely be some close races across North Carolina that have that. One of the most highly influential, one of the ones that everybody's watching, is up in North Carolina's 26th congressional district, the race between Sam Page and Phil Berger. What does it mean when a candidate officially requests a recount?
What process begins to unfold there?
Well, what they'll do is the first step is it'll go to a machine recount. Essentially, they'll run all the ballots through the tabulators again. And that takes an afternoon. That's a pretty quick process to run those all through. They'll do that in the two counties affected in the 26th district, which is Rockingham and Guilford, only in that 26th district.
And then if there is enough variance to suggest that there was a problem with the count, say it flips over and then suddenly you see that Berger is ahead instead of Sam Page, then they're going to do a hand-eye recount where everybody will manually go through. They'll get the workers lined up and they will count them and sort them manually, like the name implies. I will say, Generally speaking, You're better off with the machine recount as long as your machines don't have a flaw in them. And that's one of the things that the recount will hopefully demonstrate. Because when you do a hand recount, there is a lot of potential for what we call non-statistical error.
It's just, you know, human beings are generally not good at these kinds of repetitive tasks. Unfortunately, it was just one of the reasons I advocate for hand counting ballots, as long as you verify them, you test the machines and verify them.
So that's an issue that you have to work through. But if it turns out then that there is still a problem or they've counted three times, they say, well, we've got these different results, we can't reconcile them. At this point, you may have to have a new election. Yeah, and obviously we'll continue to track that process up in portions or all of Rockingham and portions of northern Guilford County. Andy, do we have any idea on the timeline as to how long those recounts are allowed to take?
We know that the county canvas happens on Friday. I believe candidates have to request that recount sometime in the day, next Tuesday, so a week from now. Can that process drag on for a long amount of time? It could if there were challenges, and I'm not aware of there being a lot of challenges out there that they have to go through. Like I said, they can get once they are set up for the recount, they can get that done in an afternoon.
So that'll happen The same week. And I Recount might take a little bit longer to set up. That would take all day to actually execute. But they should be able to get through that process. within next week.
If not, then certainly by the week after. We will be keeping a close eye on all of these election results as they become and go from unofficial to official. We appreciate the information this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Ah! 522. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. We have got some more concerning news out of the state auditor's office this morning. As the people over there, this state auditor Dave Bollock and his team continue to dig into financial issues across the state of North Carolina.
We now turn our attention to the city of Rocky Mount. A lack of oversight and due diligence has led to a series of financial disasters, including mismanagement of millions of dollars for Rocky Mount, according to a brand new 257-page performance audit released Monday by state auditor Dave Bollock and his office. The state auditor hosted a press conference on Monday and said, Well, turns out the residents of Rocky Mount were right to worry about their city and the financial condition of the city of Rocky Mount. He said that his office has heard overwhelming public Concerns and interest in this investigation, and noted that it possibly could have been avoided if Rocky Mount City Council had done a better job in vetting its pick for city manager back in 2023. The city hired an executive firm for $38,000 to recruit the former city manager without conducting any sort of reference checks.
With state auditor Dave Bollock highlighting during the press conference, what we found was red flag after red flag, including the fact that he had previously been the town manager for Dumfries, Virginia. And during his time there, we found recurring issues of poor management and poor decision making, including a pattern of unqualified IRS questionable salary increases without council approval. Inadequate dealing with duties and structurally unsound budgeting. Those deficiencies in the community ultimately resulted in a $1 million overspend by the city manager. Yet Rocky Mount City Council voted unanimously to hire him.
The former city manager was left unchecked from August of 2023 when he was hired to August of 2025, a two-year span of time. During that period, the city's cash and investment balance declined by approximately $80 million, falling from about $100 million to just $21.8 million, a 78% drop in just two years. During that same time, personnel-related expenditures increased 27%, reaching some $62.4 million. Citywide salary adjustments added $3.2 million in reoccurring annual payroll costs, and over $621,000 in holiday bonuses were paid despite declining cash balances. In Rocky Mountain, city spending also increased 153%.
It's a huge increase from fiscal year 2023 to year 2024, totaling $67.4 million. That included $17.2 million spent on land for a proposed casino and entertainment complex that never materialized, more than $11 million to redevelop a fire station, nearly triple the original estimate, and establishing a vehicle lease agreement of $6.6 million for additional equipment purchases, including fire. trucks and heavy machinery. Auditors also found purchases that were made without financial feasibility analysis and attempts by the now former city manager to bypass city council approval for financing equipment purchases, while the city experienced a 27% increase in employee compensation and, as I mentioned, that 153% increase in capital purchases. The state auditor said that the increased spending coincided with a 2% decrease in city revenues, and as a result of all of this overspending, it is residents that are now picking up the tab.
Ramifications include paused projects, the elimination of 86 full-time positions, that is 10% of the staff, a decrease in the budget for part-time staffing, a major increase in property taxes and utility rates for residents, resulting in an average increase of $20 per month for natural gas and $8 a month for electricity. Despite the dire financial situation left behind by the former city manager, he received almost $170,000 in a separation payment that was agreed to by the council. The state auditor's office also released an investigative special report finding the same city manager entered into a nearly $800,000 consulting contract without city council approval. About $385,000 of that was paid on the contract, but it was ultimately terminated. Recommendations for the city, we often cover these reports from state auditor Dave Bollock.
And one of the things that makes him and his office unique are the recommendations. And they include mandating a comprehensive financial impact analysis, ensuring qualified financial leadership, enforcing timely account reconciliation, and the huge red flag on government oversight, which State Auditor Dave Bollock and his team says needs to be increased. Bollock said that whether it's a member of the city council, a school board member, or a county commissioner, they have been elected by the people to make sure that things run right and ask questions if need be. During his Monday press conference, he said, Because when you don't ask questions, you don't dig into the details, and this is what happens. You take a fantastic community in eastern North Carolina, which is the city of Rocky Mount, and you run it up to the beach, and it becomes a financial mess.
And now, citizens are going to have to band together to dig the city of Rocky Mount ultimately out of this hole.
So, government leaders at all levels should have the courage and backbone to ask tough questions and get in the weeds to make sure that the professionals that are hired to run the city, the county, or a state agency are doing it the way that people expect. Because ultimately, and I say this all of the time: government doesn't run on government money. Government runs on the people's money, and it's the people's money that the government spends at all levels. Bolick said that his team will follow up with the city on the audit and is also in the process of doing some analysis of purchase card transactions, which will be reported as well. In addition, his information systems team is currently doing some analysis for its utility billing system following billing issues at the end of last year and are expected to issue a relatively short report on just that issue.
So, this is obviously a major problem that is taking place for the city of Rocky Mount, some major issues with its former city manager, now some major financial burdens. We've got a full copy of the 257-page audit report from state auditor Dave Bolick and his team. Those details are available this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. Look for the story with the headline: audit Rocky Mount's cash. reserves plunge 80 million dollars under new management.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9. WBT, I'm Nick Prague. Good Tuesday morning to you. North Carolina legislative leaders are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging a state law that bans taxpayer funding for gender transition procedures. This is as it relates to those in the North Carolina prison system.
To walk us through some of those details this morning, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, this is not the first time that we have talked about this ongoing, pretty lengthy litigation affecting the state of North Carolina. Tell us a little bit why legislative leaders are looking to jump into this case.
Well, this is actually a relatively recent suit. We have seen a number of pieces of litigation that deal with gender transition and gender surgeries. We had the long-standing suit that deals with the state health plan and whether the health plan will fund surgeries. This is actually more recent. This is based on House Bill 805 that was passed in 2025 over Governor Josh Stein's veto.
And this bans state dollars, taxpayer dollars, from being used for gender affirming surgeries or puberty blockers or things of that sort for prisoners within the state prison system. And so, this was a law that was passed, as I said, over Governor Josh Stein's veto. And five prison inmates decided to file suit in February challenging the constitutionality of this particular law. They sued the head of the State Department of Adult Correction and also the medical director at the Department of Adult Correction, or DAC. And now, the latest development is that legislative leaders have filed paperwork to intervene in the case, basically saying, Look, we should be able to defend this law.
The Department of Adult Corrections, their leadership works for Governor Josh Stein, who vetoed the bill.
So you can't be certain that they would actually actively try to defend this law. And in fact, if Governor Stein had any say in it, they might try to not defend the law or to come up with some sort of settlement agreement with the prisoners here. But the legislators are saying that they, as the ones who passed the law, certainly would defend the law. And in the paperwork that goes along with this, they remind the courts that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving voter ID, allowed the General Assembly to come in and intervene in a lawsuit, even though the lawsuit was already being defended by lawyers from the North Carolina Department of Justice representing the executive branch.
The U.S. Supreme Court in that voter ID case said that the legislative interest might at times be different from the executive branch's interest. And so the legislative branch should be able to intervene in the form of the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate and be able to present the legislature's views on a particular issue.
So that has been the argument. Also, we found out in the motion to intervene that the legislators said they talked to the other parties, the lawyers for the other parties in the case, the plaintiffs, and also the Department of Adult Corrections and Adult Correction, and did not get any indication that there was going to be opposition to this.
So it should be fairly certain that the judge in the case will allow the legislature to intervene, which makes sense because it's the legislators who pass this law. They're going to be the ones who will be most interested in defending it. And the plaintiffs in the case, rather than trying to get some sort of settlement out of the Department of Adult Correction, should in fact have the adversarial position with the legislators because they're challenging what the legislature did, not really what the Department of Adult Correction did.
Well, Mitch, I remember this not long ago before he was governor. Josh Stein was the Attorney General here in North Carolina. And during that period of time, as you talked about with the case dealing with voter ID and a plethora of other legal issues here in North Carolina, there was some pretty significant friction between the General Assembly and then Attorney General Josh Stein at the time over this exact issue, as they are ideologically very different. Would the AG, would the state really be best represented in a legal challenge when they may agree with what the lawsuit actually states? Yeah, and you don't know in this case, Nick, whether there is going to be disagreement between the lawyers representing the Department of Adult Correction and representing the General Assembly.
This is not necessarily an issue that splits them because this is about using taxpayer dollars for these transition surgeries and treatments. For prison inmates. And so that may be a case in which the Department of Adult Correction and the General Assembly would come down on the same side, and even Governor Josh Stein might stay out of it, even though he vetoed the legislation. But I think the General Assembly didn't want to take that chance. It's their law.
They're the ones who would be best equipped to defend it legally. And so it made sense to them to get into this suit and become the actual real defendants in the adversarial position against the plaintiffs rather than rely on the Department of Adult Correction and, by extension, lawyers from the State Department of Justice, now working for Jeff Jackson, formerly, as you mentioned, working for Governor Josh Stein, who might not have the same interest in defending this law as the legislature that passed the law certainly does. Mitch, as we watch a situation like this play out, I can't imagine there's anything in the North Carolina Constitution that guarantees gender affirming care for those incarcerated by the state of North Carolina. What exactly is the legal challenge being made here by these prisonmates? Yes, and the challenge does not deal with the North Carolina Constitution.
It's actually, because it's in federal court, it is a federal constitutional issue. And the argument is that this violates the prisoner's Eighth Amendment rights. And so, what they're saying is that by not giving them this care that they are arguing is part of their Life-affirming issue, not just the gender-affirming piece, but by denying them adequate care in their argument that they're inflicting some sort of cruel punishment on these prisoners. Of course, the argument from the legislature is going to be completely opposite to that, saying this is not something that they need. If it's life or death treatment, they're going to get it, but these are the types of treatments they don't need.
Another thing that's being argued by the General Assembly in the brief arguments that they put forward so far is that this is the type of treatment that comes about for the condition of gender dysphoria. And the legislature is arguing that it is up to the legislature to decide what the policy is going to be for dealing. with gender dysphoria. It's not up to the courts to decide this. And they're saying that House Bill 805, the bill that's now the subject of this litigation, is something that the General Assembly had the right and authority to pass.
After the governor issued its veto, the General Assembly had the authority to then override the veto, which it did. And that is the legislative branch taking on its role of setting the proper. State policy for how this issue of gender dysphoria will be dealt with in terms of prisoners who are in state custody. Remember, this is a case that's dealing only with prison inmates. It's not dealing with any other people who, in their private lives, are asking their private.
Health providers and private insurance to deal with this issue. This is state taxpayers funding treatments for inmates who are in custody in state prisons. And the General Assembly is arguing that this is something that is completely within their purview to do to say that this type of treatment of gender dysphoria is not going to be something that state tax dollars will fund. Mitch, are you aware of any other legal challenges as it relates to this? As you mentioned, this is in the federal court system.
Some other states, we've talked about this as it related to other cases dealing with, like, for example, the state health plan, where some of these other states typically tend to have a Republican or conservative-led legislature, sometimes also a Republican governor as well, have gone through some of these similar processes. Do you know of any other legal challenges that are semi-close to this? I don't know of any active cases that are like this one. It would not surprise me, though, because if other legislatures have passed the same sort of legislation saying, We're not going to have state tax dollars fund for this. You can imagine that the prisoners who want to take advantage of this type of service would file suit and would make similar arguments.
This is violating their federal constitutional rights. We've not seen any court filings so far that say, take a look at how this court dealt with this, because you will certainly see that one side or the other will look at other federal court rulings or even state court rulings that are on point and say that the federal courts in our fourth district should take the same sort of stance on this as others. I'm also certain that as this case moves forward, you will see some reference to the cases that you referenced, the state health plan, and how other states have dealt with this issue. We know that the case dealing with the state health plan and whether it's going to cover so-called gender-affirming care. The resolution of that case is on hold as we wait for the Fourth Circuit to deal with a similar case out of West Virginia.
And once the West Virginia case is resolved, then we should see the North Carolina case dealing with the state health plan get resolved. But that is sort of a separate issue because this is not dealing with prison inmates and the treatment that they will get while they're in prison and whether state tax dollars will fund that. It's a slightly different take. Certainly it deals with the issue of transgender people and their so-called gender affirming care. But it is a difference between someone who is on a state health insurance program and someone who is a prison inmate and what they can expect as a prison inmate for taxpayers to fund in terms of their health care.
Mitch, you join us and talk about a lot of various legal challenges and issues, and you walk us through all of those details. And most of the time, we can look back at case law, other legal precedents that go back decades, or in some cases, even more than 100 years. All of this stuff, as it relates to gender-affirming care and transgenderism and gender dysphoria, as you highlighted, all of this stuff is relatively new. That's got to put the court system, whether we're talking federal or state courts, in a very interesting position because a lot of this stuff is relatively brand new when you look at the lengthy history that is the judicial system across America. Yes, you are talking about some issues that are really only within the past couple of decades and maybe even some respects the last decade or so when this has come to the fore.
Now, there are going to be some precedents that people can rely on because courts have said in the past that you can't deny a prison inmate the type of health care that would allow them to live unless they're undergoing the death sentence at the time when that would be contradicting what the sentence actually is. But if you have a prisoner, you're supposed to take proper steps to ensure they get the health care they need. And that will be an argument that the plaintiffs in this case will make is that, hey, this. Gender affirming care, either getting the transition surgery or taking the hormones or taking the puberty blockers. All of this stuff is part of the standard course of health care.
And if they don't get it, this is going to be something that is going to harm their lives. On the other side, the argument from the lawyers representing the legislature is going to be: no, gender dysphoria is a particular type of ailment. And the General Assembly can come up with the type of treatment that is appropriate for a prison inmate who has that ailment. And in this case, they're saying state tax dollars are not going to be used for the surgeries or the hormones or the puberty blockers. And that is something that ought to be left.
To the elected people of North Carolina to decide, not for the courts to decide.
So precedents that won't quite be on point. Will certainly be put forward, and then the courts will have to decide whether these relatively recent issues of. Transgenderism and gender dysphoria, whether they lock into these old court precedents or whether this is something brand new and has to be treated in a different way. It should be very interesting to watch and could have major implications here across the state of North Carolina. We appreciate the update this morning.
Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Ah! Good morning again. It's 554. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT.
Taking an eye, or taking a look, I should say, at some state news this morning. The North Carolina Justice Center has announced that state senator Greg Meyer, who is the Democrat from Orange County, will become its next executive director. According to the announcement from the group, Meyer will lead efforts to advance economic activity and racial equity across the state of North Carolina. And with that, he will be resigning his position from the North Carolina General Assembly, where he has served for more than a decade and will take that position. He was first elected to the state House back in 2012 and later transitioned over to the state Senate representing Orange Person in Caswell counties.
According to Myers, he said in a statement, I believe that there is. Is no organization more important to restoring North Carolina to our place as the beacon of the South than the North Carolina Justice Center? He went on to say: there is a future where we can once again prioritize decisions and policies that make our state safer, healthier, more fair, and more prosperous. To get there, we need a robust North Carolina Justice Center as part of a strategic, impactful, progressive advocacy community. For those that are not familiar with the entity, the North Carolina Justice Center is a Raleigh-based progressive advocacy organization whose mission is to promote economic and social justice across North Carolina.
That is their self-described mission. Since its founding back in 1996, the center has worked to advance public education, advance access to health care, protect workers' rights, and shape economic policy to ensure fairness for all North Carolinians, according to their website. The organization pursues its mission through policy research, legal advocacy, and community organizing, as it also works closely with community groups, policymakers, and advocates to strengthen families and promote equitable access to economic and social resources. In addition to his legislative experience, Representative Meyer is a trained social worker and public school advocate. He spent 16 years working in the North Carolina public school system.
You can read some additional details about his resignation from the General Assembly and some details on the North Carolina Justice Center, all those details this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Tuesday edition. 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 WBT.
