It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Friday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. Republicans from across western North Carolina's 11th congressional district will meet Monday night. That is August the 10th to choose the GOP's North Carolina 11th congressional district candidate that will run for the United States House.
Recapping what has been a very busy week here on the Carolina Journal News Hour and across North Carolina politics, it was early Wednesday morning that Congressman Chuck Edwards, the Republican out of the 11th district, announced that he would be dropping out of the race after a House Ethics Committee report detailed violations of House rules related to Sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace. Under North Carolina law, when a candidate withdraws this close to the election, the political party, in this case, the Republican Party, selects a replacement nominee. There is no second primary election. North Carolina's 11th congressional district is made up of 16 counties, including Avery, Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Swain, Transylvania, and Yancey County, pretty much all of Western North Carolina. Jason Simmons, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, described the process in a recent press release saying, the people of Western North Carolina deserve a strong conservative voice on the ballot this November, and our party is prepared to move through this process quickly and efficiently.
The district's executive committee will fulfill its responsibility under our rules to nominate a candidate who will fight for lower taxes, secure our border, strengthen our economy, and stand up for the values of the people of the 11th district. I am confident Republicans will unite behind our nominee and continue our work to expand our majorities in Washington. Early voting is set to begin in North Carolina coming up pretty quickly. October the 15th, Election Day will roll through Tuesday, November the 3rd. And Dr.
Andy Jackson, the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, says that the timeline is short for any candidate who will come out of that vote on Monday, telling Carolina Journal: whoever the party picks to replace Edwards will have just three months to build a district-wide campaign team, raise money, and reach out to voters. This is a tall order while running against a well-funded opponent in a likely competitive district. There's been a lot of rumor, a lot of discussion over the last two days as to who will replace now retiring Congressman Chuck Edwards, who decided to drop out of the race for North Carolina's 11th congressional district earlier this week. We'll start off with State Senator Tim Moffat. He's the Republican.
Out of Henderson County. He took to social media this week to say that he's been encouraged by the strong support from across the region and is currently in discussion with local leaders as he considers entering the race. He said in part: the people of western North Carolina are resilient. Two years after Hurricane Helene, our communities are still rebuilding. They deserve a representative who will match their grit and determination, someone who will fight as hard in Washington as our families, retirees, farmers, and small businesses fight every day here at home.
Moffat also said that the race is about nominating a conservative who aligns with President Donald Trump's agenda and is prepared to win the general election that is coming up very quickly. He continued by saying the 11th district needs a conservative who will stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, champion Western North Carolina values, and run a campaign that's ready to win from day one. with the organization, the coalition, and the resources to hold this seat.
So we will be keeping an eye on State Senator Tim Moffat in the coming days as that meeting rolls around Monday evening. State Senator Kevin Corbin, the Republican from Macon County, whose district lies entirely within North Carolina's 11th congressional district, also announced this week that he will not be seeking the Republican nomination. Corbin, who is now serving his third term in the North Carolina Senate, said that he appreciated the encouragement and support, but believes he still has important work to do in the General Assembly. In a statement online, he wrote: After discussing this tremendous opportunity with my wife, Beth, and our family, and spending considerable time in prayer, I believe my work in the North Carolina Senate is not yet finished. My current obligation is to the people of North Carolina's 50th Senate District, who placed their trust in me to be their voice in Raleigh.
I owe it to them and to all North Carolinians to complete the term they elected me to serve and continue my run for re-election to the Senate. The other name that is being tossed around and thrown around is Adam Smith. He ran against Edwards in the March primary but lost by more than 40 points. He also took to social media after the news earlier this week to tell supporters that, quote, nothing is off the table. Smith went on to say, since the news broke, my phone hasn't stopped.
I'm grateful for every patriot who reached out. I'm in communication with district leadership and with potential candidates in the 11th District Executive Committee who they may consider when it meets Monday evening. Nothing is off the table. When this district demands its what this district demands is a proven conservative with a real record for our mountains, someone who stands with President Trump and someone ready to fight from day one, that'll be the standard I'll be holding every name to, including my own. According to Dr.
Andy Jackson, current state senators would have a built-in advantage in a much shortened campaign time thanks to their existing donor base and name recognition. Jackson telling the Carolina Journal, state senators would be a natural choice since their districts overlap with a large portion of the congressional district and they already have fundraising networks. For example, Senator Tim Moffitt raised a quarter of a million dollars for his 2024 campaign. He could tap that network and the party funds to jumpstart a campaign. This is going to be a fascinating process to watch unfold on Monday in what has been a very tumultuous week out in western North Carolina.
It started on Monday for those that have been following it. It started on Monday with that House Ethics Committee report detailing violations or likely violations of House rules by Congressman Chuck Edwards as it relates to sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace as it related to two young female staffers in his office. That came to light in mid-afternoon on Monday. And then most folks waking up Wednesday morning to a 3:30 a.m.
social media post from the congressman announcing that he would be dropping out of the race as a result of that House Ethics Committee report. The executive committee, I should say, of North Carolina's 11th Congressional District GOP, will be meeting in Buncombe County around 6:30 Monday night to determine. Who their candidate will be that will have a very short timeline here to run against Jamie Ager, the Democrat candidate running in the 11th district, who has already poised some pretty strong fundraising numbers. Multiple national surveys have moved this race from what we believe to be a relatively solid Republican district to now a toss-up, now throwing the current sitting congressman in Chuck Edwards, with him now throwing himself out of the race due to this House Ethics Committee report. This is going to be an uphill battle for whoever the nominee is, in large part due to these very short timelines.
We will be watching that throughout the weekend to see if there is any other chatter, other candidates whose names are thrown into the hat. And then, of course, watching everything that goes on Monday evening, we'll bring you the latest over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. And as always, as we are heading to next week right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It's 520. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, that's NCDPI, marked the first anniversary of Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green's five-year strategic plan at a meeting on August the 5th by launching a public dashboard and pointing it to four record results as evidence of progress.
However, it is important to note that all four of those results came from the school year that ended before the plan began, a point that the department made to the State Board of Education during that same meeting. The superintendent and Mo Green said in a recent press release, a year ago, we made a promise to the students, families, and educators of this state that we will hold ourselves accountable in the open for building the best public school system in America. This dashboard is the only way we are satisfying that promise. It shows what we said we would do, what we have done, and what comes next. The release lists four results it calls the highest recorded in state history.
That includes an 87.7% four-year graduation rate, a 72.1% pass rate on advanced placement or AP exams, more than 382,000 industry-recognized credentials earned by career and technical education students, and 54% of graduates passing a college-level course while still in high school. It also reports that nearly 2,000 parents applied for just 20 seats that were available on a new parents' advisory council, roughly 400 people applying for 20 seats on the Innovation Leadership Council, and more than 6,000 residents that have joined the North Carolina Education Championship. Network. The state board unanimously approved the plan back one year ago in August of 2025 following a Greens Mo Wants to Know a listening tour across North Carolina. Its stated goal is for North Carolina to have the best public school system in the nation by 2030.
DPI's Director of Government Affairs and Strategy presented the same four figures to the board and told members where they came from. The Director of Government Affairs said, of course, these were amazing results that we saw, but this was all the result that happened before the strategic plan launched. This was the year before the plan launched, but of course, it creates a tremendous stepping stone for the success that we hope to see. The figures come from the 24-25 school year, which ended before the plan took effect and was uh and were released in September of 2025. The press release does not note the timing.
The government affairs director in Jeffrey Coltrane also walked the board through the rollout. The plan's 110 actions began on a staggered schedule with 41 of them having launched as of July 31st, matching the number due to start by that period of time. He told the board, from August of last year until July of this year, 41 out of 110 actions have launched.
So work is underway on those 41 actions. And in the next year of the plan, so this month through July of next year, there'll be 53 more actions that are launched. The tracker behind the dashboard lists the other 69 as not started when it was pulled August the 3rd. The release describes the dashboard as a window into all of those actions that Mo Green and education officials across North Carolina hope will make the state's public education system number one. in the nation by twenty thirty.
The release cites four numbers. The dashboard tracks 14 and none of them measure how students score on state tests. Those scores appear further down among the measures for the plan's first pillar. Last year, 55% of students scored at grade level on end-of-grade and end-of-course exams, up from 54.2% the year prior.
So a slight increase there with the plan's target climbing to a single point a year to 60% by 2030. A finish line that leaves two of every five students still below grade level at the end of the year. And unfortunately, according to the details, some of the measures are actually moving in the wrong direction. Public school enrollment fell from 83.9% of school-aged children to 83.4% against a 2030 target of 89% of students, of individuals, I should say, being enrolled in public school, with beginning teacher retention dropping from 87.1% to 85.3%. The dashboard uses four tags, record hide, approaching target, baseline year, or data coming soon, none of which describe a measure that fell, public school enrollment down from a year before.
It tagged as a baseline year with beginning teacher pay retention also falling there by almost two full percentage points, carrying no tag at all. North Carolina's fourth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fell about eight points between 2019. and 2024, very well coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping the state from above the national average to even with it. The plan calls for a 12-point gain by 2030, noting that no state has gained more than six points over that stretch and period of time. Coltrane told the board that the measures set remain incomplete, noting that not all of the pillar measurements yet are in the dashboard and that they are still working to identify data sources and get that information updated.
Critics have questioned the plan's academic focus since before the board adopted it. The first year data shows that the pillars advancing at sharply different rates. The seventh pillar, Celebrate the Excellence in Public Education, has nine of its 11 actions in progress and two not started. The highest share of any pillar in the plan out of the more than 110 or the 110 actions set to be implemented. The first pillar, which covers academics and college and career readiness, has 15 of its 21 actions not started.
The eighth pillar, focused on building a public support and investment, has 11 of 12 not yet started as well. Dr. Bob Lubke, the director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation, questioned the plan's accountability when it was released last year, saying at the time, our shelves are filled with plans to improve schools, and what happens when those plans failed? Nothing. Bryce Fielder, the director of the Carolina Academic Leadership Network at the John Locke Foundation, told the Carolina Journal last year as well that the plan contained, quote, no yearly targets for raising state test scores and cautioned against leaning on graduation rates, citing research finding North Carolina's rate rising while proficiency stayed essentially flat.
Coltrane told the board that 18 actions have had their launch dates pushed back and in some cases by nearly a year. And that the public dashboard reflects new dates rather than the ones that the board originally approved. He told the group: while the launch dates in the published strategic plan that you approved is there, this has updated launch dates on it. Board member Olivia Oxendine raised this risk at the August 6, 2025 work session, questioning the plan's description as a living document, noting if we're constantly changing, we lose a sense of the plan that we approved. Preliminary 2025-2026 accountability results go to the state board in September.
Those will be the first figures on the dashboard produced by a full school year under the plan. This has been something that we have been tracking now for about a year since it was officially approved by the State Board of Education. You can read some additional coverage of that this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. Look for the headline. DPI marks first full year of Greens plan with pre-plan results.
It's 537. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. A good Friday morning to you. It has been a busy two weeks in Raleigh for the North Carolina General Assembly as now the North Carolina Senate and North Carolina House have taken action on two different pieces of legislation, House Bill 958 and House Bill 834, both of them dealing with elections across the state of North Carolina.
To walk us through the latest on these bills that are now sitting on the governor's desk, Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, you and I chatted back a couple of weeks ago when we saw some of the proposed changes that were going to be made with these two pieces of legislation. Can you give us a rundown of some of the things that jump off the page on these two pieces of legislation? Yeah, well, in this final version, it used to be that 958 was this really large, that it had gotten up to 37 pages at one point.
It covered a whole gambit of things. 854 comparatively was this little teeny tiny thing. And part of what they did in the Senate is they removed some of the stuff from 958 and put it into 834.
So both of them are kind of mid-sized bills now. 958 is. Certainly, the more controversial of the two. It covers items like county boards can suspend officials. It clarifies that they're allowed to do that, you know, for whatever malfeasance.
A big controversial part there is that it reduces the number of early voting days in primaries, municipal elections, special elections from 17 under current law down to 10. It also expands. Who can challenge early voting votes? It used to be that only people in the precinct could challenge, now anybody in the county can challenge. And it clarifies that you can have that challenge up to five days after election day, which is the same rule for absentee ballots.
And it does have some other rules also about. Saying that people that are registering people to vote, either election officials or people of the DMV, for example, they have to get affirmation that a person is a citizen before they can proceed. And there's a host of other, those are just the ones in 958. Yeah, and we did see it, as you laid out in your open there, this is a morph. These two pieces of legislation have changed pretty dramatically over the last couple of months.
With some of those details that you just went through, you mentioned that this was a relatively divisive issue in the General Assembly. Andy, accurate to say that this was a pretty split party line issue like we see with a lot of other pieces of legislation?
Well, certainly for 958. Election legislation tends to be a zero-sum game if one party is for it, the other party is against it, because both sides believe that even with little minor tweaks, you're going to change the outcome of elections to their benefit or detriment. And we certainly saw that. And I'm not sure exactly what the strategy was in the Senate because 958 had some provisions that Democrats had supported, like expanding the number of days that the boards had to consider provisional ballots or absentee ballot cures from three days to five days, letting county boards start counting absentee ballots they had received before Election Day a little bit earlier, and some of these other kinds of loosening of previous tighter restrictions. And these are things that Democrats had expressed some support for.
And that is a thing that kind of made 958 at least a little bit. Little bipartisan, and even if Democrat, you know, most Democrats could bring themselves to support it. All of that got transported into 834. And so 834 passed the Senate unanimously. It went to the House for concurrence.
It passed with a veto-approved majority. On the other hand, 958 was a strict party line in the House and the Senate. Stein's already said he's going to veto 958. We don't know the fate of 854, but even if he does veto it, it's probably going to get through.
So it's really interesting that. I don't know what the strategy was, but essentially the leadership put everything that some Democrats liked. Into one bill rather than having an omnibus bill where you're going to give away a little bit and maybe get a little bit more back. Yeah, it is an interesting political strategy there. I want to take a moment to remind our audience, as we've talked about these two pieces of legislation.
Nothing that Andy and I are discussing now or have discussed over the last couple of weeks are relevant for the upcoming elections. We'll see early voting begin here in mid-October, election day coming up in early November. The vast majority of these provisions, as it deals with things like early voting and some of these time periods, as I understand it, Andy, will not begin.
Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens with the veto and potentially veto override. But if that legislation does become law, those things would not begin until elections that would come up in 2027, correct? Yes, definitely in 958. None of those happen until 27. There are some of the provisions in 854 would become law immediately so that this fall they could have five days instead of three.
But yes, the majority of provisions don't apply until elections starting in 2027.
So, you've had the opportunity to speak on a couple of these pieces of legislation. You've watched some of the changes over the last couple of months with them. Give us your analysis. You're digging into election details and following election policy closer than anybody here in North Carolina on a day-in- and day-out basis. Good legislation, bad legislation, mixed bag, where do you fall on it?
I think they're both good pieces of legislation and they'll both help with improving election administration.
Some of those changes, relaxing some of the restrictions, it was difficult for they basically, there was a previous legislation that passed a couple of years ago that really front-loaded the process. Of ballot counting and dealing with ballots. And it was difficult for county election boards to kind of keep up with that.
So, you know, administratively, this helps things out. And it still makes it so that we're not going to have like continuous counting like we did with the Supreme Court race back in 24, where, you know, You didn't get a flip until two weeks after election day almost. And so we're still not going to have that. It'll still be basically resolved within a week, which is a good thing. One thing that's in 958 that I think is especially welcome is that it's going to add these performance audits to elections.
Now, These performance audits done by the Office of the State Auditor would not be like a recount thing like we have now with current audits. And it wouldn't affect the outcomes at any elections. It's a simple examination of the process so that you can find problems and correct them before the next election. And I think that would be to be able to do that systematically, essentially every two-year cycle, I think would be a way that we can have continuous improvements in our election system and help county boards fix problems before they get to the point where somebody's going to ask an election director to resign, like we've seen in a couple of counties this year. Yeah, these performance audits are a real key portion of this legislation.
We'll get into some of the other opinions and some of the controversial takes on that. But, Andy, as I understand it, this performance audit that's in House Bill 958 would essentially follow the process from the second that a voter registers through the process of them, not who they're voting for, but through Election Day and everything that is in between that to determine whether there are problems. It's important to note, again, for our audience, we have a very decentralized election system here in North Carolina. The State Board of Elections in Raleigh does not administer and run elections. This is split across 100 counties, 100 election directors, 100 boards, 100 different individual entities that are paying staff and having individuals working in those offices.
And there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen here. There's a lot of different processes that has to be followed. It's inevitable with a system this size that there's going to be little issues that prop up here and there. Yeah, definitely.
Now, the State Board of Elections issues guidance to county boards and will inform them: hey, this is the law, you ought to follow it. But in the end, the day-to-day administration, the actual counting of ballots is done in the counties. And so. We've seen this, especially with some of the smaller counties that have maybe a little bit less of a budget, a smaller staff. We've seen situations where.
County officials might be taking shortcuts they shouldn't, appointing people they shouldn't be appointing to serve as precinct officials, for example. And that's the sort of thing you want to root out. You want to make sure that ballots, for example, are being handled, that the Somebody's privacy of their vote is kept in, is not broken.
So, you want to have ballot security from the time the person gets it in the tabulator to the time it's counted and eventually put in storage.
So, all those things from voter registration to post-election ballot security is something that's going to be covered in these audits. Andy, what were some of the objections? As you mentioned, this was a strict party line issue, Republicans in favor, Democrats against, especially for House Bill 958. What were some of the major sticking points, some of the major objections that those on the political left made to this piece of legislation? The left objected, they objected to the audits.
They thought that this would be a way for the auditor's office to interfere or cast doubt on election outcomes, despite the fact that the legislation specifically says this will have nothing to do with election outcomes. This is just a process-fixing thing. But they say this is a way of sowing doubt among voters and limiting trust in elections. I have also, and not just from legislators, from people that I've been sitting next to at some of these hearings have talked to me that they believe that the challenge provisions, you could end up seeing these wholesale hundreds, thousands of challenges to early voting. I don't expect that's going to happen.
There's nothing in the legislation that kind of steam you know causes this kind of steamroll effect, but that was an objection that they had. And the general argument that anything where you are trying to have a Stricter control on elections will inevitably cause repression of votes. We watched this piece of legislation move through Raleigh over the last two weeks. We have seen some social media postings from Democrat Governor Josh Stein that he does intend to veto House Bill 958. We don't exactly know when that happens.
We do know, however, that the General Assembly is not expected back until after the election coming up into the middle and end of November is when they're expected to go back in the fate of 834 unknown. We'll be keeping an eye on this over the next couple of months. We appreciate the information this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Good morning again, and welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT, North Carolina's high school students reported carrying weapons at schools less often, getting into fewer fights, and drinking and using marijuana at what state officials called 20-year lows. This is according to new data from the 2025 North Carolina High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which was presented this week to the state board of education. The survey found that 1.1% of students said that they carried a weapon on school property, down from 3.1% in 2023. The share reporting a physical fight fell to 16.4% from 22%.
Meanwhile, the share who said they missed school because they felt unsafe dropped to 9.9%. From 14.6.
Some pretty encouraging percentage drops from that report. The State Department of Public Instruction said that the results showed North Carolina has returned to and exceeded pre-pandemic levels across nearly all reported measures. The superintendent in Mo Green said the 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey reflects meaningful progress, particularly in improving student safety and reducing several risk behaviors. At the same time, the findings reinforce the need to help every student feel safe, connected, and prepared to learn. Current alcohol use was reported by 16% of students and current marijuana use by 10.6%.
DPI called both of those percentages 20-year lows, down from 42.3% for alcohol and 21.4% for marijuana in 2000. Yeah. Current cigarette smoking fell to 3.5% from 3.9 in 2023. Christy Day, director of the DPI's Office of Teaching and Learning, said that these improvements matter, noting that they suggest that sustained attention to prevention, education, and student support can make a difference. The report also shows that mental health has seen significant improvements among students since the low point of the pandemic.
The new figures report that nearly 30% of students said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness and or hopelessness in the previous year, and 11.4% said that they seriously have considered or are considering suicide. The figures extend a decline that began after the 2021 survey, which was administered during the pandemic and produced the worst mental health reading in years for state data. As Carolina Journal reported at the time, 22% of high schoolers said that they had seriously contemplated suicide in 2021. That was up from 16% in 2015. The state reported 18% for 2023, and the 2025 figure is more than a third below that.
So some very good work there as well. Reports of sadness and hopelessness. Have followed a similar pattern according to those earlier state figures: 43% in 21, 39% in 2023, and now 30% in 2025. More coverage of this over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Friday edition.
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.
