- [Kelly] House Democrats lose one key member and it gives the GOP a legislative Supermajority.

We examine this power shift and the fate of issues still not addressed.

This is "State Lines" - [Announcer] Quality public television has made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[dramatic music] ♪ [dramatic music continues] - Hi there.

And welcome to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me around the big table today Mitch Kokai, of the John Locke Foundation.

Anna Beavon Gravely, of NC Free.

And Lucille Sherman, reporter for Axios Raleigh.

And in chair four, Mr. Joe Stewart, longtime political analyst and good friend to PBS North Carolina.

Well busy week and thank you for taking time out of your busy week to be here.

We're gonna talk about first Lucille, how about your scoop?

[Lucille laughing] It's official.

Republicans now possess a veto-overriding Supermajority in both the North Carolina House and Senate.

Mecklenburg County representative Tricia Cotham said this week she's switching from being a Democrat to a Republican.

And I guess numerically and officially the Republican caucus now has 60% of total house membership and 60 percent's what you need to override Governor Cooper's vetoes.

Before Representative Cotham's party switch, one democratic vote was needed for a 3/5ths majority.

Lucille, first of all, a tip of the hat to you, because you broke the scoop.

- Thank you.

- Your colleague said, we can't confirm.

And you stood your ground.

Good lead, big change in North Carolina politics or just kind of a truing up of what's really going on in Raleigh?

- Almost both.

I think it was the biggest news that we've had in a long time and that's saying something, because the governor signed Medicaid expansion into law last week, but also at the same time representative Cotham has said that she's gonna vote the same way that she would've if she was in the Democratic Party.

So I'm really watching to see if she really is gonna sort of still vote that moderate way, so everything could be the same.

- Joe, why wouldn't Tricia Cotham be Tricia Cotham?

She's been there before, and she's back and is a known brand in the Democratic Party.

It's the Republican thing's new.

- Right?

Well, I think there's three things here.

Cotham family, really a fixture in Democratic party politics in Mecklenburg County.

It's a significant reason back home, as much as it is in terms of the balance of power here in Raleigh.

The other is the house kinda had a practical Supermajority, maybe three to five Democrats that were willing to cross over and vote and remember it's 3/5ths of the members present.

And so we saw this in the gubernatorial veto override vote on the Pistol Permit Bill.

And Representative Cotham was one of three Democrats that were not present making it possible for the then 71 Republicans to vote to override the veto and in effect have the Supermajority, because of the absence of those three Democrats.

The third is, it makes it very difficult, I think for any politician to change their party, but doing it such a conspicuous way and guaranteeing the absolute Supermajority of House Republicans, probably is an issue for representative Cotham in her political career, as long as it may go on.

A lot of speculation about what this may represent, whether or not there will be an attempt to try to draw her a more favorable district so that she can win.

The district she represents now, over 60% Democratic performance.

So it's hard to imagine as a Republican, even as a Republican incumbent, she could win reelection in 2024.

But we'll have to see.

- Mitch, would you expect Representative Cotham to change her stripes, the way she's governed that district before and now after she's become a Republican?

Do does the person change because they change party?

Or does the party really leave a person behind?

- Well, I think in this case, she believes that the Democratic Party left her behind.

I don't think she's going to change much.

I think she's going to be voting the way that she was planning to vote on issues.

To me, the key piece of this story is if there was a problem for the Democrats, it seems to be a problem of their own making.

When she had this news conference talking about her switch from Democrat to Republican, Tricia Cotham said she came to Raleigh, she was planning to be a contributing member of the caucus.

She went to that first meeting with treats and cookies and was planning to participate.

But as time went on, she saw that the fellow members of her caucus didn't really wanna have much to do with her.

They didn't want her to come to the caucus meeting and considered her a spy.

This was especially true after she was given a Chairmanship of a very powerful committee, that K-12 Education Committee and they said, wait a minute, this must be an interloper here.

- But is it reasonable for them to have that conspiracy in their mind that she would be someone who would tip off Republicans to what's happening in the Democratic caucus?

Is that fair in this climate?

- I think they were right to at least have some questions about it, but certainly you don't alienate a member who you want to keep in your own party.

She said that she tried to have meetings with the House Minority Leader Robert Reives who refused to meet with her.

That's not a strategy that's successful, if you want to keep people in your caucus.

You need to keep all of those people in your caucus even if you know that some of them on an issue here or there might stray.

- We'll have to throw an invitation out to a representative Reives to come on house democratically.

That would be fair, wouldn't it?

It certainly would.

But A.B., Anna Beavon, what do you make of this switch over?

It does numerically prove that the Republicans have a Supermajority and before this, one veto's come up for override and it got overridden.

So what's the practical nature of this?

- I think that we're really focused on the numbers and what this looks like, and missing sort of, and Mitch touched on it a little bit but what does this mean for Governor Cooper?

She aired some dirty laundry in her news conference, about what it's like to be on the inside of the Democrat party right now.

And listening to her conference and the way she was talking, there is not a single person who was like, Oh, you're, that, that doesn't seem to be cool that you did that.

But they're more on her side based on how her children have been treated, how she's been treated.

And all she did was miss a veto override vote, for a very legitimate reason.

And talking about how Governor Cooper has been, he wanted to have approval of the seating chart.

And I think this really just goes back to how much is Governor Cooper trying to control right now the Democrat party?

- And I think one of the biggest mistakes Republicans could make here, is if they try to corral Tricia Cotham into voting the way they wanted her to vote every time, because then it would basically be the same situation she just walked away from.

- Yeah, she said repeatedly, that it was a part of pretty much the terms of her discussions with Republicans, that she was going to vote the way she had always planned on voting and that she wouldn't be put in a box.

So she really laid that ground in the press conference.

Secondly, representative Reives had sort of a little, baby press conference yesterday, in which he disputed almost everything she said.

He said, "We really want people to come to caucus.

We have to beg people to come to caucus."

He said that Representative Cotham and him have been really good friends for nine years.

He said, "I'll show you the text messages."

So I thought that was really interesting he disputed every single claim that had something to do with the caucus.

And that sort of puts us in a he said-she said situation, but I totally agree.

I'm looking at what this means for Cooper, and especially what it means after Cooper sought a primary opponent for Senator Kirk deViere last year, who sort of didn't back Governor Cooper up in 2021 budget negotiations.

- Joe, Lucille sets you up with that.

What does happen?

Tricia Cotham will not be welcome to Democratic caucus now, and she'll be a new member of the Republican caucus.

And there's a lot of Republicans there wanting to climb the ranks, and Republicans aren't hugging them.

How does this play out?

- Yeah, we'll have to see.

I mean, the legislative process does have a tendency to be immensely personal to the people that are participating in it, because they have to spend a lot of time together, and they have to work together on legislative issues.

I think we'll have to watch over the next couple of weeks how Representative Cotham is treated, if the Republicans give her higher profile committee assignment, or a responsibility for other legislative initiatives within the Republican caucus.

But in the modern era, all that's really left now is the TikTok dance craze, "The Cotham Switch."

I mean, that's what's gonna come out next, is she will become a meme on the internet, and there will be an embodiment of her representing the traitorous move against the Democratic party.

These things have a half-life, and at some point that will no longer be the issue, and what will legitimately be of concern, I think, particularly to the Cooper administration, what does this mean for the rest of Governor Cooper's tenure as governor, knowing that he can't get any vetoed legislation to actually not be overridden?

- Two quick follows on that, sorry.

One, there are already TikToks circulating.

[panel members laughing] I have friends in in other states that were sending me TikToks about it.

- There you go.

[laughs] - So I thought that was crazy.

Two, one more note on what will change.

I talked to House Majority Leader John Bell yesterday, and he said the only thing that changed is three seats in the legislature.

They moved around seats so Cotham could move to the Republican side of the chamber.

So everybody's sort of adamant on that side of things that nothing will change.

- One thing that I'm gonna be looking for moving forward, is the ripple effects of her change in party, is really what does it mean for new candidates that are looking to run in Democrat primaries and in the general election, how welcome will they feel?

Because one thing she continued to hammer the whole press conference, and then she was on Fox News later in the day, was just how she was an independent thinker, and she kept pushing independent thinker, and autonomy, and wanting to flesh out ideas, and really saying that was not welcome where she was.

- So if you don't know the General Assembly, would she be like a Joe Manchin or a Kyrsten Sinema, what would be the, or John McCain, what would be the- - I think she sort of teed herself up to be a little John McCain-ish.

And that was, yes, I'm McCain John McCain-ish a word.

[panel laughing] - I like that.

- Thank you.

And that was sort of what, what sort of was underlying her talking points about her independence, and she will vote the way she wants to vote, she won't be swayed, she can't be bought, like that kind of thing.

- And that's one reason why people shouldn't look at this and say, okay, Republicans now have 30 Senate seats, 72 house seats, they're gonna get this entire agenda that they want through.

No, I mean, Tricia Cotham still has to be convinced that it's something that matters to her as a person, as a free thinker, not as now an R rather than a D. - Lucille, Jeff Jackson was the one going online most about this, talking about it.

Very interesting guy, of all the congressional delegation to weigh in on 10 more issue.

Knowing redistricting's coming, and knowing there are Democrats in this state that go, "Of all the districts they could touch, they could play with Charlotte a lot, especially get it up there where Tim Moore could run for US House."

How powerful is that social media play?

When you drop that, we see it.

- Yeah.

how impactful was Jeff Jackson's social media play, is the question?

- The media made him a darling just last week, or two weeks ago, with his TikToks.

Well, he's weighing in on something that involves people that are in his immediate political sphere in North Carolina.

- Yeah, yeah.

What's interesting about Jeff Jackson, is his appeal is beyond North Carolina in a lot of ways.

So I think whenever he, Jeff Jackson's another person, my friends send me TikToks, that don't live in North Carolina, from him.

So when he goes out there, I feel like it has less of an impact on what's actually happening here, just because he's a Democrat, and we now know Republicans have sort of cemented their authority, and has more of an impact in sharing this story nationally, of which it's blown up.

But two thoughts on maps in the Charlotte area.

One is Representative John Bradford is running for a statewide position, I believe it's Labor commissioner?

- [Panelist] State treasurer.

- State treasurer.

And so that moves him out.

And we could also see Tim Moore running for Congress.

Would that help them sort of shift districts around?

Those are the kind of things that I'll be watching in the summer when they likely redraw maps.

- Very subjective.

Joe, TikTok, that's just your way to fame, Mr. Stewart.

It's all about the viral outreach.

I should have known it was instantaneous.

I should have known.

- Alright, well there's growing discussion, and now some legislation out, that would change North Carolina's abortion laws.

Three different proposals, all Republican.

Senate President Phil Berger, maybe not an official proposal, but he says he can see supporting abortion restrictions after the first trimester.

Over in the State House, Speaker Moore mentioned he could support an abortion restriction after six weeks.

Some of the more conservative members of the House have filed a bill that would stop abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Anna Bevan, it's an uncomfortable topic to talk about this, but- - Sure, yeah, I love it, yeah.

- The debate is, heartbeat, looks like heartbeat, to trimester 12 weeks.

- Yeah, yeah.

The thing that I think is interesting about this topic, is that it's not really changed for these guys.

President Pro Tem Berger and Speaker Moore have been pretty clear about this all year.

They've stood their grounds, they're not really changing camps.

And so I think this is gonna be one of those things that happens longer into session, or once we get there.

And also, it's gonna get wrapped up in some other discussion topics.

- I was gonna say, I think it's also important to note that when Moore and Berger have talked about this, they've been talking about, sort of their personal preference, when they've been prodded on it.

But really, in both cases, they're gonna go with what the caucus says.

- They're gonna throw it out to the other members of the Republican caucus and their chambers and say, "all right, what are you willing to accept?"

I think either of them could live with a 13-week bill, a 6-week bill.

I don't think they're gonna go with the bill that's been filed, the one that says no abortions unless it's gonna kill the mother.

That's sort of on one end of the scale.

That's not an end that I think they're gonna go to.

And I think, frankly, that if it came to the conclusion that you couldn't come up with an agreement and we stuck with the 20-week ban, probably the legislative leadership would be fine with it.

The people who wouldn't be fine with it are the pro-life groups who say, "look, we elected you.

You gotta make this change."

They're gonna be the ones shouting if nothing happens.

- The big thing about the pro-life groups that their strongest argument, I think, is that 33%, abortions in North Carolina have increased 33% since the Dobbs decision because of how lax our regulations are, compared to our neighboring states.

And so that's gonna be the drumbeat that they're continuing to hit.

- I think the pro-life groups are doing something interesting right now in that they started out session pushing for six weeks.

Some of them want a conception ban, like the one that was filed, I think, last week.

But what that's done is it seems like there's a smaller group of people who would like a 6-week or less ban and then we have Senator Berger and Moore saying there's the most appetite for a 12 or 13-week first trimester ban.

And so that's really gotten everybody stuck in their corners, especially in the House, and it makes me wonder, and I've talked to a lot of people who've said the same thing, will they be able to pass anything at all because everybody's so stuck in those positions?

Some people have pointed to the pro-life groups as sort of lobbying that and adding to the stuckness of the House Republican caucus.

- Joe, being stuck is a strategy.

You think the Republican leadership would be just fine if a war didn't break out over this?

- Well, absolutely.

This is an issue people feel very strongly about.

And if you go back to the polling that was conducted in the 2022 election, you found most North Carolinians supported some sort of guardrail.

A very small percentage of North Carolinians said they wanted an absolute ban and a very small percentage said they wanted no guardrails whatsoever.

But this notion of somewhere between 13 and 20 weeks is where the vast majority of North Carolina voters are in terms of what they think is an appropriate regulation on this issue.

It is some portion of the conservative element of the Democratic party and the more liberal portion of the Republican party and a lot of the unaffiliated independent-minded voters in the middle.

So I think there is an expectation that this issue will come out to play in the 2024 elections.

Legislators and very conservative Republican districts fear that they would face a Republican primary challenge if they're not stalwart on the position of wanting it to be either a heartbeat bill or very few weeks like six.

And then you have Democrats on the other side in very strong democratic performance districts saying, "well, you might face a challenge if you don't raise more of a ruckus against these restrictive provisions."

But I think it's very likely not to be as significant an election year issue as other issues like the economy, but still important to a lot of legislators.

- One other important note I think all of us would agree that moving from 20 weeks to 13 weeks would be a very significant change, but at least among some of the pro-life advocates for whom this is their issue, they say 20 to 13 makes almost no difference.

That's why they're pushing so much for six weeks, 'cause they're saying you wouldn't really reduce that many abortions by changing from 20 to 13, although I think most of the rest of us would say that would be a very significant change.

- Anna Beavon, does this issue stay red hot in the future if the economy really cools off?

We're talking interest rate hikes put us into a recession to push inflation down.

People won't be feeling good about their wallet.

Or does abortion transcend that?

- I think it's gonna stay hot for a section of people as long as it's on the table for discussion, and it has been red hot since the Dobbs decision.

- All right, House Republicans are pushing some proposals that would change North Carolina's election laws.

Namely, the plan would end a 3-day grace period for mail-in ballots that arrive at the State Board of Elections after Election Day.

This law was passed in 2009, I should say, to allow absentee ballots to be counted if they are postmarked and they arrive up to three days following Election Day.

This plan would require that mailed ballots arrive at the Board of Elections by poll closing time on Election Day.

And the House bill would also stop the service where absentee ballots could be dropped off at those one-stop early voting sites.

Mitch, the ballot drop off and all of this came out of COVID-era beliefs that the elections weren't stable from conservatives.

This is a 2009 state law.

What happened?

It worked for a decade, apparently.

- For some, and then some had some concerns about it.

I think this entire issue of trying to get the election integrity, as it's being described, is those of us who are older remember that there used to be an election day.

You went one day, you voted, and that night you found out who won.

There have been a number of changes over the years, where people have been able to vote for more than one day 'cause you have the early voting, which is very popular, and there have been changes like this one that said, "okay, if you mail in the ballot, it doesn't arrive by the day, as long as it's postmarked by Election Day and arrives within three days, it's going to count."

Some people think that all of these changes make it just too unclear on Election Day who has won and who has lost and we need to make it clearer that there is an Election Day and once an Election Day is over, you're gonna get the results and you're gonna find out who won.

I think that is what's driving this particular change.

- And Anna Beavon, it's like some people do believe when Election Day polls close at 7:00, we watch all night, we have a President, a Governor, and a legislature.

Outdated thinking, and what does voting over multiple days have to do with ensuring every vote is valid?

- Well, the thing that I find is fascinating about this particular topic and the 3-day grace period and the conflict that it's received is that in 2022, early voting numbers outpaced Election Day voting by 27%.

In 2020, early voting numbers outpaced Election Day numbers four to one.

So it's not like people don't know their other options and other times to vote.

And if we remember, we have some of the earliest voting days possible because you can request your absentee ballot almost two months before the election.

And so saying, "hey, we're cutting off, if you don't get it in by Election Day, we're not gonna count that" is not a disservice, I think if anything clear is kind, in this scenario and we as citizens of North Carolina and voters deserve to know who our elected officials are, at the end of the day, there's no real reason, for us to be on pins and needles, unless it is one of those really close races, that everyone's like, "oh my gosh, it's a close race.

Will we find out or will or will we not?"

I think that should be a little more of a mystery and less of a guarantee.

- All right.

- I think the counter-argument to that, that Democrats have is that so few in theory, absentee ballots should come in, after that deadline, after election day.

And so the argument is, what big of a difference does it make, which I think is really interesting.

I'm kind of wondering if Republicans are gonna put this bill or some other kind of election bill in the budget and I wonder how Cooper would respond to that and what that might mean for, whether the budget will become law or whether Medicaid expansion will become law.

Funny how elections and Medicaid expansions, somehow get stuck together.

- That's business in politics.

I tell you the governor may have, a very big decision to make.

- Well, it should not be lost on anyone.

The Republicans made it clear, that the Medicaid expansion would necessitate the governor, letting the budget go into law.

- [Reporter] To put it all in.

- It may not matter now that there's a super majority, in the House and Senate, what the governor thinks about the budget, may not be as relevant as it once was, but that haven't been said.

Election law is a thing of importance, because we need to believe, that there's integrity in the process.

We have a checkered past as a nation, in terms of how we manage voting.

In fact, when the country was first founded, only white men with land could vote.

I mean, we've come a long way, baby, in terms of who we're letting actually vote, in our elections.

There are a lot of complicating factors and it used to be, as Mitch pointed, you were absent from election day, because you were in Chicago.

Aunt Mitzi was having her bunion surgery and you just literally weren't gonna be here to vote.

And now it's become more a matter of voter convenience.

And we're ensconced in this notion that somehow, election integrity is a reflection of the divisive times, in which we live.

And the truth is, we are probably within a decade, of having the ability to vote online, of using our devices to vote, because of the convenience of that.

And a younger generation of Americans, who do most of their transactional activities, on their devices.

- But even if it's convenient and if it can be proven to be safe, how do you convince people who say, you know, they're shenanigans in these local state and national elections.

- [Joe] Right.

- You're not gonna convince someone there's not.

I've never seen one someone change their mind.

- No, voting is a messy business, because it involves people in their busy lives and their ability to take time away from work or whatever they're doing with their families, to go a place and vote.

And so we probably do need some liberalization, away from that notion of you're only gonna be able to vote, on this day during these hours, but that having been said maybe a federal holiday.

So it's everything is closed down on election day and it's more convenient for people to go and vote.

But the integrity of elections is an important thing.

I'm not sure this is really relevant to that.

Absentee ballot has become more of a convenience, than just a recognition.

Some people are just away on election day, but at three days or two days or no days after the election day, I think that the point is taken.

It's not really that relevant.

- We got about 90 seconds to two minutes.

We'll have to be quick on this, but important legislation being filed.

It's getting a lot of attention at least, that addresses transgender students' participation, in school athletics.

Also, another bill's out could limit state funding, being used for any gender affirming medical treatments, for the most part.

This came in late this week, just ahead of the holiday weekend, Mitch.

Culture Wars, is this a culture war issue?

Has it now officially arrived in North Carolina?

- Well, certainly it's going to be part of the culture wars and the reason it arrives is because in the Senate, this is the bill filing deadline week.

So all of the bills that have to be filed, that are policy issues have to be filed this week.

- Stop right there as a civic lesson.

The bill filing deadline means, if a legislator waits till next Tuesday to file any bill, what happens?

No good.

- Well, in the Senate they can't.

- So we'll see a lot of this going on.

- Exactly and the house will have its own rush of bills, maybe on similar topics.

But yes, this is gonna be something that will divide people.

Some people will say, "this is anti LGBTQ".

Others will say, "no, this is protecting women sports, from men who wanna compete as women".

- There you go.

Anna Bevan, your thought about this and how it breaks down to the general assembly, is it a political partisan issue party-wise or is it whether it be conservative Democrats, who are in the caucus of the Democratic Party and in good standing will say, they'll take pause on this or do you go along?

- I think the latter that you just mentioned, is definitely not gonna be the case.

I think this is where you see some really strong divides.

You see this with abortion.

You see this with LGBTQ+ rights.

You see that with some of these main issues, that are core to the Democrat Party these days.

- All right, last word, to you Lucille.

- Yeah, I'm watching Tricia Cotham on this issue.

She's one person who I'm wondering, she campaigned on supporting LGBTQ issues, so I'm really wondering where she's gonna go on this.

And it's also worth noting that North Carolina, was much later to introduce some of this legislation, than other states.

- And reminder whether Tricia Cotham, is a Republican or a Democrat, if she wants to sustain the veto, it will be sustained with her one vote, right?

- Right.

- Thank you so much to all of you, for coming back here on this weekend, holiday weekend.

I appreciate it.

We'll have you all on very, very soon.

I thank you for watching "State Lines" this week.

Email us state lines at pbsnc.org.

We'll read every email, and like I said, we'll see you next time.

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