What can we learn from North Carolina's elections?

Donald Trump won North Carolina. But Democrats in the state swept every major executive branch race, including governor, and broke the Republican supermajority in the statehouse. What explains this split?

Steve Harrison, politics reporter at WFAE, the NPR member station in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Pat Ryan, founder and owner of Ryan Public Relations. Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications for North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger.

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Happy Monday, everyone. Today, we're continuing to take a look at how American voters showed in the 2024 election, that neither party should take how voters think or behave for granted. You might have heard our other shows on the state of Missouri and the one about Starr County, Texas.

If you haven't, definitely check them out in our podcast feed. They are super interesting. Today, it's off to the Tar Heel State.

DONALD TRUMP: Hello to North Carolina, because I've been at North Carolina a lot lately, you probably see.

CHAKRABARTI: President elect Donald Trump won North Carolina's 16 electoral votes with 51%, according to the Associated Press.

Vice President Kamala Harris got roughly 48% of the North Carolina vote. But down the ballot, Democrats swept many major statewide races.

JOSH STEIN: We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That's who we are as North Carolinians. And I am so honored that you have elected me to be your next governor.

Democrat Josh Stein won the state's gubernatorial race, beating Republican Mark Robinson in a landslide. Stein got roughly 55% of the vote, according to the Associated Press. Robinson just 40%. Now Robinson is North Carolina's current lieutenant governor. Inside North Carolina, he has been a highly controversial figure for years.

A few highlights.

(MARK ROBINSON MONTAGE)

That abortion is a scourge that needs to be run out of this land.

It's not your body anymore. It's y'all's body. And yes, that includes the daddy. Homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes, I call it filth.

When it was time to face down Goliath. I sent David, not DeVita, David, and I'm not ashamed to say it.

I'm probably not supposed to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. I got them AR-15s in case the government gets too big for his britches, because I'm going to fill the backside of them britches with some lead.

CHAKRABARTI: Lieutenant Governor Robinson came under broad nationwide scrutiny in September when CNN published a story unearthing inflammatory comments Robinson had made on a pornography website.

In one, Robinson referred to himself as quote, a Black Nazi, end quote. In another, he expressed support for reinstating slavery. Now, after CNN's report, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was asked if Robinson should step down from the lieutenant governorship.

ROY COOPER: I have said for years that he should step down from his position because of extreme positions that he has taken and his attacks on people. I don't think he's qualified.

CHAKRABARTI: As we mentioned, neither did North Carolina voters who handed Robinson a crushing defeat. Now, North Carolina Democrats also won the lieutenant governor's race, attorney general, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction.

And they appear to have broken the Republican supermajority in the state's General Assembly, pending any recounts. That's despite a redrawn map that heavily favored Republicans at the state level. Democrat Beth Helfrich flipped a statehouse seat north of Charlotte.

BETH HELFRICH: I was seeing a General Assembly that seemed more focused on power grabs, trying to push through legislation really quickly without even, in some cases, allowing for conversation.

People from across political lines recognize that we have checks and balances in government for a reason, and they are not operating right now.

CHAKRABARTI: But again, the reason why we're doing these close looks at different counties and different states is that in nowhere is it a uniform sweep by one party.

Because that's the same in North Carolina. North Carolina Republicans did win or hold on to some statewide offices, including Commissioner of Labor, State Auditor, Insurance Commissioner, and State Treasurer. And interestingly, they also won a series of judicial races. So once again, how should we understand what it is that voters are saying with this mix of choices that they're making between state and federal offices?

So today we're going to answer that question through the lens of North Carolina. And joining us now is Steve Harrison. He's the politics reporter at WFAE, the NPR station in Charlotte, North Carolina. Steve, welcome to On Point.

STEVE HARRISON: Thanks, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Also with us is Pat Ryan. He's founder and owner of Ryan Public Relations and former deputy chief of staff of communications for North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger.

Pat Ryan, welcome to On Point.

PAT RYAN: Hello, Meghna. Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. First and foremost, let's just state the obvious, that it's not that unusual for North Carolina to have a Democratic governor, right? I think Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the governors in the past couple of decades have been Democrats there, right?

HARRISON: That's right. In the last 30 years, North Carolina has had one Republican governor. And of course, in that same 30 year period, North Carolina has voted for a Democrat for president just once. Barack Obama in 2008.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so it's focusing then on the gubernatorial races though, then why is it that the Robinson-Stein race is so interesting if it's not entirely unexpected that Robinson lost?

HARRISON: So I think going into this race, I think if Republicans had, it would have been running a candidate who was just a generic Republican with no baggage and no controversy, I think Democrats still might have been favored in this race, just because of the past history that we talked about.

But after the CNN report in September about the things he'd written on the message board of the pornographic website that just devastated his campaign, and the damage started to extend to other Republican candidates as well. And that was something I don't think people had anticipated as much.

And so he lost this race, you mentioned earlier, by 15 percentage points. That was the biggest defeat in a North Carolina governor's race since 1980, I believe.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, wow. Pat, let me turn to you because, obviously, you are a Republican communications strategist as well. Was the issue Robinson?

In and of himself, or the direction that the North Carolina Republican Party has headed towards with which Robinson may be an indicator of?

RYAN: I think you can find the answer in the election results there. The takeaway for me is that the fairly generic, boring Republican candidates who did not run high profile races, they all won, and most of them won by a margin bigger than the Trump margin in North Carolina.

Robinson, by contrast, just a more controversial figure, and I think you saw the results of his past statements coming back to bite him, the tens of millions of dollars that were spent just informing voters of those past statements. Robinson sort of was a unique figure in that he lost by a very wide margin in North Carolina when normally statewide races are quite close.

CHAKRABARTI: okay. So given, let's talk about the messaging that came from the Democrats. And Steve, I'm going to turn this to you. But first of all, here's an example, Josh Stein, now governor elect of North Carolina ran several ads that were nothing more than compilations of some of Robinson's controversial statements.

That's all they were. Here's a clip from an ad that Stein's team ran with quotes from Robinson on abortion.

(CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENT)

ROBINSON, MONTAGE: For me, there is no compromise on abortion. It makes no difference to me why or how that child ended up in that womb.

The abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers.

It's about killing the child because you weren't responsible enough to keep your skirt down.

It's not your body anymore.

CHAKRABARTI: Again, that's an ad from the Stein campaign during the governor's race in North Carolina. Steve, I'm wondering, do you think that there was a lot of money also spent to campaign against Robinson?

Or given how ultra controversial he was in the statements that you just heard, did that actually make it easier for Democrats to decide where to spend their money in 2024?

HARRISON: Democrats continued to pound Mark Robinson with negative ads right up until the end. They did not let up.

They shifted some money to other races, to down ballot races, but they kept attacking him again and again, the clip you played of the abortion ad, the keeping your skirt down. I think that was particularly devastating. The Stein campaign had a huge buffet of options to attack Mark Robinson with. In the Republican primary, one of the challenges focused on comments Robinson made about the Holocaust. There was also contrary comments about the LGBTQ Community. The Stein campaign focused on abortion. That quote in particular about the skirt. I think it was particularly devastating.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Pat Ryan, though, do you, what do you think about the fact, we're going to talk about this more in just a few minutes, but if someone as controversial as Mark Robinson was able to secure the Republican nomination in North Carolina, again, I'm just, I'm trying to dig deeper than was this one faulty candidate, because voters did actually put him onto the ballot for the general.

What does that tell you?

RYAN: Sure. It tells me that candidates that are not of the traditional mold, that aren't gray, patrician bespectacled figures, they do well, especially in Republican primaries. Mark Robinson is a former factory worker. He's a Black working-class voter, and that's certainly not anywhere close to what Republican candidates were 20 or 30 years ago, and it certainly, I think, appeals to a large subset of voters, Republican and Democrat, who probably look for something different in their politicians these days.

Mark Robinson, I think won the primary with 65% of the vote, including against a candidate who put in several million of his own dollars. In my opinion, Robinson was always going to win that primary regardless of what party leaders did or said, regardless of what concerns may have been out there.

Robinson, before all of these previous statements were aired with many millions of dollars behind them. Robinson was a fairly compelling figure in Republican primary voter circles.

CHAKRABARTI: And compelling because of his, like you said, his background as a Black working class North Carolinian.

RYAN: His background and being plain spoken, part of being plain spoken, I think, involves saying things that are rather controversial, perhaps not extremely controversial. I see, I think you see a similar brand in Donald Trump, right? He says things that cause some people to raise their eyebrows, and that is indicative of a separation from the standard, buttoned up politician, and that I think appeals to a lot of people.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today we are taking a look at election outcomes in North Carolina. Because just like many other states and counties across this country, Election 2024 showed that voters and how they think and behave should never be taken for granted by either the major parties.

So here is the voice of some voters during early voting in North Carolina. They're in Charlotte, and the Washington Examiner asked Republican voters coming out of the polls how they felt about Mark Robinson, and here's what some of them said.

(VOTER MONTAGE)

VOTER #1: I'm a moderate. For me, some of Mark's stances are a little extreme. There is a concern there.

VOTER #2: I voted for Josh Stein.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Why'd you split your ticket there?

VOTER #2: Because my son in law told me he was a moderate.

VOTER #3: That was tough, but I went straight ticket. Mark Robinson has got his hand on his own. Yeah. Some people are going to have a hard time pulling the lever for Robinson.

CHAKRABARTI: ... Those were the voices of some voters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now as you heard me in the previous segment, I really want to dig in more into what Robinson's nomination in the North Carolina primaries meant for the GOP in North Carolina as a whole, because all the way back in January, during the primaries, some North Carolina Republicans did indeed express a great deal of skepticism about Robinson's viability as a general election candidate.

So here's attorney Bill Graham. He ran against Mark Robinson in the primaries, lost, and in an interview with WFAE, he criticized Robinson's inflammatory and anti Semitic statements.

BILL GRAHAM: If this guy is nominated by the Republican Party, I will guarantee a loss. And that Josh Stein will be the governor for the next four years.

This is the kind of thing you'd hear from someone who's running the country of Iran.

CHAKRABARTI: That's attorney Bill Graham on WFAE. And Steve Harrison is the politics reporter there, WFAE in Charlotte. Steve, can you give me your take on how the primaries unfolded in North Carolina? Because I heard Pat clearly earlier talk about Robinson's plainspokenness, you could call it in the Donald Trump mode.

But as we've seen in other places, Trump's particular brand of political speech, it often doesn't actually work out well for other candidates who are simply not Donald Trump.

HARRISON: Yeah. I think that's right. Only Trump can be Trump. I think this race, that the Republican primary, I was thinking about this, June 2023, the state Republican party held its convention in Greensboro and Donald Trump was the speaker, and he gave this kind of coy statement that Mark, I'm probably going to endorse you.

I haven't yet, but I will in the future. And I think at that point, once he said that, the race was probably over, it would have taken kind of a Herculean effort by other state Republicans to rally around another candidate. Our U.S. Senator Tom Tillis did support Bill Graham, but most of the other top Republicans did line up behind Robinson.

Perhaps out of enthusiasm, perhaps a bit out of fear or resignation, but that key moment in Greensboro, I think, probably ended the primary.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, Pat Ryan, let me ask you this. We've heard this story before in other states, in other races. But, if Donald Trump can come in and tease, and just tease an endorsement.

Say, I might throw my hat in, or my weight behind you, Mark Robinson, and that melts away any meaningful opposition to someone who is as controversial as Mark Robinson, who, as we heard Graham say earlier, it's like, he doesn't even think he'd even have a chance to win in the general. Does that show, let me just put it this way, a spinelessness in the state GOP in North Carolina to stand up for candidates that could actually win in a general election, despite whatever Donald Trump says?

RYAN: Yeah. Look, I think there are two reasons. First of all, Donald Trump's endorsement may well be the only endorsement that actually has meaningful impacts on elections. So certainly, his support for Mark Robinson matters, but I think you have to ask yourself, there are two different reasons that Trump or anybody else may endorse someone.

One is because that person is going to win anyway, and so I might as well be aligned with him at the beginning. And the other is because there's actually a bonafide close race here, and you want to choose the candidate who is perceived as having the better chance of winning. In the Robinson case, I think it's certainly the former, even before the Trump endorsement, I think most people in this state expected Mark Robinson to be the nominee, regardless of who ran against him and regardless of who endorsed him.

So I don't think you can call it spinelessness or anything like that. I think it's a recognition of the reality of what voters were very likely to do in that primary election.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so then let me ask you, if most people did expect Robinson to become the GOP nominee, what does that say about Republican primary voters in the state of North Carolina?

Because I heard, I totally hear you when you say that his background as a Black working class North Carolinian was the kind of against the grain story that a lot of people are finding great resonance with, but everyone in North Carolina also knew at the time that it came with the anti Semitism, the sexism, the advocating, at least around the edges, for political violence.

So primary voters were okay with that?

RYAN: I think both Republican and Democratic primary voters are generally more to the right or to the left than the rest of the electorate. That's just the nature of primaries. I don't, of course, I can't speak for every primary voter here, but I don't know that folks viewed Robinson as anti-Semitic or sexist or what have you.

I think that they viewed him as rather controversial and saying things that raised eyebrows, but that's not unique to American politics anymore.

CHAKRABARTI: Which folks are you talking about here?

RYAN: Primary voters who pulled the lever for Mark Robinson.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Steve, what do you think about that?

HARRISON: It is interesting how voters were able to wave off a lot of the past statements.

There were, that Bill Graham ad that you played earlier, or the quote where he talked about someone coming from the president of Iran. Mark Robinson had made a Facebook post about the Holocaust in which he put 6 million in quotes. And that's a tough one. That was a tough one to, he never really tried to explain it.

It's a tough one to rationalize. But I think one of the other things at play here was that at the time of the primary, Republicans thought they would be running against Joe Biden. And I think they thought they were going to win pretty handily, they beat Kamala Harris by three.

I think maybe they thought they might've beaten President Biden by five or six. And I think some people thought, look, We will win this race so comfortably that we can bring a damaged Mark Robinson or not a great candidate across the finish line with us. I also think there are some degrees here.

So I think that a candidate who, I use the word rather, is rather controversial is somebody who can be palatable and that may even be a benefit to that candidate in some races. But I think that the farther along the spectrum of controversy, if you will, you go, the harder it is to win and be pulled across the finish line.

So that CNN story, I think to me, was the straw that broke the camel's back in which a lot of people, including a lot of donors, said, okay, I maybe could have handled a few of these controversial things from his past. But this has gone on long enough. I can't support him anymore.

And that's really where the bottom fell out of the Robinson campaign, though. He was trailing before that.

CHAKRABARTI: So I'm gonna move away from the gubernatorial race here in just a second. But Pat, I've got to ask you, I understand that we're trying to provide analysis here about how voters have behaved, which requires a little bit of distance.

But I also hear you trying to dance around the fact that this guy was gross. Let's just be honest. For someone who says, that like a woman's body simply does not belong to her, no matter what you think about abortion, that a woman's body does not belong to her. And then, as revealed by CNN, is on some pornographic websites calling himself a Black Nazi.

This isn't just, oh, he's maybe on the extremes. He was really out there.

RYAN: Yeah, so I think there's a difference in awareness here, there's no question that the statements about abortion, the statements on that website, like those are extreme statements that I think most people who saw said that's too much for me.

I can't get behind that. But before, remember, before there was a multimillion-dollar gubernatorial race. He wasn't going around saying those abortion statements at every rally he went to, it wasn't part of his stump speech. I think it was a video that was unearthed by just good campaign work on the Stein side, and then replayed to every voter in North Carolina over and over again, which is what you're supposed to do in a campaign, right?

And so I think once the level of awareness of the degree of some of those past statements just became ingrained in voters' minds. That's when you saw things really start to collapse.

CHAKRABARTI: So one more question, because again, the individual candidate aside, Pat, do you think that this indicates, that are the primary voters, Republican primary voters in North Carolina, are they out of step with sort of Republican voters overall in North Carolina?

RYAN: I don't know that you can necessarily draw that conclusion. You look at some of the other primary, Republican primary winners. The state treasurer candidate went on to win. The state auditor candidate went on to win. Now you can make the argument that those candidates are just unknown to most voters, and they just pulled a lever.

Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. But I don't think you can draw a universal conclusion about Republican primary voters in North Carolina based on the just really unfortunate result of this gubernatorial election in the minds of Republicans.

CHAKRABARTI: Got it. So Steve, let's use that to talk more about those down ballot races, more of them.

Because as we started the show, what was really interesting to us is we'll talk about the judicial wins for the GOP in just a minute, but it seemed as if Democrats did fairly well, not just the governor's race, but lieutenant governor's race, attorney general, superintendent of schools. Can you talk about some of those races?

HARRISON: Yeah, sure. So like I said earlier in the governor's I think if Republicans had nominated just a generic candidate. Josh Stein still might have won that race. He was the attorney general for eight years. In North Carolina, we like to say that AG stands for aspiring governor. It's a great launching point for that job.

And there's a history of Democrats winning that race. So I think Democrats might've won this race regardless. The attorney general's race, I think Democrats might've, Jeff Jackson, the Congressman, he's the TikTok star. I think he is a very compelling candidate. He may have won regardless.

But if you start going farther down the list, the Lieutenant Governor's race. It was such a large ballot drop off between President Trump and the Republican for Lieutenant Governor. I think you can make a good case that Mark Robinson cost the Republicans that race. Secretary of State, they might have pulled off the upset there, without Mark Robinson.

And then there was the final, the fifth Democratic win in our council of state races, which was for superintendent of public instruction. That was another unforced error on the Republican side because they in the primary picked a candidate who had on social media called for the execution of Barack Obama, that was another one that was just too far for voters.

And so you had a series of unforced errors or forced errors that gave Democrats, I think, some real strength in these races.

CHAKRABARTI: Did those same Democrats outperform Kamala Harris in North Carolina or no?

HARRISON: I think the case was mostly that the Republican candidates fell way behind Donald Trump.

That was the main issue. Not all of them, but I think that was the biggest problem for Republicans, was just ballot drop off.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, and I would argue that these other offices that we're talking about, Attorney General, Superintendent of Public Instruction, these are offices that actually have an on the ground impact.

In states, right? So let's just look at education for another second here. The winner of that race, Steve, what kind of impact could they have on schooling in North Carolina?

HARRISON: Public education is a huge issue in North Carolina right now, with the Republican legislature trying to expand opportunity scholarships.

The idea that your tax money stays with you and you can use that for a private school. That is a big push on the Republican side. And yeah, that is a very, like you said, Meghna, very important job. And there are even some Republicans lamenting today that candidates matter, they say it in code, we did not have a particularly good candidate in that race.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Pat, then let's look at the judiciary here for a second too, because it looks like Republicans actually won some very important court races or judicial races in North Carolina.

RYAN: Sure, Republicans have done well in judicial races in North Carolina for the past four years. I don't believe, with perhaps this year's Supreme Court race accepted, I don't believe Republicans have lost a statewide judicial race since 2018.

You put, folks going to sign a lot of reasons for that. It's pretty clear. Perhaps a reaction to the general Republican brand advantage as on being law and order candidates. These races are usually not very well funded. There's usually not a lot of individual candidate identification that voters can go into the ballot and say oh, yeah, I remember so and so, it's I think it's probably a lot of, I'm voting for the Republican judge because I think Republicans are better on law and order. Or some other reason. So all of that, you know, plays in Republicans favor, the state Supreme Court race this year.

There are seven justices on the Supreme Court. There was one up for election, one seat up for election this year. That is, I think right now, just a few dozen votes separate the Republican and the Democratic candidate. So it may well be that Democrats are able to win that seat or maybe that Republicans end up winning it, after a few weeks of recounting and going back and forth.

But the trend may end this year.

CHAKRABARTI: So Steve, let's pick up on that, because the Democratic candidate for that state Supreme Court seat Allison Riggs, let's just listen to a quick ad that she made, again, focusing on abortion as a major touch point of her campaign. And here it is.

ALLISON RIGGS: I believe our courts are where rights and freedom should be protected.

It's what I did defending voting rights before Supreme Court, and what I do every day as a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. So when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the stakes here got even higher. I believe in a woman's right to choose. As your justice, I will always fight to protect your rights and freedoms.

CHAKRABARTI: So Steve, what is the status of that race? I don't know if you have more information on the Riggs campaign or that Supreme Court race. Sure.

HARRISON: It's pretty remarkable, actually. More than five and a half million people voted in that race. Right now, Allison Riggs is ahead by 24 votes. We've still got a few more ballots to count today and then of course there'll be challenges from both sides, but 24 out of five and a half million.

Pretty remarkable.

CHAKRABARTI: I keep getting astonished about how close some of these are.

So that's obviously going to be a recount case.

HARRISON: Yes. There'll be a recount. And then the biggest fight will be over both sides, challenging which provisional ballots counted and which didn't, these are ballots when people go to the polls, and they don't have photo ID, or they go to the wrong polling place.

But I'll just go back to that ad. I think it's very interesting. Pat had just said earlier that Republicans have had tremendous success in statewide judicial races in North Carolina, and leading into this race, Alison Riggs said she was going to run a different race. She was going to lean in heavily to the abortion issue.

A lot of Democrats who have lost. You've run traditional judicial races and not really gone deep on the issues. She decided to do that. And it's paid off. She was able to separate herself from the rest of the field.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: In a moment, we're going to hear from the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.

But before that, Steve, let me ask you, can you quickly talk to us about this supermajority question in the North Carolina legislature? Because that actually seemed quite important to me if Democrats do indeed succeed in breaking it.

HARRISON: Yeah. It looks like they have broken it in the State house.

The Republicans kept their supermajority in the state Senate, but what that means is when Republicans have had a supermajority and their caucus stays together, they are able to override vetoes from the governor. That's currently democratic governor Roy Cooper. They have overridden his vetoes time and time again.

Now with a new Democratic governor coming in, Josh Stein, if the Democrats stay together, then his power, his ability to influence state government is multiplied exponentially because he can block, he can block what Democrats would consider extreme legislation.

CHAKRABARTI: Do you think that the Republicans who've been in the state legislature with that super majority in comparison to what the North Carolina GOP was say 15 years ago, are they more extreme or not?

HARRISON: I think North Carolina, and this is a this depends on which side of the fence you're on. I think North Carolina Republicans ever since HB2, remember the bathroom bill from eight years ago, I think they have taken an approach of not wanting to get out in front of a lot of social issues.

They tend to be a little more followers rather than leaders after HB2. Now, many Democrats are going to feel that the legislation they have put forward is still too extreme. A 12 week abortion ban, the funding of the expansion of opportunity scholarships where people can keep their money and deliver it to private schools would be another example.

But they have, I believe, I think it's fair to say, ever since HB2, taken a slightly more cautious approach. Okay, Steve, so hang on here for just a second because Anderson Clayton joins us now. Anderson is chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party and joins us from Roxborough. Anderson, welcome to On Point.

ANDERSON CLAYTON: Hey, thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so how do you read this sort of interesting Trump at the presidential level and a more mixed set of results at the state level in North Carolina? What does that mean for North Carolina Democrats?

CLAYTON: I think it means that we had incredible candidates that ran really successful campaigns this year and it means we've got a bench to continue to run them statewide and that it's no different from North Carolina's past at being a state that typically does elect Democrats at a statewide level and Republicans at a federal level.

So that we are inching closer and closer. We were the second battleground state to swing to the right the least this year. We were one of the least invested in battleground states from the presidential campaign. As people remember, we were one of the last states to get added into the category. It used to be we were an expansion state and not a battleground state way back when.

I remember that, and I desperately think that we have the opportunity to continue to make sense of that. But I also think that voters in North Carolina decided that Republicans had taken it too far. And what my good friend there, Steve Harrison, I keep hearing opportunity scholarships from you, and I'm like, they're private school vouchers, in any sense.

And the word opportunity scholarships is something that Republicans made up as a propaganda point in our state to be able to say that they weren't going to take money away from public schools and put them into the hands of people that could already afford to go to those private schools to begin with, if they wanted to.

And so I think that the number one economic driver in all of our communities, especially rural communities right now, Person County, where I'm from, being one of those places that these scholarships are taking money actually out of our county, not keeping it with the taxpayer. As to what was said earlier, I just, I inherently disagree with that.

I needed to make that point clear.

CHAKRABARTI: Steve, I'm gonna let you just respond to that really quickly.

HARRISON: Oh, no, Anderson's right. ...  I use the lingo Opportunity Scholarship, which is their branding, but yes, it is taking money that you can carry with you and send it to a private school if you're wealthy or not wealthy.

And but yeah, that was, that's what it is.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I just wanted to say that we frequently find ourselves in this conundrum, Anderson, if I can say, because we formally actually have to call bills what they're called by in their titles in the legislation. And I totally take your point that the titles themselves are used for political purposes.

CLAYTON: No, I feel you. I just wanted for my listeners out there to understand exactly what we were talking about here, because I think that folks deserve to know what's the layman's terms of all this of, not what people try to spruce it up to be.

CHAKRABARTI: Got it. So let me ask you the same set of questions, but through the Democratic lens that I asked Pat, and that is about the direction of the party for the Democrats themselves in North Carolina.

Because you heard me ask Pat Ryan a little earlier, does this mean that like Republican voters in North Carolina have actually gotten much more to the right, but maybe not quite Mark Robinson right? Simply because he's not Donald Trump. I have that same question for you regarding Democrats in North Carolina.

And here's why. Last week, we heard from a voter in the Midwest who said, I'm a Democrat, but I am not. These are her words. So sorry, California listeners. But this Midwestern voter said, I am not a crazy California Democrat. I'm a Midwestern Democrat. And so she wasn't enthusiastic about Kamala Harris. We can read into that a lot of things, but I'm wondering how that falls on your ears.

And putting Democratic candidates up for election in North Carolina.

CLAYTON: I think that it is, I don't think after this election cycle, we should be trying to pinpoint people into boxes. And so I'm not going to try to paint Republican primary voters in any direction. I just think that everybody is always going to be somebody worth talking to.

And to the point that was made earlier, people didn't always know the history of Mark Robinson when he was a lieutenant governor, at least broadly across the state. Inside Republican circles, apparently they knew his entire background, which I think it should maybe make not question the Republican primary voters.

It should make people question the Republican party because apparently all of them did know Mark Robinson's dirty laundry. The rest of the state did not. And once the rest of the state figured out what the Republican party had put up, they were pretty disenchanted with it. And I think that is where we're finding that aspect of it.

But I don't think that you can blame an entire swath of voters for something that they didn't really have the education on. And I think throughout the last year, we gave them a great education, and a lot of what we're seeing right now at the national level was disinformation. And I think if Kamala Harris had won an election last Tuesday, people would probably be thanking her and praising her rather than trying to pinpoint what exactly about the Democratic message went wrong.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, that's true. But she didn't, right? So that's why I have to ask you this, because I think this is a really important question that Democrats at all levels are wrestling with right now. And I think it's even much more of an issue, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, at the state level, right?

Because that's where the rubber meets the road. What would you say are the core values of the North Carolina Democratic Party.

CLAYTON: Freedom, fairness, and opportunity. Hard work is attached to every single one of those. And I think that what you're going to find is a party that's always been very representative of the people across the state.

40 years ago, Democrats like Harry Sanford and Jim Hunt, who are former Democratic governors, created public education in North Carolina and drove it to being what it is today. Because they knew that everybody across North Carolina, regardless of your geographical zip code. Or whether or not you were voting for them and electing them into office, deserve the opportunity to have a better life for themselves.

And that's why you find people right now, 59% of our state still lives in a rural area because we created geographical hubs that were able to have a community college system and a university system that allowed people to grow and live where they lived. And I'm like, grow up and live where they live currently.

And I think that's really important. When you look at the economic opportunities that Democrats have created historically in the state. And so people can attach our party to good economic opportunity, but also the reality of that, we want to see access to health care for everyone. Pat Ryan's good old boss is the reason why for 10 years in North Carolina, people have been denied Medicaid expansion in the state.

Democrats, the reason why last year 600,000 people got access to health care for the first time. And so I'm like, I think that Democrats have run on our values in North Carolina and that we don't have to step away from them. But the national level has got to be a place where we get back into getting people more educated about what's happening, because disinformation killed us this election cycle.

CHAKRABARTI: So do you think that, so disinformation is definitely an issue and it's going to be an issue with us for time immemorial, unfortunately. But do you think that the National Party, the National Democratic Party, did a good enough job in doing that education that you're talking about, that you feel is needed?

CLAYTON: I think that they tried as much as they possibly could. But I also think that we saw a worldwide shift to the right this year, not just in the United States, but everywhere. And people don't have to run from our values. That is what I want to get across through this, to be honest with you. Because I think that a lot of the conversation right now is that we don't have to continue going in the direction that we are.

And I'm like, no, we do, but we have to be able to talk to everybody about it. And we don't need to have a perception about any voter right now. And that's what we said this year in North Carolina. We said everybody was somebody worth talking to, and we went out in rural communities and suburban communities and urban communities and did that.

All of our candidates, they showed up across the state this year, and they made a concerted effort to help win those statewide elections that you saw. But also, we broke a super majority. Because of people like Beth Helfrich and Brian Kahn, but we also kept an R plus two district out of Buncombe County with Lindsey Prather.

And that is one of the other reasons why we broke that Republican supermajority, and people aren't talking about that one enough, to be real with you.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So Steve, I want to merge what Anderson was saying with how folks at the national level have looked at North Carolina, because she was right about North Carolina being a relatively recent addition to the swing state category, which is when part of the reason for that is, I think the national Democrats for a long time, maybe they continue to do so, are still believing in the demographics is destiny.

Belief in how North Carolina might trend in the future, with the hope that they would trend blue, is what the Democrats at the national level want. Is that accurate? In North Carolina?

HARRISON: I think there are signs from this election that I think that actually could be starting to happen. Anderson talked about a little bit earlier.

But if you look at all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, I think only six states in D.C. had a smaller shift to the right. North Carolina, like we just didn't move that much. Donald Trump won it by a little over three points and he won it by about 1.3 points last year. So the state is now much closer to the national mean to the national mood than it has been, I think in a long time.

And I do think for Democrats that sets them up well. I think there's reason for optimism for 2026, for 2028 that at least in this election, North Carolina became much more aligned with the rest of the country.

CHAKRABARTI: Really? Because here's why. Here's my why. I'm a little bit questioning of that, Steve, not questioning your reporting, but I'm just thinking of, some of the big takeaways nationally where that Democrats reduced their share of Latino voters.

They reduced their share, a little bit amongst Black male voters, looking at young men, millennial and Gen Y young men having moved towards the right. I think the national narrative is that demographics is not destiny. Why would North Carolina be any different?

HARRISON: It's a good question. I think maybe one explanation is that our electorate is a bit inelastic. We, maybe we just do not move that much. But I think the Harris campaign did have success. In the seven states where it competed. Not enough. They lost all seven. But the swing in those seven states was much less than it was in the rest of the country.

I think only Wisconsin, Wisconsin and North Carolina stayed as close, the closest to the Biden 2020 result. So it is a good question about, because in North Carolina, Black voters are about 20 percent of the voting pool. If Black males move away from the Democratic Party, that is a real problem for Democrats.

But I do think that there is reason for optimism going into the next midterm.

CHAKRABARTI: Anderson, do you want to give us your thought on that?

CLAYTON: I don't buy demographics or destiny. I think that people right now are going through a political realignment. And like I said, it's talking to people about the things that matter to them the most.

And the one thing that I'll give credit to that I could think is that the messaging this year really did come from the national level down. And what you're going to see from our party, I do believe, over the next decade, is messaging coming from the bottom up, because we are focusing on the grassroots, at least here in the South, and at least here in North Carolina.

CHAKRABARTI: Anderson, tell me more about what you just said, that this year you believe the messaging came from the top down. Specifically, what do you mean?

CLAYTON: I think that people kept asking me like this entire last year, what's the messaging in North Carolina, what's the message in North Carolina. And I'd ask them, where are you sitting in it?

And I believe that we have got to regionalize. We've got to localize our messaging because people want to know how you're going to solve their individual problems. And a lot of what we didn't do this year is paint the picture about, Democrats are the opportunity party. And I, one of my best example is when Joe Biden came to North Carolina.

And he talked about the money that was being given to Wolfspeed. And I think that one of the best ways that we could have really talked about that, the storyline that should have been there is that, Wolfspeed was created by three guys that graduated from NC state, I guess the Wolfpack.

That's why it's called Wolfspeed now. And this administration, the money that came into communities, we reinvested back into the people of these states, and in these communities that have created jobs and opportunities, and we're going to continue to do it. I saw something the other day about how many millions of small businesses have been created right now under this administration.

And I'm like, that's believing in people. And that's what we did. And I think that we've got to do a better job at explaining that, at giving people the opportunity to understand that and saying, we do fight for you. We fight for your ability to have opportunity wherever you live. And that's exactly the message that down ballot Democrats gave this year in North Carolina.

But I really do think that disinformation stopped that from reaching people at the top of the ticket. And I know I heard a lot of it sitting outside of voting booths and places and knocking on doors this year, what people were hearing from information silos that they were in. And we've got to get into those information silos these upcoming years too.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And by the way, Wolfspeed, if I'm understanding this correctly, is a Silicon Carbide Tech Company based in Durham.

CLAYTON: They manufacture chips to go in your phone and your car and anything else. If you don't know what a chip is, that is why the Chips Act was so important this upcoming year.

So make sure that you Google it.