Episode 247: Election 2024 Results

In today’s episode we’ll be reflecting on results from 2024 state election results and examining how those results will likely impact local public schools in the near future. We’re joined by some education and political science experts to take a deep dive into what to anticipate as new terms begin next year.

Guests:
Dr. Chris Cooper, Western Carolina University Political Science Professor
Liz Schlemmer, WUNC K-12 Education Reporter
Bettina Umstead, Durham Public Schools Board of Education Member

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome to Education Matters, presented by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Ann Wolf. In today's episode, we'll be reflecting on results from the 2024 state election and examining how those results will likely impact local public schools in the near future. We're joined by some education and political science experts to take a deep dive into what to anticipate as new terms begin next year. Today we are so pleased to be joined by Dr. Chris Cooper, Professor of Political Science at Western Carolina University, Liz Schlummer, a K-12 education reporter at WUNC, and Bettina Umstead, a board member and the Durham Public Schools Board of Education. Chris, we're going to get right to it. Last time we asked you to predict what the elections might look like and what we were expecting. And today we'd love to ask you how do you describe the outcomes of the election for North Carolina?

SPEAKER_04 1:10

Purple. Right. I mean, I think that's really what we're seeing. We're seeing, um, of course, the presidential level, Donald Trump won as Republicans have done every year since 2008. And before then, it was 1976 before a Democrat had won. But yet that doesn't mean that we were a red state by any stretch of the imagination, right? The Democrats won the only competitive congressional race in the state. They won really five of the 10 council of state races, including the top seats. And they were able to claw back, granted, by just one seat, but still claw back the supermajority. And it looks like probably most likely by about 630 votes, maybe kept the state Supreme Court justice race. So it wasn't a perfect day for either um, for either party. I think it was um it was a very purple outcome for a very purple state.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Well, thank you. And I know we've been getting some questions and just some curiosities about some of the races you mentioned. Can you explain what a provisional ballot is and then also what this recounting process is and what kind of triggers that into happening?

SPEAKER_04 2:13

So, yeah, the um these are separate processes, right? And if folks are confused, I get why, right? It's a confusing process and it seems to change every year. But the way it works is that like on election night, when people are quote, calling races, there's nothing official there, right? I mean, this is usually a journalist or somebody in the media who's decided that they are gonna, they've seen enough, they're gonna call a race. Well, of course, that has no real impact on the law or what actually occurred that day. And so the process of county canvas is when that's with two S's at the end, is when every one of the boards of elections go through and they say, Hey, these are the real final tallies. Part of that is counting provisional ballots. So a provisional ballot might be if I show up and vote and say, Hey, I'd like to vote in this um uh in this precinct, and they say, We don't have you living here, we have you living in this other precinct. And I say, No, no, no, I promise I live here. They might say, Okay, we're gonna let you cast a provisional ballot, and then you've got to come back later and prove that you really do live in this particular precinct. Or perhaps it might be a voter ID issue, which we had for the first time in a general election in North Ghana's history, right? So those are provisional ballots. The other thing we are waiting on, and one of the reasons these results changed a little, is that even though uh mail-in ballots had to be accepted by five o'clock on election night or 7:30, excuse me, on election night, uh, there's a federal law that applies to Uacava voters, which are folks who are military and stationed overseas, and by federal law, not North Carolina law, federal law, they get up to three days to return those ballots. So you've got the vast majority of your ballots in, and then a few that you still have to go back and count. So that is the county canvas and this provisional process. Then we have the recount process. So we're having recounts right now, I believe it's six races, um, five in the General Assembly, one in the state supreme court. There may be some other county ones that I'm unaware of, um, but that's the lion's share of them. So this is when they do just like it sounds. It's a recount. And for a statewide election, like state Supreme Court, excuse me, it the rule is if it is within 10,000 votes or one half of 1% of the ballots cast. And for a race that had five and a half million ballots cast, decided by currently 646, I believe it is, votes, that meets both standards. So you're going to get this recount process. This is totally normal. This doesn't mean that anything's wrong. It's not wrong to call for a recount. Um, this is part of the process, not an addendum to it.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Well, thank you. And all goes back to just how close some of these races are and a great reminder that each and every vote really does count when you look at how how close some of these have been. Um, Liz, I'd love to turn to you. You cover education all the time, but I know that this election also has had some interesting potential impacts on education. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you're expecting to see post-election, particularly in the long session, but more broadly too.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah, I mean, I think the long session uh being a budget session is going to be very much about teacher pay as a major issue. Um, you know, also child care funding, I expect to come up again for early childhood education. Uh, a bill that was uh passed today would extend um child care stabilization grants, but just for another quarter. And advocates are asking for $100 million to really chop up the child care industry. So that's going to be a major issue. Um, and who knows, we might see any um adjustments to opportunity scholarships as well. Um, and you know, and looking broadly at the election, so we've got Democrat Mo Green, um, who won the state superintendent seat. Um, that was, you know, it was a it was a big headline race um watching Michelle Morrow and Mo Green as they stepped out in the last few months and had a lot of debates. Um, and he is seeing this um, maybe not, uh, as a strong referendum when he was speaking. He was saying, you know, he understands it's still very much a purple state, but that he feels that um supporters of public education came out uh to support him. And along with that, we're gonna see on the State Board of Education, you know, we're gonna have a Democratic governor making any new appointments. Um, we're gonna have um Lieutenant Governor Hunt also on that board. Um so you're gonna see uh a lot of uh democratic influence at the state board level.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Well, thank you. And but Tina, turning to you really at the local level, and you've been a school board member for some time. So you've been through elections and different results. What are you anticipating how this will impact your district, but also other districts across the state?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Really grateful that um uh Superintendent Alec Moe Green was elected. He has experience in public schools, and I think he has a clear vision on what we need. I've been really appreciate listening to him as he's traveled across the state talking about that. And so, you know, while there's uh on the federal level, I have a lot of concerns. I think I feel excitement around what the state can do and what laws can be put into place to help protect public school education. Um, so more funding, like uh Liz mentioned, and this hopefully in the budget year. Um, I hope to think about how do we protect the rights of our students, all of that in North Carolina. So in the breaking of the supermajority also feels like there's an opportunity for public school champions to really fight for what we think is right.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Thank you. And I wanted to actually go back to that supermajority conversation a little bit, Chris. Can you just explain for us kind of what that means and how rare or not rare it is to have a supermajority?

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah, absolutely. So the the key to the super, look, the Democrats will just say in the front end, they never thought they were going to win the majority in the North Ghana General Assembly. I don't think any Democrat would say that was a realistic goal, right? So the goal is to break the so-called supermajority. And what that means is that if the party has supermajority control, the Republican Party in this case, they're able to pass a bill. And then if a governor, a Democratic governor in this case, will say Roy Cooper vetoes that bill, the Republicans can then override that bill without getting a single Democrat on their team, right? So it's a way to basically mean that if they have Republicans have supermajority control, they can, within reason, pass kind of whatever they want to, and they never have to reach across the aisle a single time for a single vote. And so it looks like the Democrats probably broke that supermajority, maybe by just as I'm giving all these uh sort of wiggle words because we still do have recount to go, but it looks like probably one seat. And so what that means is Josh Stein's veto will be able to be sustained, and the Democrats will be able to play defense as long as they can keep everybody on their party together. So Josh Stein's victory was important and critical and key, right? If you're Democrat in a good way, Republican in a bad way, but it really needs to be understood in tandem with breaking that supermajority because that's the combination of those two is where the power lies.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Well, thank you. And Liz, do you anticipate that loss of the supermajority affecting some of the issues you mentioned?

SPEAKER_03 9:35

I mean potentially it stops um some bills. Like we've seen a lot of controversial bills coming up in the past with new education policy, um, and things that could be, you know, maybe more extreme might get stopped. Now, if we're talking about teacher pay or we're talking about vouchers, um, maybe not as much as you would think. You know, vouchers were a campaign issue in some of these state representative races. Um, but the bill that you know just became launched uh this week, that builds in funding that's in the base budget. And so when you're looking at future budgets, you know, usually lawmakers are playing with what's the surplus over the prior year. And so that money for voucher funding is already going to be built into the base. Um there's there isn't anything new that um could be uh vetoed and then overridden, you know, because of a change in in the supermajority. So, you know, some effects, but maybe not as much as you might think.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Thank you. And Bettina, with all of this in mind, are there some specific areas where you hope to see initiatives, guidance, support, policy, you know, that would really support Durham public schools and other districts across the state?

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Absolutely. I mean, I think the first one is investment in use educators' salaries. So I think that goes from teachers who are in the classroom to also the folks that are supporting the classroom. So our bus drivers, custodial staff, um, mental health support, all of that that goes into supporting what happens inside the classroom every day. I think districts across the state as well as in Durham would love to have additional support at the state level. I think we also used a lot of our federal COVID relief funding to do additional tutoring support, mental health support, social workers and counselors. And could we have some more additional support on the statewide level to support some of those positions? We saw there was a great positive impact with our students. We want to keep continuing that impact. And so those are some of the things that we're thinking about on a local level and hope to see those priorities put into place. I really think it could help support not just Durham, but also, again, districts across the state, which impacts the public school students all across our state. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

We'll continue this conversation after the break. Liz Schlummer, the K-12 Education Reporter at WUNC, and Bettina Umstead, who is a board member of the Durham Public Schools Board of Education. Welcome and thank you for joining us. I'd love to ask both Chris and Liz your thoughts about people working together, because some of what we hear about is well, this is just a little nod towards people working together, maybe more collaboration. Are there some of these issues that have been pointed out by Liz and Bettina? Um, you know, what does that look like? And so, Chris, I'll give you a chance, but you always remind us just how purple we are.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

You know, I think in the vast majority of bills, we're probably not going to see a lot of collaboration. I think we need to sort of know that going in. I mean, the the bipartisan victories are going to be few and far between, but few and far between can still be incredibly important. And so we can look, we got Medicaid expansion in the state of North Carolina. That was an unlikely bipartisan agreement that took years in the making, but it did happen and it wasn't easy. So I think we can look at that as perhaps a model for uh for what bipartisanship might look like in the state of North Carolina. And I think that uh sort of policy victory also reminds us just how long our time horizon needs to be. I think a real problem we sometimes have in American politics is everything is on a very quick time horizon. It's before the next election. And in North Carolina, those are just two-year cycles. But if we're going to get any sort of meaningful policy change across the aisle, it's going to take more time.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Thank you. Liz? I think if not bipartisanship, at least um moderation might be something that you could see more of, right? Is that um bills that might have uh been proposed before that might seem more extreme to Democrats aren't going to make it as far or aren't going to make it all the way to the end. So, you know, whether or not there's bipartisanship on individual bills, I think the sort of the bigger issues that you see coming up in a session um will have that moderating factor in them.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

I do want to give each of you a little bit of an opportunity to talk about the tax-funded private school vouchers, which we know were expanded even more this week with the veto override. And um I do think they impact each of your works differently. I'm gonna start with Bettina because she's in a district and a school board member that could have families taking advantage of those vouchers. Um, but I want to hear from everybody because this is a pretty big change for North Carolina, but we're also seeing it nationally. And we saw three states actually choose not to go in that direction in different ways. So, Bettina, how do you expect that to affect you and your work?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, I think it's something that we're grappling with as a district. Um, there's a funding piece of that. So corn of public schools first in C, they say approximately 23 to 24 million dollars have been put into private schools in Durham County since 2014, 2015. And I think that number varies across the state. So I just wonder if those dollars and investment have gone to our public schools, what might be different? But then there's another question. I think our public school system is always ready to welcome students at different times of the year, but we do see some students who choose a different option and then come back. And so, how do we create some stability for some of our schools who are seeing students coming in and out, as well as for students and their educational experience for students who are moving around different districts? So we're carefully watching it. We also want our enrollment to stay high. We think that's really important. And so wanting to make sure that we are showing families that we're the best option for you.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

I think some of what I'm trying to communicate in my voucher reporting is just how much money this is and how much it is not just this year, but over the next eight years. Um, and there's there's additional funding built in beyond this bill too. So it's it's adding up to like six and a half billion dollars over the next decade. And when you think about the impact on public schools, it's both direct and indirect, right? So if you see students, say in Durham public schools moving directly from their public school to a private school, yeah, that's gonna change how many students and how much state funding you get in that district. But there's also this indirect impact where the state has committed so much funding to private school vouchers that it's not going to be there to raise teacher pay across the board. Um in the Senate debate this week, um, Senator Marcus was saying this is a budget costing expense, I think was the term she used, that um they're so much committed to it at a time that um the Office of State Budget Management is uh predicting a possible shortfall because we're also seeing income taxes being cut at the same time that have already been voted on. Um so this is just it's making the pot smaller when public schools are coming with new needs in a time of inflation and wanting to see educator pay um and other resources increased.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

So, Chris, in recent polling, we had 71% of those that responded in a representative poll said that they believe investing money in public schools would improve education more than investing them in vouchers. And yet, when you look at the election and what happened that Liz just described and Betina's experiencing in Durham, it just doesn't look that way. Can you help us make sense of that?

SPEAKER_04 18:07

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is about look, when people go to vote, they've got a whole host of issues that they are concerned about. And I think if you separate out that issue into some sort of a ballot item like we don't have in North Carolina with an initiative process, yeah, you'd see a very different result, right? So just to grab a different policy area, but I think it illustrates it well. In Montana, they voted for uh, you know, Donald Trump for president, not surprisingly, right? They voted uh the Democrat John Tester out of office in the U.S. Senate. And on the same ballot, they voted to codify abortion rights in their state constitution, right? Seems like kind of counterintuitive, these would be on the same ballot, but I think that's exactly I think that explains kind of what's happening here in North Carolina, with, as you pointed out, the public opinion polls on the one hand, and then election results that seem to run counter to that on the other. People have a host of issues they're concerned about, even if they tend to support public education in exactly the way you're describing. That may not be the thing that ultimately drives their vote choice.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Well, it is going to be a very interesting next three, six, nine months, and obviously probably at least four years in North Carolina, as always. And I know we're going to want to talk to you all more. So thank you for sharing your perspectives today and just giving us a little insight on what the election means for those of us in North Carolina. After the break, this week's final word.gov slash election-results. Following the election, there will be some changes in the General Assembly. The Republican Party has controlled the North Carolina General Assembly since 2010 and has held a veto-proof supermajority since 2023. Republicans maintained a majority in both the North Carolina House and Senate, but the supermajority was broken by one seat in the House. Senator Phil Berger will remain the President pro temp of the Senate, while Representative Dustin Hall will assume leadership as House Speaker. Per our state constitution, the North Carolina General Assembly is responsible for providing funding for a free and uniform system of public schools and is responsible for allocating state funding to support instructional expenses for public education, including salaries and benefits, supplies, and transportation. Current issues in education policy that the North Carolina General Assembly is likely to address include school funding, teacher salaries, taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, student mental health, and school safety. The North Carolina General Assembly holds the power of the purse, allowing them to exercise significant power in directing state education policy through laws that shape policy and the state budget. But after losing the supermajority, Republicans will have a more challenging time advancing their priorities without compromising with the governor's office. In response, there have been efforts to make quick progress on some Republican agenda items before current terms end in January. This includes overriding Governor Cooper's veto. Of HB 10 to provide an additional $463 million to the taxpayer-funded private school voucher program and require local sheriffs to work with federal ICE agents. The day before lawmakers overrode the veto, SB 382 was introduced. The bill provides funding for Hurricane Helene relief in Western North Carolina while also reducing the authority of newly elected Democratic officials, including the governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction. In North Carolina, the state superintendent is charged with leading the Department of Public Instruction and serving as the Chief Administrative Officer of the State Board of Education. The superintendent is responsible for implementing education policies, supporting local school districts, administering billions of dollars in education funding, and advocating for public schools. Throughout his campaign for superintendent, Mo Green celebrated public schools and highlighted successes from his time as superintendent of Guilford County Schools. During a candidate forum at the Public School Forum's 2024 Eggs and Issues Breakfast, he shared that as a leader, he likes to listen, learn, and lead and expressed reverence for public school educators. Green's campaign website also includes these public education pillars. Prepare each student for the next phase in life, invest fully in public education, revere public school educators, enhance parent and community support, ensure safe, secure learning environments, and celebrate the good in public education. Governor-elect Josh Stein also expressed strong support for public schools throughout his campaign. During exit issues, he stated there is no greater priority for the state of North Carolina than to do an excellent job educating the young people of North Carolina, and shared that if elected, his priorities for public education would include adequate funding, recruitment and retention of educators, and safety. With new terms around the corner, the incoming elected and incumbent officials have the opportunity to respond to what North Carolinians care about by increasing resources and support for local public schools so that they can prepare our children for life. We at the Public School Forum look forward to working with these officials. Together, we can provide our children with the tools needed for successful lives and thriving communities. Thank you for taking time with us to learn and think about education. That's all for today, and we'll see you next week.