Voucher deal sealed, new poll numbers, Cooper in the spotlight

good afternoon welcome to the weekly edition of the rap I'm Laura Lesley WL Capital bureau chief and I'm Paul spay PolitiFact reporter and uh wrl state government reporter and it's been a big week of course here at WL we had our poll out we do this a couple times a year survey USA does it for us um and um interesting results we'll get to in a minute but I wanted to take a moment to return to um the really great Sunday special that you did this week about immigration and the costs and that been that's been one of our top stories all week I think people really want to know about that oh thank you for saying that uh and I think immigration comes back into the light u based on some of the things we heard dur in the presidential debate you know president Trump put out that baseless claim that people are eating dogs in Ohio or whatever again you didn't look into that did you uh PolitiFact did and so we found that uh the officials there the town officials are saying there's no evidence of this uh and you know I think I saw a tweet today where they and this is Friday uh where they said we need help not hate they do have a a Haitian population there uh but um a lot of people are uh spreading unfounded rumors um and actually it's been interesting to me on that note that a lot of the people who have been saying this on National Television are Republican leaders from Ohio Republican County Commissioner Republican Governor you know talking about yes we do have challenges yes we are overstretched this is not one of the challenges right and so um with that in mind uh even before this rumor started started circulating we had seen a lot of campaign ads here in North Carolina about uh immigrants coming over the Border uh slipping past border security uh earlier this year you and I both covered uh a press conference down at the legislature where a bunch of House Republicans gathered and said North Carolina is a border state and Governor Cooper needs to send the National Guard to Texas that same letter uh was the inspiration for this Sunday special uh story that we did uh it talked about immigrants straining schools causing an increase in crime and uh straining the social safety net so we thought why don't we look into those things I I just genuinely genuinely curious from a a human standpoint and as a newsreader whether or not there were any numbers to support these claims that were being made and what we found were was that there there really aren't uh when it comes to Crime uh crime lags a year or two at least the data does uh but the most recent available data from the FBI and SBI in 2022 does not show uh Surge and crime at all uh and experts say it would be hard for immigrants to be driving a surge uh when there's when overall there there's not one uh we even found a couple cases um that Republicans have talked about uh there's a man uh named AET hagos he was in a standoff with Gates County deputies uh he entered the country in 2016 and then stayed on a visa on a Visa that's right and stayed Beyond uh his deadline to leave and so we've seen people try to tie him to the Biden Administration uh he didn't come across the border he came in through other means uh and then there are those Brothers uh I'll probably Mis mispronounce their names but the satell Brothers shot and killed a Wake County Deputy here in North Carolina in 2022 I believe they're still waiting for that trial come to find out the uh Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as ice does not know when they came in so it could be the last four years it could have been under Trump they don't know and so we just looked into a lot of this and uh looked into uh whether not they're overburdening schools well guess what uh Public School Systems in North Carolina don't track uh their students immigration status you know I think that was the takeaway the biggest takeaway I got from your story was that there's not a lot of data you know and I maybe the answer is more tracking of data and across various ways of of doing you know in various areas but yeah there's just not a lot of data to back this stuff up and you know I just think I hear what you're you know the soell brothers for sure you know here right here in Wake County you know the plural of anecdote is not data they say exactly and that and that's what we we wanted to look past sort of the narratives uh and the rhetoric to see what we what was provable and so we you know without citizenship data for students in North Carolina we just looked at the number of English Learners uh in our public schools and that's only gone up that number has only gone up marginally like 2% uh in the last four years uh and I'll I'll hit the rest here quickly you know they talked about straining North Carolina's Social Services well uh the number of unemployment claims filed by non-citizens who are eligible in some cases by the way uh is 2% that's much lower than it was even in uh the 2010s it was as high it you know obviously it went up really High during the pandemic but in the 2010s uh it was closer to 4 and 5% so we're we're below that now and then uh Medicaid Medicaid has been expanded in North Carolina more people are eligible uh but the number of non-citizens on Medicaid has only gone up marginally so we didn't see any evidence of strain uh at least not in the numbers you know this is we can only go with the data that we have and the data that we have doesn't support the narrative that's out there right uh in the meantime lots of drama this week first of all of of course on Jones Street uh a deal was reached late last week and announced formally on Monday that uh legislators had agreed on a combination of uh the entire voucher Bill nearly half a billion dollars that they had talked about earlier this year they've coupled it with the ice retainer s detainer Bill sorry the bill that would require Sheriff's to uh to cooperate with ice detainer requests for 48 hours that all made it through the legislature sounds like mostly on a party line vote it's on its way to the governor I think we can guess what the fate of that bill is going to be oh I'm I'm I would bet if I were if you could bet on this like you can on Sports I would bet that he's going to veto it don't you know you already can in some places just not here uh and then um also um they did some other some veto overrides um and so we expect another veto of this bill we expect they'll probably come back they're talking about November after the election um probably do a veto override at that point on House Bill 10 those voucher expansions by the way would be retroactive so you know the families who were put on hold or or were who were hoping it would be in effect for this year would be able to be reimbursed so but of course again that is a you know huge expansion of the spending I mean I think if you think about it you know our current spending on um vouchers for this year was about $300 million this adds $248 so it nearly doubles the spending half a billion dollars toward private schools yeah that yeah exactly um all right also big trama this week RFK first he went to court to get onto the ballot and then he went to court to get off the ballot it went all the way to the state supreme court and the state supreme court hit the brakes and said he gets to get off of it so that means all of these ballots that were about to be sent out can't be and they have to be reprinted right and I think that's there's so much to talk about you could talk we could spend so much time talking about this particular issue but you know we have the longest voting period in the country here North Carolina our absentee ballots uh are scheduled to go out September 6th obviously that date has passed and it's because uh uh Kennedy won this case before the state supreme court uh now the ballots have not gone out uh they they have not gone out by September 6th is what I'm trying to say uh and so people are sitting around waiting and there's a federal deadline to get them out to members of the military as well and if I remember correctly there's a a spokesman for the elections board who says I don't even know if we'll make that uh this has been uh a very big and costly change at the last minute for North Carolina's election uh like Logistics you could say right and Wake County um uh Jerry Cohen longtime legislative Bill drafting person you know expert on legislature he's now a member of the board Wake County Board of Elections and he tweeted that it's going to cost Wake County alone about $300,000 right and these aren't huge operations they're not like you know other agencies in the state like you know the DEQ you know you're not looking at a giant budget here no these are staffs of you know sometimes what a dozen people I'm guessing and so much smaller in most counties yeah right and so they they don't have many resources to work with and now they have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again um also this week um we should mention um obviously the debate uh Tuesday night everybody was talking about notable that Roy Cooper was in the spin room for kamla Harris um again you know you just what do you think attorney general right he could you know it wouldn't surprise me no I just wonder because he's been extremely prominent for her in a way that I have not seen a North Carolina politician especially a Democrat be uh in on behalf of a presidential candidate it you know uh Trump talks a lot uh former president Trump talks a lot about loyalty and so a lot of politicians they hire and put people around them that they trust well it is very very obvious that the vice president knows and likes and trusts Roy Cooper whether it's to introduce her at the DNC or to go in the spin room or you know she uh was considering him for vice president he took his name out but um it's clear they have this uh relationship if she gets in office it it wouldn't shock me one bit to see him appointed to something yeah all right well this brings us to an ideal opportunity to have a break from the people who are paying our bills uh please hang out there for a second and we'll be back with you just a couple of minutes and welcome back to this week's edition of on the wp I should say I'm I'm Laura Lesley here with Andy spay and we are looking at what's going on um well our new poll numbers which were fascinating that's right we spent all week sort of uh giving giving people a taste of of the poll one you know one little poll question at a time and putting those results on air and online um and they've been interesting we covered a lot everything from you know uh the presidential race to what people think of marijuana legalization to how their opinions have changed on abortion and then what what you're doing today is what sports gambling I think Sports gambling and medical marijuana so and it turns out a spoiler alert medical marijuana still popular still but still not legal in North Carolina Bill Raven has already said he will try again next year and I you never know he and he's been trying for medical marijuana right not even full our we should be clear our poll asked people if they supported full legalization and I believe it was medical marijuana oh it did they it was medical and this is sheerly medical and his bill is extremely limited it would be one of the most restrictive medical marijuana bills in the country and even so you know it just it it it can't get as the social conservatives even though in our polling even those who describe themselves as very conservative politically supported it by a majority it wasn't even a plurality it was a majority it seems like at this point uh that many obviously cancer is very prevalent we know each one of us seems to know someone who's had cancer well just in my lifetime in the last you know 10 20 years reporting you know between us it seems like more and more people know someone who is used cannabis marijuana for treatment for Cancers and other other sort of severe illnesses and so I it just makes me wonder if that's why those numbers have shot up so much I think so I I think there's I think also maybe maybe more people are willing to talk about it you know what I mean maybe in the past people didn't mention that that had helped them like you know like excuse me that's kind of what happened with Senator Raben right he went through all this with cancer never really talked much about it and it was just like this past it was 2023 I think when he first told his whole story about it right there's there's still a lot of stigma about it but I think as more people talk about it more people say you know really you know right why is that a problem so anyway um but we should go back to our poll numbers it shows Josh Stein uh in in the governor's race opening up what looks like a 14-point lead which to me looked a little odd it looked like awfully big right but then we saw some numbers come out from another poll this week that I think it was High Point uh High Point uh was a couple weeks ago but they also had Stein with the 14 yeah and there was another one that came out this week that had a 14-point lead as well so I feel a little bit more more more confident in those numbers but you know it is pretty dramatic I think the last one showed Stein with a lead that was just at the edge of the credibility interval and this one is of course well up and we spoke to experts about that race and asked you know does this surprise you why do you think he's up by so much uh and they said that one reason is because because uh you have a combination of two things one Robinson has said a lot of controversial things and two Stein has the money to put put them on the air to put them on the air that's right and so he gets to Define who Mark Robinson is to the P to the viewing public the other thing that's important about that is that these things that Mark Robinson said that were controversial were on video that's right there's one ad that the sign campaign has up where you see Robinson speaking to the camera in it looks like he you know was speaking to someone on Zoom or on FaceTime or something or shooting a video a selfie video or something um and you're right and then there are other uh video clips they've gotten from churches uh and uh I believe a radio show he was on as well so this is all out there there's a lot of material and Josh Stein like his um predecessor uh attorney general Cooper before he was governor there are both um extremely good fundraisers even Republicans in this game this political game will say that and so uh he's been putting that money to use yeah and you know this may be a situation where he's helping kamla According to some of the folks that I talked to um you know or vice versa so I mean certainly it's good news for him that she's doing as well as she is in the state she's currently leading although statistically it's a tie and then um you know he's obviously leading by more than a statistical tie so we also uh surveyed a couple of other races going down I wish we had done the Supreme Court race we had not darn it however we did look at the AG race and that one also the the Democrats leading that one not not by a huge margin though right and this is a race between two charlotte-based congressmen one the Republican Dan bishop and the Democrat Jeff Jackson and uh they're very very different people uh even in style um but the poll showed Jackson up about 6 or 7% That's outside the margin of error or we call it a credibility interval which was somewhere between 4.2 and 4.9 I can't remember off the top of my head that was a 4.9 I think .9 okay uh and it looked like and that was a change from March when we pulled the same race and it looked like Bishop uh was ahead with me with more of the demographics that we that we track right uh but since then Jackson has been able to boost his numbers among black North Carolinians people in urban cities uh and then uh with young people he was uh I think it was pretty close back in March but now Jackson is ahead with people under the a or between the ages of 18 and 49 so um whatever he's doing how was he doing it because I Haven is he on TV well he's I haven't seen any ads from him I know one of our pundits out west had not seen any ads but uh Jackson uh has is very good on social media yes he is extremely prolific on social media yeah uh I say good in reference to just how he uses it not what he says but um you know that's one Theory someone threw out you know and Dan Bishop's more of the classical um Republican who goes on Fox News a lot and uh gets his message out that way and he's been they were both legislators as well down here in Raleigh so same they know each other it'll be interesting to see um how they can whether they I can get their names out there in a state with so many things on the ballot I know that um The Institute for political leadership is going to be doing a series of debates and I think there is an AG one slated so I really hope I can attend that one CU I think that would be a really good debate I do too I just high quality I know they're both attorneys and they and sharp Attorneys at that so um other things to mention um concerns uh you know the the the issues are pretty much what they were what the voters care about the issues um we should mention that oh oh um Mo green and Michelle marrow in the superintendent race M green about two points ahead that is about it um we asked voters whether cared about some of the more controversial comments that Michelle Maro had made and also Mark Robinson had made about education uh and the sort of the punchline was that voters really didn't I mean for most voters it really did for about half of them it said it didn't change how they were going to vote so those people I think that's just baked in you know we also asked that question about um the Biden administration's position on Gaza and the Trump Administration uh in January 6th and again the the half of Voters said it really didn't make any difference either way um in the the case of January 6th uh I think there was slightly more voters said it would made them more likely no it wasn't January 6 sorry it was the lawsuits it was the lawsuit the felony lawsuits and the felony conviction from Trump yeah sorry not j6 and I think it slightly more said it made them more likely to vote for him for Trump because they see him as a victim according to those poll result results EXC exactly so yeah so um interesting stuff but um you know you can find all of that of course online atl.com we've got your tabs up there for those of you who like to dig into that stuff I know I sure do so uh Harris here in the state just last night she was here she hadit two cities while she was here yeah Greensboro and Charlotte yesterday along with Roy Cooper at both of them of course uh JD Vance coming next week to to Raleigh fulfilling that postponed visit that happened back in August when we had a hurricane Debbie show up and both he and Kam haris I think canceled their events I think it was both of them that's right yeah I think that's about it for me what are you watching next week uh I'll be watching to see uh just how much this these races change uh candidate Behavior you know we've seen a lot of polling now on Mark Robinson uh being way behind um he I don't believe spoke at the last Trump rally uh Democrats have said they want to try to tie the two together Trump and Robinson uh to try to bring Trump down not just Robinson I'm still waiting to see where that might happen and when I say Democrats I'm I'm talking about advisers for Harris's campaign have gone on podcasts and things like that and talked about how Robinson in their eyes is so toxic that he could also uh hurt Trump's reputation I don't know I don't know how true that is I about say that could be a that could be a lot of Bluster too but I I do wonder what we will see out of Robinson to try to salvage um or just make up ground in this race I'll be interested to see how much money the are G pumps in that's why I'm really watching here so um all right well thank you very much for listening as always and we will catch up with you here next week here on the wrap