Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. We always chat with Andrew Dunn at this
time and we will do so again today. It's Andrew Dunn.
He is the publisher of long Leaf Politics. He is
also a contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer. Andrew,
how are you today, sir.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Good to be with you. I also
want to say thank you and Happy Veterans Day to
your listeners who have served.
Speaker 1: It's not a contest, Andrew's okay, I already said it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you did, but I wanted to say it.
Speaker 1: No, that's fine. So last Tuesday when we spoke, the
election was underway, and in the evening you apparently made
your way over to Selwyn pub where Republicans have traditionally
hung out and watched the returns come in, and they
were there again. And you have a quote from Pat
McCrory as you were watching the carnage on the computer screens,
he said, this city's changed a lot. And then you
say in your piece at the Charlotte Observer, the only
explanation appears to be a reaction to President Donald Trump,
with suburban voter sending a clear no that washed straight
through a municipal ballot. So when I read those two things,
did I read this wrong? But it sounds like those
two things are in conflict, Like he said, the city
has changed a lot? Or is it a repudiation of Trump?
Or I think is ed when Peacock called it a
Trump labd Yes, Are those things at odds or or
am I off on that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I don't think they're necessarily in conflict, but I think
it does reflect two different things that are happening.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: One, you know, Charlotte is a rapidly fast growing city
and we are getting a lot of folks coming in
from out of state who are bringing their politics with them.
At the same time, I also think we're seeing a
change in voting behavior, you know, in these off year
municipal elections. You know, for a long time, we've seen
a distinct difference that voters are willing to look at
Democrats and look at Republicans in the context of their
positions on issues locally, and I just didn't see any
evidence of that at all this year. It's really the
first time where the only explanation for what's happened seems
to be national issues kind of percolating their way down
to the local level.
Speaker 1: So, because I got to tell you, when I heard
Edwin Peacock say that, the first thought I had was
that seems like an awfully con union thing to say.
So it's not on you, you know, as a candidate or
maybe a poor campaign, although Peacock raised a whole bunch
of money for his campaign, but he also lost his
at large bid back in two thousand and nine. Right, So,
like the city hasn't sent a Republican to an at
large seat in Charlotte for what ten years, fifteen years now,
So I don't know. Also, you got a lot of
Republicans that have fled the area over the last twenty
five years. As you know, these Chamber pushed projects, the
Center City Partner pushed projects of the arena and the
light rail and the NASCAR Hall of Fame and all
of these other things that you know, made us quote
unquote world class, and a lot of Republicans who fought
that stuff they just left. They went to all of
the surrounding counties. So was that really a nationalization of
the politics or is that there just aren't any Republicans
left because they got so fed up with publicans doing
these types of projects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a fair pushback. And I you know,
I don't think you can attribute Edwin Peacock's loss just
to a Trump lash. You know, perhaps you could say
the margin was impacted by that. I think where it
really shows up is in District six, the Christa Bakari race.
I mean what, I don't think all those things you
just described can account for, you know, for Tark Bakari
winning by a couple hundred votes two years ago to
Christa losing by what almost four thousand votes in two
years without having some of these other issues at play.
Speaker 1: You had another quote or another line in the piece
at the Observer, Voters in and around Charlotte used local
levers to make a national statement that's why District six
fell that's why the school board lost its last Republican vote.
I would also throw into the mix Democrats have a
history of voting for like guys like Jim Black, even
like they would rather put a crook back into a
state House spot rather than elect I think his name
was Hal Jordan rather than vote for a Republican they
will send the corrupt guy back as well, so I think.
But again, like and these are the city council race
was partisan, the school board was nonpartisan. But I mean
that's just name only. You know, the parties put out
their palm cards and stuff for everybody to know who's
a Democrat, who's a Republican, and that sort of thing.
And then you also had a was this a dig
at Driggs? You said he tends to go along with
vy Lyles the mayor, so there's functionally no longer a
conservative voice of accountability at the dais.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you could certainly read it
that way, Okay, right, I was.
Speaker 1: Just checking because I read that. I was like, oh,
Andrew with a well, and I have heard the same thing.
I have heard the same thing about Ed Driggs being
part because I like my view on the city council
is basically you've got two voting blocks there and one
is you know, whipped by the mayor. Uh. And then
you've got sort of this dissident block and that's you know,
Renee Johnson Victoria Wattlington and they don't have the votes
yet to do stuff. And you know, Drake's goes with
the mayor on a lot of those votes. So and
I thought that's what Peacock was kind of positioning himself
for as well. How he got the you know, how
he got the appointment onto District six before this election too.
But anyway, so that's that's.
Speaker 2: That's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it is.
It is sometimes when we're talking about issues of transparency
with you know, with some of these settlements that we've had.
But oftentimes, you know, Mayor Lyles is on the on
the right side of things as more of your more
traditional pro business, moderate ish type politician.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the saying that there are three
parties in Charlotte the Democrats or not. Okay, so this
was the common axiom about twenty twenty five years ago.
They would tell me that there are three parties, the Democrats,
the Republicans, and the Chamber, and the chambers the most powerful,
and I just and over the years, I just wonder
if the Chamber fed the alligator hoping you would eat
it last, you know, And I don't know if it's
got that same kind of pull anymore. If you've got
like the Council now in this kind of voting block
split where half of them might not be Chamber voters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's in a stude observation, I would
absolutely agree that the Chamber has lost a lot of
influence over the past ten years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So let's talk a little bit about
your predictions, because it's never too early to talk about,
never the next election, and you talk a little bit
about your predictions based on the Civitas Partisan Index. We're
actually going to talk to Andy Jackson from the John
Locke Foundation at twelve thirty to go into some of
these numbers. But you you say that we are kind
of sort of maybe looking at a blue wave election
based on the CPI data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad you're going to have Andy Jackson on.
He's amazing, And this Civitas Partisan Index is kind of
a gold standard for understanding general Assembly elections. And you
know the reason why I say it's kind of going
to be a blue wave. I think it will be.
I think Democrats will pick up seats, but I don't
think it's going to be a twenty eighteen style wave
where we were looking at ten seats flipped in the
House and six in the Senate. And that's just because
there's fewer actual battleground type districts left to flip. You know,
twenty eighteen is when the suburban Charlotte districts went from
red to blue, and those never went back. So you know,
those are just not in play anymore because those are
just Democrat districts.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're also going to have a Senate race at
the top of the ticket there that's going to motivate people.
You got congressional races as well that are going to
motivate more turnout. And one of the things that I heard,
you know you've heard of Scott Presler. He does a
lot of yeah, get up the vote registration stuff for
the Republicans. And I saw an interview he did with
Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary, Yeah, and he
was talking about all the work that they were doing
ahead of this last election in Virginia and New Jersey,
mainly in New Jersey, I think, And he was like,
MAGA did not turn out, just like the Republicans turned out,
but MAGA did not. And I don't know how Republicans
motivate MAGA voters when Trump is not on the ticket, do.
Speaker 2: You, Yeah, I don't know. It's really an interesting question.
You know, Historically in low turnout elections, Republicans have had
the advantage because republic voters tended to be higher propensity,
you know, they'll always get out.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Democrats had lower propensity voters that really had to work
on turnout. Now it's the opposite. Republicans have the turnout problem,
and I don't know what the solution is. I mean,
it does seem pretty clear at this point that there
is a block of Trump voters who are not Republican voters.
And I don't know if there's any real way to
convert Trump specific voters into Republican voters more broadly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's harder too. I know. Democrats built up an
entire infrastructure around you know, voter registration and getting out
the vote, with all of their various activist organizations and such,
but they're I mean just From a practical standpoint, it's
easier to go door to door and reach those voters
in urban areas because people just live closer together. You
can drop a couple of canvassers off, you know, and
they can hit a couple of hundred houses versus Maga
kun tree, where you know, you may be going one
to two miles between homes and maybe getting shot out
while you come up the driveway. So I don't know
how you build that kind of infrastructure, unless maybe it's
all with text messaging. Now, lord knows, I'm getting a
ton of them. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: It just yeah, all of a sudden, Oh boy, yeah,
I don't know. I don't know what the solution is.
I think part of the problem is that that President
Trump isn't necessarily as concerned with party building infrastructure building
as a as a Reagan or a Jim Martin here
in North Carolina where.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you mentioned the low propensity party. That's what
Scott Presler said as well. He's like people need to
understand that that that has flipped. So you echoed what
he said. But also he said Trump needs to stop
telling people not to vote early, like you got to
get all of these votes banked, and you got to
be working for you know, the first month before the
election or that last month before the election. You got
to be working on banking all of those votes as
early as possible, because the Democrats are just eating their
lunch in a lot of these states. So maybe Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you can be philosophically
opposed to early voting, but it's not going anywhere anytime soon,
so everybody should get on board. I always vote on
the first day of early voting, for what it's worth.
Speaker 1: The only downside that I've ever heard about doing that,
and I voted early most of the time, is that
if some scandal breaks, you know, and I think the
j Jones text message scandal up in Virginia is a
pretty good example of that. You know, that oppo research
or the story broke, I guess like three weeks before
the election, but so many people had already voted by that, Like,
what do you do at that point? So maybe Europo
dumps have to come earlier. Maybe that's w.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's got to be a September surprises right
in October.
Speaker 1: One No more October surprise, is exactly right. You could
read his work at long Leaf Politics. Long leafpol dot
com is the website subscribed to his newsletter. There. You
can also read his work at The Charlotte Observe. He
is a contributing columnist, Andrew Dunn. Thanks again for your time, Andrew,
We appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Pete.
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All Right, Happy Veterans Day. That is, of course the
US Air Force a song that's also known as the
Wild Blue Yonder Happy Veterans Day. On this eleventh of November.
I will be playing the other branches as bump tunes
as well, so nobody feels left out on Veterans Day,
because you shouldn't. And that's the kind of guy I am.
By the way, there was another piece we did not
get to with Andrew that he wrote it the Charlotte Observer.
But it's been a couple of days, well almost two
weeks now, about the budget stalemate in the legislature, and
he says like it's getting like they're getting drag the
Republicans are being dragged by Democrats and media. But I
repeat myself, like why could they pass a budget and
all this? And he's like, I actually see a healthy debate,
and it's the right kind of fight. And the sticking
point is not pet projects or power plays. It's tax policy.
And there are two different arguments being made, and both
of them are conservative arguments. And so that's that's where
the jam is coming from. All right, if you're listening
to this show, you know I try to keep up
with all sorts of current events, and I know you
do too, and you've probably heard me say get your
news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you
detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed
with ground News. It's an app and it's a website
and it combines news from around the world in one
place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You
can check it out at check dot ground, dot news
slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too.
I started using ground News a few months ago and
more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate
because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered
and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which
stories get ignored by the left and the right. See
for yourself. Check dot Ground dot news slash pete. Subscribe
through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription.
I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to
every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast,
but it also supports Ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. I want to welcome to the
program doctor Andy Jackson. He is the director of the
Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. Andy,
how are you.
Speaker 3: Ah doing great? I'm technically off today, but.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, va to you. I'm so sorry. I
actually I'm not. I'm just I'm selfish like that. So
the moment we have all been waiting for the cpi'
not the one that tells us how terrible the economy is. No, No,
this is the Civitas Partisan Index. And I just had
Andrew dune on. We were talking a little bit about
his early predictions based on the CPI. Your CPI for
twenty twenty six. Because it's never too early to start
looking at the next election. So first off, what is
the Civitas Partisan Index.
Speaker 3: Well, the Civitas Partisan Index is a analysis of the baseline
voting tendencies of North Carolina's General Assembly district. So we
take data and apply that to all one hundred and
seventy districts in North Carolina, the fifty and the Senate
one hundred and twenty in the House, and then we
see if all other things are equal, and of course
they never are, but if they were all equal, how
would this district vote between a generic Republican and a
generic Democrat? And we get these numbers. We get updated
data every two years, so we update the CPI every
two years.
Speaker 1: And so this uses your model utilizes precinct level results
from the nine to twenty twenty four Council of State races,
and you don't use presidential data.
Speaker 3: We don't. You know. This is we've been doing this
for a while since even before I came on board
to do this, and we were one of the We
want to use races that are kind of as generic
as possible. So these statewide Council of State races minus
the governor are good for that because they really tend
to be in that narrow band, for say, between fifty
five and forty five percent Republican or Democratic. How people
vote if they don't have a whole lot of other
information or there's not a lot of weird news media
information coming out that might alter the vote, and so
they're kind of generic votes, and so they make pretty
good data points for us to use.
Speaker 1: What about I hear this every time there's a presidential
race and the Republican wins North Carolina but loses or
but the Democrat wins the governorship, the ticket split a
effect in North Carolina? Does that have what does? How
might that impact the data set?
Speaker 3: Well, we saw that in Council of States there were
some races won by Democrats Secretary of State, Lieutenant governor.
Republicans won races like Commissioner of Agriculture and the state auditor.
And so this accounts for all of those because we
pull all of those together and put them in not
just the percentages, but the vote totals. And we take
the vote totals of all nine races and plug them
into each of the approximately twenty seven hundred precincts in
North Carolina, and then, based on the current districts, we
assign those precincts to each of the districts to get
the results. And so it's kind of good that we
have that variety in the Council of State because it
kind of covers all basic contingencies.
Speaker 1: So, okay, so you're you said nine, because there are
ten Council of States, so you're not including that.
Speaker 3: We Yeah, we went Originally we didn't include governor because
there's a relatively high profile race. We started using it
for a couple of years, but you know, the last
one was a bit of an outlier. Now, the way
that we do this, since we kind of norm based
on the election results, we compare each district to the
statewide total, we would kind of account for that. But
having a race that was so unusual and including that
could have some unforeseen effects on the analysis in some districts.
So we decided to go back to the old ways
and not include the governor's race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't really affect the outcome of the district
so much as far as we know, but there could
be one or two where it would have made the
results a little odd.
Speaker 1: So this is what then gives you sort of the
four categories of of what directs a district is potentially going.
You've got toss up, you've got lean, you've got likely,
and then safe. Obviously, a safe seat is one that
is virtually guaranteed to one party or the other. Likely
obviously means that it's more likely than not that you know,
Republicans going to carry the district or a Democrat. And
then you've got the leaning and the toss up. What's
the difference between the leaning and toss up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in a certain sense, it is arbitrary. You have
to assign a category to each of these. But basically
our toss up districts have a different difference of either
basically completely even. We call that plus zero, like an
R zero or a D zero or plus one. Either way,
they're just so close that you couldn't really reliably make
any kind of prediction there. The leans, those are the
ones that will generally go for that party, and that's
from A plus two to a plus five. The likelies
are six to nine, and then ten plus is the
safe districts. Generally speaking, you know, once again, all other
things being equal, you're going to win your leaners, you're
going to win your likelies. But in elections, like this,
which is a midterm election, the party out of the
White House, we've found out, will often be competitive in
the lean districts of the other parties. So that's potentially
good news for Democrats in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Right, And of course, if there is some sort of
a wave election or there's some you know, massive political
scandal like posing in front of a gas grill claiming
to cook barbecue like that could have an impact on
some of these districts specifically, because I mean I always
say candidates matter. The candidates do matter. So oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
So what does it look like. Let's look at the
Senate real quick? First? What does the Senate look like?
According to your analysis and the see.
Speaker 3: The baseline would indicate the Republicans are going to come
out ahead. They'll have a pretty solid majority somewhere in
the twenty six twenty seven to twenty eight seat range,
not near a supermajority. Once again, Democrats could make a
play for some of those seats. One of the different
thing we talked about, and you mentioned how candidates matter
is a couple of those lean Republican seats are held
by frankly, really good politicians like Danny britt and Buck Newton.
Both of those are out East, and so even though
they at least potentially could be districts that are in play,
probably not unless the Democrats can raise a ton of
money and recruit a really, really good candidate to oppose
those guys. But yeah, in the Bennett it's probably going
to be Republicans being able to hold the House is
potentially more interesting. Even though a majority of seats are
either safe, likely or lean Republican. A lot more of
those lean Republican seats appear to be in play this year.
It's still, you know, really early to figure us to
predict that. But if you go by pass tendencies in
these midterm elections, the party out of the White House
picks up close to half of those lean seats on
the other side that would be and generally comes close
to sweeping the toss up. So you're looking at a
potential you know, eight nine, ten seats swinging towards the
Democrats in the House potentially.
Speaker 1: And again not enough to give them the majority, but
definitely not That definitely makes it harder to override veto
sing goes for the Senate if they don't get thirty
votes in the Senate, you know, or seats whatever. Then
that means they're not going to be able to override
any of Josh Stein's vetos without Democrats' support, and that
becomes more difficult. One of the seats here you've got
listed in the Senate side is Gabaris, County Lean's Republican.
It's an R plus two and that's Chris Mesmer and
he was the fellow that just got appointed to that seat.
And there were some shenani going on at the county
commission level from whence he came, right, so that might right,
I'm thinking that was the that was the seat in question.
So yeah, but again we're still a year off, so
we'll see how it shakes out, whether people have a
memory for that sort of thing. You also listed on
the House side to Mecklenburg seats that are toss ups,
Tricia Cotham's and Beth Helfrich that's Mecklenburg ninety eight. She
is in a D plus one seat, but you still
rate that as a as a toss up. So there's
you know, potentially again depending on what we see sort
of as a in the national environment and in the
local environment, like there's a possibility that Cotham is out,
but also a possibility that Helfrich loses depending on who
they run against her.
Speaker 3: So yeah, definitely there's a potential there, although probably a
little harder for Cossam just because of the likely environment
next year unless something very strange happens and we have
an usual election here right.
Speaker 1: Yep, you never can tell, You never can tell. And
by the way, candidate filing starts December first, so are right,
just a couple of weeks away. So there we go,
h Andy, I'll let you get back to your vacation.
Thanks so much for your generosity and spending some of
your time with us. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: All right, it's good talking to you too, all right.
Speaker 1: Take care. That's doctor Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation.
You can, by the way, check out, uh the Civitas
Partisan index. Oh, I had the website here, hang on,
let me find it here so I can give it
to you before we toss it to traffic. It is
John Loock dot org. Okay, just go to john lock
dot org. They've got it on their page. They're introducing
the twenty twenty six Civotos Partisan Indexes. The headline John
Lock dot org. That's Lock with an E at the end,
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alrighty Happy, Veterans Day. It's a shout out there to
the army. The army goes rolling along. That's their tune.
We'll be playing one from all of the services, yes,
even Space Force, they have a song. So I said,
I would circle back to Andrew Dunn's comments on the
budget stalemate in Raleigh. He said, it's a genuine policy
disagreement between Republicans, okay, and it's both over tax relief
and fiscal stability. So under the Senate plan, personal income
tax rates would continue to come down over the next
three years, under an agreement that the chambers had reached
back in twenty twenty three. The Senate initially wanted even
more aggressive tax cuts, but leaders say that they have
backed off of that position now. The House, meanwhile, wants
to delay the tax cuts for the foreseeable future. After
spending more than two billion dollars on Hurricane Helene recovery
and hearing economic forecasts of potential looming budget deficits, they
want to keep more flexibility. That's the rub, Okay, It's
about the tax rate, the personal income tax rates. Do
they keep dropping or do you pause them because of
the Hurricane Helene costs? And you keep the revenue coming
in at the current level, and if there is going
to be a deficit in the future years like four years,
five years down the road, then does this guard against that.
That's the nature of the disagreement. As Andrew says, everything
else is noise. All right. That'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
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You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
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