Under the Dome: What to know about Tuesday’s election results
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Good morning! ☀️ Here’s what you need to know in North Carolina politics today.
Republican voters handed a decisive victory to Hal Weatherman in the GOP runoff for lieutenant governor Tuesday night.
Weatherman, who was the chief of staff to former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, defeated Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill handily, advancing to a general election matchup in which he’ll face Democratic Sen. Rachel Hunt.
In the runoff for state auditor, meanwhile, Dave Boliek, a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, beat Jack Clark, a staffer for a budget chair in the N.C. House, the Associated Press projected. Boliek will now take on Democratic State Auditor Jessica Holmes.
And Brad Knott, a former federal prosecutor, is likely headed to Washington, after he won the runoff in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District. His opponent, Kelly Daughtry, dropped out of the race earlier this month after Knott secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Check out the full results from Tuesday’s Republican runoff election at newsobserver.com. — Avi Bajpai
Keep reading for more from our politics team and correspondent Stephanie Loder.
‘Academic Transparency’ bill may be moving ahead
House Deputy Majority Whip Jake Johnson indicated Tuesday that there could soon be a path forward on the House’s “Academic Transparency” bill, while also criticizing the N.C. Association of Educators.
House Bill 1032 would require teachers to post lesson plans and curriculum materials online for the public to read, not just parents, within 10 days of instruction.
Johnson posted on X that the bill, filed in early May, is “a great first step toward keeping families informed. I look forward to engaging with superintendents, principals, and educators across the state to work out the details. (NOT political activists like fake union @NCAE)”
Johnson referred to NCAE, an advocacy group for teachers and other school personnel that is not a union. There are just under 25,000 members, which I wrote about in 2023. North Carolina has the second-lowest union membership rate in the United States, at 2.8%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 1959 state law bans collective bargaining by public-sector employees.
Republicans in general are critical of NCAE, which is a vocal supporter of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
– Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan
Help sought for people with disabilities and workers who help them
More than 100 people at the legislature on Tuesday shared their experiences living with disabilities – or caring for people with disabilities – and not being able to access needed resources and care in North Carolina.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers are looking to take action and filed a bill Tuesday that would, among various other changes, raise the wages of workers known as Direct Support Professionals who care for those with disabilities. This would be done using state and federal funds.
The goal would be to get the wages up to $18 an hour. The average hourly wage for DSPs in NC is $13.93, according to research from 2022 shared previously by the state’s health and human services department.
The bill also seeks to cut the waitlist under the N.C. Innovations Waiver, a backlogged state program that provides access to a wide range of behavioral health services for those who qualify. Currently that waitlist is more than 17,000 people long.
Primary sponsors of the legislation are Democratic Reps. Zack Hawkins and Sarah Crawford and Republican Reps. Donna White and John Bradford.
— Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi
WHAT WOULD NC MASK LAW CHANGE MEAN FOR SICK?
GOP legislation that would repeal a health and safety exception to the state’s public mask wearing ban moved forward Tuesday, with Democrats raising concerns about whether repealing the exception would affect anyone with health conditions.
Republicans who introduced the bill say the pandemic-era exception isn’t needed.
Here’s what lawmakers are saying:
Wilson Republican Sen. Buck Newton, the bill’s primary sponsor, said the bill is meant to target people who wear masks to hide their identities or commit crimes.
Sen. Sydney Batch, an Apex Democrat, continued to wear a mask long after others stopped during the pandemic because she was undergoing treatments after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She said she would be concerned if the health and safety exception wasn’t in place.
Sen. Natasha Marcus, a Davidson Democrat, asked Newton for assurance for her constituents as the bill would make mask-wearing for health reasons a violation of the ban.
Tara Muller, a policy attorney at Disability Rights NC, said her organization had heard from several cancer patients and immunocompromised people and parents of medically fragile children worried if children could wear masks on a school bus.
Newton said people who wear masks because of their health shouldn’t be worried, since it was “not a problem, pre-COVID.”
He dismissed the possibility of any such problems once the legislation passes, and said that the people who are voicing concerns are “stoking fear.”
Get the full story from Avi Bajpai here.
WOULD HOUSE BILL ROLL BACK ‘RAISE THE AGE’ LAW?
Despite concerns, a bill requiring 16- or 17-year-old juveniles to be tried in superior court initially as adults if they are accused of Class A through G felonies took a step forward on Tuesday. Those felonies range from murder to robbery.
Lobbyist Chuck Spahos with the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys said House Bill 834 still allows for proper cases to be sent to juvenile court. Less than 500 cases a year are transferred now to superior court, he said.
However, critics say changes would reverse criminal justice reforms like Raise the Age law, implemented in 2019.
Criminal cases begin in juvenile court for anyone under the age of 18
Higher-level felonies are transferred to adult court after an indictment or hearing.
Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Raleigh Democrat, on Tuesday called the bill “a fairly significant rollback of Raise the Age.”
Get the full story from Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi here.
That’s all for today. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol news.
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