NC News Roundup: Rep. Chuck Edwards drops reelection campaign; NC hemp regulations go nowhere for now

This is Dues South on WUNC News. I'm Jeff Tiberi. Congressman Chuck Edwards abruptly backed out of his re-election bid this week following a congressional ethics investigation that laid out inappropriate relationships with two female staffers. It outlined numerous instances where Edwards showered them with lavish gifts, including more than $1,000 in jewelry, a kitchen aid mixer, tickets to performances, and around 30 different types of ice cream. For what happens next in the district, we turn to our panel of reporters in the North Carolina Friday News Roundup. Also, plenty of happenings at the state level and some sad news on the college sports scene. The NC state community is mourning today after the death of Lopac basketball legend Cozell Queen. McQueen was part of the 1983 NCAA championship winning team. Do South get you caught up on the week? First, news. Hi there. I'm Leonita Inge, host of DoSouth. Thanks for listening and supporting our podcasts. We work smart to bring you the best North Carolina and the South have to offer. From the latest in state politics to important voices in race and southern culture, do South is here every day. but we couldn't do it without your financial support. Thank you. If you like what you're hearing, please consider making a donation today at wunc.org.

From the studios of WUNC News and Chapel Hill, it's due south. Time for the North Carolina Friday News Roundup on listener-supported public radio. Thank you for tuning in wherever you may be joining us from. I'm Jeff Tiberi. The hemp industry is running out of time. One senator moves a key vote to yes and a creepy Christmas tree? Let's get going with some sounds of the week. Congressman Chuck Edwards is withdrawing from his re-election campaign. It comes days after the House Ethics Committee recommended that Edwards be censured after finding that he engaged in unprofessional and inappropriate conduct. Bill would make multiple changes to how trial court judges can be disciplined in the state. It would allow the state Supreme Court to censure, publicly reprimand, suspend, or remove judges. North Carolina bill is on pause tonight after hundreds of protesters called on state lawmakers not to... to pass new regulations on hemp products in that state. I plan is now one step closer to becoming the Attorney General for the Trump administration with a full Senate vote expected soon. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein says he will veto one of two election bills sent to his desk Tuesday evening.

All that, plus more bad news for the Carolina football program. With us until 1 o'clock and embodied are Colin Campbell, Capital Bureau Chief, here at WUNC News, Don Vaughn, Capital Bureau Chief at the News and Observer. Danielle Bataglia, congressional impact reporter for the News and Observer, and the Charlotte Observer, is here. as well. Hi, everybody. Hello. All right, you're encouraged to join our conversation today. You can offer a question or share a comment at do-south at WUNC.org. We're going to get a couple of reporter check-ins during the roundup today. Later, Dan Cain, investigative reporter at the News and Observer. We'll go next level on some of his recent reporting and joining us now for the first portion of the program is Felicia Sanmez, reporter at Blue Ridge Public Radio. We're going to start in the mountains and on Capitol Hill where what... began with an excessive, if not inappropriate, hall of ice cream ended with a middle-of-the-night social media post. Chuck Edwards, two-term Republican congressman from North Carolina's westernmost 11th district, has dropped his reelection bid. The 11th hour decision follows a House ethics investigation into inappropriate relationships with two female subordinates. Danielle, there has been smoke around this story for a year. Why did it now turn to a brushfire? So there is a big push in Congress with a lot of different members of Congress on how they are behaving, I guess, sexually. That's a weird way to phrase that. Interpersonally? Interpersonally would be better. And so this broke this week because the House Committee on Ethics had been investigating Chuck Edwards, Representative Chuck Edwards. For sexual harassment of two very young female staffers and also for creating a hostile work environment. And the report came out Monday saying that there is substantial evidence that he did both of those things and caused both women to quit working in Congress. And so the committee is recommending him for censure. And he decided to. not resigned. He decided to not run for reelection, but has not resigned. So that censure. threat is still possible, yeah. Barring another surprise, which we're not anticipating here. Chuck Edwards will be in Congress until January, but his replacement successor will be elected come November. We're going to get to who that potential successor or the candidates here in a moment. But let's go next level. Are we talking about criminal findings? Are we talking about alleged sexual assault, impermissible gifts, all of the above? What's in this 60-page report? So what the report says is they didn't find any evidence that he had a sexual relationship with them. And so I think short of anything criminal, I don't think criminals on the table right now that I have seen, not to say that can't happen, but the Congress does not have, you know, that kind of power. They do have power to.

to go further with basically humiliating him in front of the entire body with the censure. He would have to stand in the well and have what he's accused of read to him, which, I mean, runs the gamut. We've seen text messages that came out that shows, you know, he skipped votes to decorate one of the women's Christmas trees. He also canceled a teletown hall to go on a date with one of these women. He, um, He took one of them to the White House Christmas party. He sent 30 tubs of ice cream to one of their houses to cheer them up. Vegas, New York City. He did a ton of different things. where he is, you know, in hot water, basically. The censure is about as bad as it gets within the U.S. house confines. Colin, you had a thought. Your microphone was off. It's on now. Yeah, so one of those was a trip to Las Vegas, which just, like, can't imagine a situation where your boss invites you to go spend a weekend in Vegas together, and that's somehow okay. I will say she was not working for him at the time of the Vegas trip, but the... One of them was working for him during the New York City trip. So there was multiple trips going on. And, yeah, I can't imagine either. A couple of points of context here. Do South Friday News Roundup. Congressman Chuck Edwards not seeking re-election. He is 65 years old. He is married. And this is. Kind of the trio, right? Mama Tiberi used to say bad things happen in threes, and it seems like that's happened across the last decade, at least in terms of what this has done. You use the word, I think, embarrassing here. This collectively is embarrassing for Western North Carolina. You had Mark Meadows who had some scandals elevated to Chief of Staff for Trump. Then you have Madison Cawthorne. We'll save that saga for another day. And now you have Edwards, who I guess unironically, ironically, I don't know, ran in part because he said, I'm not going to be Madison. I'm very different personality. Most people thought that from his time in the state senate that he was a very, I mean, obviously nothing on the level of Madison Cothorn in some ways, but it's a different circumstances. In other ways, yeah. I mean, wholly inappropriate here, of course. That goes, should go without being said, but we'll say it. Felicia Sademes is with us on the line from Asheville and Blue Ridge Public Radio. Felicia, you were in the district this week hearing from voters in the wake of this announcement. By the way, it came at a text or a tweet or something at 332 in the morning from Edwards. I've done deep prayer and I'm not going to run like, okay. Felicia, what did the would be voters tell you this week in recent days? Yes, Jeff. So I was at a rally last night that Democrat Jamie Ager held here in Asheville where he had about 80 people in attendance. I also went to Hendersonville. which, you know, downtown Hendersonville is a couple of blocks from Edwards District Office. And I spoke with a couple of local residents there just a few hours after Edwards announced that he's not running for reelection. The overall mood, I'd say, was exasperation and frustration.

pretty much all of the dozen people that I spoke to said that they were really disappointed in the Ethics Committee's findings of Edwards' behavior toward his staff members. Some of the people I spoke with, one, for instance, is a woman named Karen Pachetti. She's a Republican who lives in Hendersonville. She told me she has voted since she was 18 years old. She had supported Edwards, and she really appreciated the ways that he communicated with his constituents after Hurricane Helene here. district, but she said the allegations were just too hard for her to ignore. Yeah, here is a cut of Karen Pachetti, who's a registered Republican, who's now considering perhaps a candidate from the other party. There's always a possibility, absolutely. I'm not a hard party line. I like to know what they're going to do for the people. It's early, and this is anecdotal, but Felicia, there's long been this populous streak in the mountains. This is a safe or has been long viewed as a safe Republican district, but this is just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. How emboldened are Democrats feeling in this moment about the possibility of an upset here? I would say quite right now. I've been covering this campaign for, you know, this past year. And when I saw Eager on the stump last night, he is a far more polished candidate now than he was when this campaign started. And I think that, you know, among his supporters there, there's... I think there's still a lot of uncertainty because we don't know, as you mentioned, who Republican leaders in the district are going to choose to replace Edwards on the ballot in November. So there's still a lot that's unknown. But among the voters that I spoke with, both... you know, mostly Republican voters in Hendersonville and also Democrats last night, there was a sense that things need to change. And there's frustration with the economic situation right now. There's frustration with corruption or perceived corruption in Washington, D.C. And so I think, you know, the circumstances really are ripe right now for Democrats to turn this red district blue. Democrat Jamie Ager is the nominee on the left side of things. His father was in the... state legislature. His grandfather was... His brother is currently in the state legislature. His brother's currently there. His grandfather was a congressman way back when. If one of y'all can, I mean, who's going to decide who the Republican is here? Or a thought first on vote. Well, not as deciding Republicans, but in the general, looking at unaffiliated voters can play a significant role. I interviewed an unaffiliated voter a few years ago. She was a neighbor of Madison Cothorn. And in different elections, she had voted for... Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. So it's with a variety of reasons and different issues. So I think those margins there could make a difference, even if unaffielded voters tend to vote Republican in the general. We're coming up on a break, but briefly, Danielle, who's going to decide when about the name to replace Edwards on the Republican side of the ballot? Yeah. So the state law gives power to the local Republican Party. So there's about 60 people who get to take.

vote on this. It's supposed to happen Monday night at 630. And hopefully we will know who will be on the ballot after that. As dysfunctional as Congress says, there are still only 435 seats. This is a seat that many people aspire to be in. Are there any names you would put out or not yet at this point? So, I mean, the overarching name I keep hearing over and over is Moffat. He's one of our state senators. State Senator Tim Moffat from Henderson County seems to be, I don't know if I would say the frontrunner because these. situations can provoke surprises, but the best known name, aside from, I think, some of the people who've run against Edwards and primaries who have raised their hands, but it doesn't seem like they necessarily have a lot of support. And important, I guess, to consider in the next steps, we're less than three months until the election. So you would think, from the Republican standpoint, you want to nominate somebody or put somebody on the ballot who has some name recognition because you don't have a lot of time to introduce yourselves to voters ahead of this November 3rd election. A mess in Western North Carol. We'll track it as we barrel toward the midterm. Much more coming on the North Carolina Friday News Roundup here on due south. Please stay with us. This is listener-supported WUNC News.

Welcome back to the Friday News Roundup on Due South. I'm Jeff Tabiri. On this day in 1972, Walter Fenner Leonard was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, better known as Buck. The Rocky Mount Native became a baseball great during a segregated era, whose story remains largely under told. Leonard was born in 1907, grew up in Rocky Mount, and left school after the eighth grade. He worked for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad, where he started playing semi-professional baseball at the time here in North Carolina, then in time turned his full-time focus to the diamond. He played 14 seasons with the mighty homestead grays out of Pittsburgh in the Negro League. Buck batted behind the iconic Josh Gibson, a slugger who was given the nickname the Black Babe Ruth. Buck Leonard, a three-time Negro League champion and 11-time All-Star was in time labeled the Black Lou Gehrig. These were separate and unequal times. After all, Lou Gehrig is not known as the white Buck Leonard. Buck is regarded by baseball historians as a pure hitter, extraordinary first baseman, and key figure of the Homestead Gray's Dynasty of the 1930s and 40s. Years after Jackie Robinson dismantled the color barrier, Buck Leonard was offered a major league contract, but turned it down. He said, quote, in 1952, I knew I was over the hill. I didn't try to fool myself. After his playing days, Leonard spent decades involved in the minor leagues here in North Carolina. He earned a high school diploma at the age of 52, and in 1972 was enshrined in Cooperstown. He died in November of 1997 at the age of 90. He was laid to rest in Rocky Mount. North Carolina history is slotted for 20 minutes past the hour on Fridays. We welcome your stories and nuggets due south at WUNC.org. All right. The honorables were in this week on Jay Jones Street, state legislators. What's the most notable thing they did, Don Vaughn, not the most notable thing they didn't do. We'll get to that. What's the most notable thing they did this week? That's, I mean, what bill are you covering for me? Because I cover the budget and the governor, it's that they want to take more power away from the governor in a budget technical corrections bill. But I would say. The biggest news of the week was the hemp bill not coming to the floor. And that's stalling out after, you know, a huge crowd earlier in that day. And then it came apart after a Republican caucus. It was, there was talk that it could be a shrimp gate level of crowd. There was a large crowd there in the legislative building early in the day. But they didn't stay all day. Maybe they all went to work or had like, didn't dedicate the time.

down to all their employees to the legislature to lobby for their jobs. Yeah. So by the time the Republicans were caucusing, we're watching, you know, outside, and it was pretty quiet, a handful of lobbyists. As a reminder, the hemp industry is facing a deadline by which Congress or the state legislature, somebody's got to do something, or this multi-billion dollar year industry with tens of thousands of jobs is going to be shuttered. So there was a bill, a something that didn't move forward this week. What does that tell us? So this is a bill that passed the Senate back. back at the beginning of July right before they adjourned. The House decided not to take it up. The legislature to his background has been working for years now on, hey, we've got to regulate these hemp products in some ways because they're currently not regulated. Teenagers can go buy this stuff without an ID if the retailer doesn't do it themselves with an ID check. But they can't seem to agree on the details. So you've got like the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party, particularly with the Senate, that just wants to more or less ban this stuff, similar to what the federal government has kind of. in the pipeline, but not until November and could get pushed back further. And then you have others that want to sort of do responsible regulation around it. And as a result, you get this stalemate. Even with all this lobbying, you saw the law enforcement officers there, the hemp industry there. And ultimately after a two-hour caucus meeting, House Republicans decided, let's not move forward with the more strict ban. House Speaker Dustin Hall says he's now going to form a committee to look at it more further. But again, we're just sort of kicking this can further and further down the road on a subject that everybody from both parties says we need some kind of regulations out there. I asked if there was a simple solution last week. I think I was appropriately admonished by Don Vaughn for, you told me, there's never a simple bill. And that's kind of the problem, though. It wasn't a simple bill, and there's a variety of things in it that people had different opinions on. And it seems like, you know, after the Long Caucus meeting, I think they didn't end up coming in session until after five, you know, that day. They started. started their caucus meeting late also late in the day, and it just wasn't coming to pass. And it's kind of not a surprise in the sense that when something has taken years to do in the first place, that it's going to have obstacles to, you know, before it gets across the finish line and something that everyone agrees with it. And you had this really last-minute lobbying push from the hemp industry, but also, I mean, these THC beverages become so popular among craft breweries. Some of the beverage distributor companies were a... opposing this, and you saw this sort of back and forth. As I was watching the caucus, I mean, they had left the caucus and then Representative Tricia Cotham, the Democrat turned Republican from Charlotte, seemed to have been getting into it behind the closed doors with House Majority Leader Brendan Jay Jones, who was one of the supporters of this bill in its latest forum. So definitely some bitter divisions among Republicans on what to do about this. And when the Senate passed it, they did it in a, you know, pretty unhappy with the House because the Senate and the House aren't really getting along. conference reports they passed this week is, you know, probably the more significant ability to come together, but it just wasn't going to happen on this topic. Do South Friday news roundup. Colin Campbell, Don Vaughn, Daniel Bataglia here in studio, Felicia Sanmez on the line. I'm going to take, I guess, maybe not an off ramp, I don't know, a parallel lane here. To what extent could this...

kerfuffle, lack of action. Is this going to matter on the campaign trail? Like, Republicans are looking at some uphill, some uphill contours. I've talked to y'all. I've talked to folks in this legislative world. Republicans are concerned about losing seats. How does the hemp thing matter from an electoral standpoint? Maybe for single issue voters, you know, like that are directly impacted. I think there was a worry among Republicans. We heard this from a Republican strategist. Patrick Sebastian, who was on PBS state lines with me last week, he said that he thought this was a losing issue of Republicans. If you ban this stuff right before an election, suddenly a lot of people who maybe aren't that politically interested but happen to like, you know, THC beverages or some of these other hemp products that are out there are maybe going to be suddenly motivated. And that could be a negative for Republicans if they do this right before an election. All right. We'll keep you all posted and updated on this one. Felicia San Meswell, you are. Still with us, we would love to hear some good news on the transportation front more than 22 months after Haleen ravaged Western North Carolina. Tell us what is going on with roads, please. So State's Transportation Secretary, Daniel Johnson, was out here in Western North Carolina recently, where he announced that 99% of the roads that were damaged by Hurricane Helene have since been reopened. So that's an incredible accomplishment. All of us here in the West are just deeply grateful for how... how NCDOT has just really hustled to get things back up and running. That said, you know, that remaining 1%, it sounds like, you know, maybe not a big deal, but the projects that are in that 1% are really massive in scale. You've got Interstate 40 running through the Pigeon River Gorge up to Tennessee, which is a project that's not going to be done until, I believe, 2028. Wow. You've got the Hickory Nut Gorge, lots of roads down around the Batcave and chimney rock area. Those are not. going to be finished until 2029. And then you've got other smaller state roads like US 176, which is a road that I've reported on down in Polk County, southeast of Asheville, and local residents rely heavily on that road and many others like it. But for various reasons, usually to do with the mountainous terrain, the reconstruction of a lot of those roads is going to take a couple more years. So overall, Incredibly good news. Sure. It's really been amazing to see over this past nearly two years how much the transportation infrastructure has recovered, but still some major projects left to finish. Is the through line with the roads that are yet to be restored? Are these low-lying roads that were just washed away? Some of them, it kind of varies. Two of them are in very deep gorges, especially the Interstate 40 reconstruction project. And I went out there about a month ago to just see how the reconstruction is actually happening. And basically, NCDOT has created a whole...

city of its own of construction workers who are out there and contractors who are, you know, mining rock from the nearby Pisga National Forest to use to rebuild the retaining wall that the highway actually sits on. It's, I think, 80 or 100 feet above the river at some points. So it's definitely a really precarious place to be doing this kind of work. So I think in that case, it explains the big delay, but they've got, I think, the number one. was like 300 people out there working on it this summer. We've had, you know, all kinds of weather that has, I think, hampered a lot of these projects. So, yeah, I think it's just been a massive effort and still not quite at the finish line, but getting there. Yeah, 22 months, as I note. More than 22 months now since Haleen damaged much of Western North Carolina. Danielle Batagli, we didn't chat about this before the show. I'll give you that, I guess, cushion here on live radio. But... We're not expecting anything from Congress soon as it pertains to relief money or support for Helene, or are we? So I know they're fighting for it. I knew that. They are fighting for it. I don't know. I mean, everything in Congress is a little bit stalled right now. The House is out. The Senate's in. The Senate should not be here. They were supposed to go home last night and they can't get. We're going to get to that in a moment. It's right here on page seven of my script. They sure can't get along right now. And so I wouldn't expect anything right now, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. All right. Bottom of the hour, due south, North Carolina Friday news roundup. Trivia, come get some. And by some, we are referring to a stunning due south mug black with blue lettering W&C on the back. Today's question, please don't blurt it out. I think one of you two will maybe have this one or all three of you. Who is the only North Carolina candidate in the 21st century to lose? two general elections for the United States Senate. One more time. Who is the only North Carolina candidate this century to lose two general elections for the United States Senate? You can send in your responses to do south at wunc.org. Time for an update now on the acting attorney general saga. And there are updates involving Todd Blanche who continues to try to climb up a greased hill in his pursuit of Senate confirmation. He might have found a path here. North Carolina's senior lame duck senator Thom Tillis is involved in this story. Tell us about Thom Tillis's change of direction this week, please. So he's been confusing on this issue, to say the least. He has. Originally, he said he supported Todd Blanche because he helped him with the Jerome Powell investigation, getting that dropped. He's the...

financial reserve chairman, former financial reserve chairman. And then he said, I will not support him until he meets with the Epstein victims, which he then Todd Blanche did do the same day, meeting and go well. And then he said, I will not support you until you drop the 1776 fund, which allows people who participated in January 6 to get. restitution. Some level of compensation. Yeah. After being convicted of crimes. And then pardoned by the president. Basically, the president setting that up as these people were victims of political prosecution. And so that was a big sticking point for Thom Tillis that he doesn't believe people who harmed police officers at the U.S. Capitol. on January 6, 2021 should be allowed to access this money. And so Todd Blanche finally put in writing, not signed, that this is dead, which he's been saying for weeks now, the fund is dead. It also limited a settlement agreement, and this was part of the settlement agreement, but in the settlement, they had said that President Trump, his family and his companies could not be investigated for past tax. returns. Right. And so this limited it to the people who were part of a lawsuit that this settlement came out of, and that would be President Trump, his two oldest sons and the Trump organization. And so that was enough to get Thom Tillis across the line. All right. That got Thom Tillis across the line. And for a moment, at least for me this morning, you maybe just had better intel more quickly. It looked like perhaps Todd Blanche was in trouble because Susan Collins, Senator of Maine, Lisa Murkowski, Senator of Alaska. Bill Cassidy, Senator of Louisiana, who I should note are the only three remaining senators who voted to convict Donald Trump back in 2021, were holding out and potentially knows on Todd Blanche. And that with Mitch McConnell, who knows where, that could have spiked Todd Blanche, but that's not the most up-to-date information. Could have spiked Todd Blanche. No, around 1030, Bill Cassidy, Bill Cassidy, took to the floor and explained all his concerns about Todd Blanche. and all of the things that made Todd Blanche good. And he ultimately decided that there was enough for him to vote for Todd Blanche. I will say, though, I really want to talk to somebody who was in the chamber when he gave the speech because right at the end, he told the Louisiana. like the people he represents in Louisiana that he thought this through. But as he said it, it almost sounded like he was choking up a little bit. And that surprised me. So I want to hear from somebody who was in the room to see if that's just how it came across on C-SPAN or if that's really what was happening. What a mess. I know. Okay. I think that's all for now on Todd Blanche and this saga. When? We expect a full vote today. You were supposed to go home yesterday, the U.S. Senate. Are we going to have an attorney general confirmed by dinner time today? That's what they want to have happen. I have not seen an updated schedule from the Senate. I'm checking my email right now. It was not scheduled this morning because they did not have Bill Cassidy's vote. And I've not seen anything that says that Senate Majority Leader John Thune has added that to the calendar. But I think they will try to before the end of the day unless there's another holdout we don't know about. All right. We're going to trend.

from Congress back to the North Carolina General Assembly where One of the chambers this week approved legislation dealing with ADUs, auxiliary dwelling units. I saw there's some other funny name for these, like Grandma Shacks or something. I like that cottages, granny flats. I like that. Yeah. What did they do and why is it needed? So this was part of the regulatory reform bill that the Senate passed a week prior to the House. And it allows more ADUs by right in large areas. There's an exception for the coast. And anyone that's been to a town council, city council meeting in the past, I don't know, 10 years, a lot of people like to argue about housing and different types of housing. And there's been different, you know, red tape permitting process, that sort of thing. ADUs are also called granny flats, backyard cottages. I remember when Durham City Council is wrestling with this, they were trying to figure out how to fit it in a headline because not everyone knows the accessory dwelling unit. acronym, but basically it's This reduces a hurdle to increase housing supply. I think everyone agrees in large cities. There's a shortage of housing. For sure. This allows more of that. Is this? But can you give us a set? Like, this is going to open the floodgates and really make it easier. This is a symbolic thing they've done here. Well, a lot of municipalities have already kind of moved toward this. I think Rowley already has made this shift in the last few years. Yeah. So the controversy is like, I'd say it's like pretty much like fizzled out. But now this. Yeah, this sort of takes the battle to the state level now that. you're sort of resolving this in a few of the larger cities that still weren't sure what to do with this. And whenever they bring this issue up, it's always controversial. There's people who really like this as a way to expand housing and other people who are worried, all my neighbors are going to build these little houses in their backyard and rent them out to college students to have parties in or something. And that's always the pushback you hear on this. Or you wonder, yeah, is it someone like an extended, like they've been referred to as like in-law buildings too, you know, if your in-laws move in with you. But then it's like where all the car is going to. part, you know, all of like the other issues that come with increased housing. I got a couple of education updates. If you have anything to round this out with, please jump in here. The superintendent of the state's second largest school district remains on leave with scant details into an ongoing investigation. According to WFAE radio, Crystal Hill, the Charlotte-Meklinburg superintendent, is suspended. Last night, the school board met and went into closed session for hours. Now, Hill has been suspended since mid-June. When the board emerged, no further action was taken, nor did it. details provided. Thursday's meeting was the seventh closed-door special session since April. That's when the school board voted down the superintendent's budget in a surprise move. School in Charlotte Meck begins later this month.

Meanwhile, the Winston-Salem Forsyth County School Superintendent is retiring next month after 33 years in education. According to WFDD Radio, Don Phipps is stepping down to help his brothers as caregivers to their 88-year-old mother. Phipps has been at the helm in the district as Winston-Sand-Fersight County School officials have worked through a major financial crisis across the last year. They recently announced that the district is debt-free. This follows a $46 million budget hole. as recently as last summer. Phipps' last day is September the 30th. All right. In case you missed it, one programming note for you before we step aside here for a quick break. We spent the Wednesday hour with a focus on political violence, former elected officials. and scholars talk about the moment that we're in presently in American political discourse, what it might mean for the campaign trail this fall. You can find those conversations and other Do South offerings at WUNC.org slash do South. You, of course, can also download and subscribe our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you do that on demand listing. Let me throw you the trivia question one more time. We'll do it here in about 10 or 15 minutes after we talk with Dan Cain investigative reporter at the NNO. who is the only North Carolina candidate in the 21st century to lose two general elections for the United States Senate. Ponder that one. And in the meantime, we will say thank you to Felicia Sanmez, who joined us on the line from BPR in Asheville. Alicia, Felicia, thank you as always for the insight. Thank you so much, Jeff. It was great to be with you. All right. Hanging out with Colin Campbell, Danielle Bataglia, Don Vaughn. For the remainder of the hour, Dan Cain, investigative reporter stops by in just a moment here on listening. supported due south on WUNC News.

Welcome back to listener-supported WNC News. It's Dues South Friday News Roundup. A couple of prominent, notable political figures of different ideologies have birthdays tomorrow. Phil Berger turns 74. The Republican has sat atop to state senate for 16 years, during which time he has led a transformation of politics in our state. Berger has become one of the most significant elected officials in North Carolina's history. And Erskine Bowles celebrates his 81st birthday tomorrow. The Democrat served in several posts during the Clinton administration. Ultimately, ascending to White House Chief of Staff, Bowles was just the 19th person to ever serve in that role in the late 1990s. Erskine Bowles then took aim at the U.S. Senate and twice secured the nomination. However, Bowles lost in consecutive elections to Elizabeth Dole in 2002 and Richard Burr in 2004. That means Erskine Bowles was the answer to our trivia question today. Will is our winner. Congratulations to Will on picking up a snazzy-Dusouth mug. We're hanging out with Congress. Colin, Danielle, and Don, welcoming in now Dan Kane, investigative reporter at the N&O. Dan, good to have you back on due south. Well, thanks for having me. All right. You've been reporting on some behind-the-scenes happenings in the highly regulated state alcohol industry, the alcoholic beverage control commission ABC stores, as we know them. They oversee regulation, sale, purchase, transportation, possession, among many other facets of alcohol. We're going to get to the controversy in a moment. But if we can, let's start with two, I view them or read them as central players in your reporting. Just briefly, tell us who, what, are Greater Carolina and the M Group. Okay, well, Greater Carolina is a nonprofit, political kind of advocacy nonprofit, started in 2018 by an aide to then Representative Jason Sane. He was a pretty powerful member at the time who was a chief budget writer, you know, a guy who kind of really has a lot of control over the purse strings down there. And so basically in 2022, they started holding these. distillery tours in Louisville area, inviting lawmakers, lobbyists were going, their clients. Some of them were also going to these things. They're under the radar. The first one went under the radar. The second one became public because, you know, a worker at one of one of distilleries put out, posted on Reddit that, you know, these guys were. Pretty unruly when they showed up. And I think you all folks in this room all kind of picked up on that. And then things kind of got running from there. A complaint was filed by Carolina Forward. That's a kind of left-leaning kind of think tank nonprofit out of Carborough. And as the digging started, they...

You know, Lauren Freeman basically felt like, yes, there was a need for criminal investigation. So Lauren Freeman, Wake County District Attorney, gets involved. These distillery tours, let's hone in on 2024. Several North Carolina lawmakers are there, but remind us. Laws were broken. Charges did come? Yes, yes. This year, four lobbyists were charged with misdemeanor offense for violating the gift band by kind of underwriting, you know, this trip, the 2024 trip. And one of those, since I'll kind of segue into the M group here, one of those lobbyists. also has an M Group subsidiary as a client. The subsidiary is called Mooresville BTR. And so, you know, last October, we did a pretty lengthy story about how... Moresville, BTR, was building a residential community in that town. And they, you know, they went to the town board and said, hey, you know, we'll build this $15 million connector road for you. We'll connect two big north-south highways in the town as part of, you know, winning approval for our development. And the town said, oh, great, we're getting a free route out of this. Why not? You know, well, the following year. $15 million pops up in the final version of the state budget that is directed to a regional entity called the Centralina that, in turn, supposed to basically turn it over to developer to pay for this road. Okay. And while this is happening, you know, Something you're never like $400,000 is flowing to state lawmakers in their campaign accounts. And so, you know, we've got this situation where, you know, M Group is apparently trying to exercise some political influence, you know, to get things taken care of for them. They're being reimbursed for their altruism. Is that maybe a fair way to look at it? You could put it that way. And I did, just to be clear. Okay. All right. I want to pivot to this warehouse. There's a warehouse that is apparently related or maybe not, depending on whom you ask, an ABC warehouse. The basics here, where is this proposed planned warehouse? Who wants it? Is it needed? Yeah. I mean, the ABC Commission has been asking for this for about a couple three years. They even got funding for a study, I think back in the 2023 budget. And what they've been pushing for in the last couple of years is either getting a state grant to build it. And this is a massive warehouse. All of your liquor comes from, I think, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's one of the issues they're having. I went down there and actually looked at the warehouse. And the way it's designed, it's designed for an earlier time. There's a rail line that's abandoned now that runs down one side. You can imagine, you know, the liquor would come off the rail cars and then it would go over to the bays on the other side.

It's not how things work right now. It's also much smaller. It's like 200,000 square feet. This would be like three times a size. Yes. And right now they're saying that there are a lot of, you know, sort of like specialty, you know, liquor. Sorry, I don't drink that much. So I can't help you too much on that. But all these, like, craft liquor distilleries that have popped up. It's not like everyone's ordering Jack Daniels anymore. Yeah, so it's a lot harder to process those kinds of orders with a warehouse that small. They actually have to pay for extra space in a warehouse in, I think, in Johnson County. Okay. So there's these entities. They're giving... These tours, at the same time, there is a need, it sounds like, and that's widely agreed upon, a need for a new, more updated, modernized warehouse. But how does the M Group factor in here? And tell us about the role of Brendan Jay Jones, Republican of Columbus County. Well, let me tell you, there's another connection here with the M. Please, please. Okay. And so the local representative for Moresville BTR, you know, handling the development in Moresville was David Cobel. He's also the director of Greater Carolina. And co-hosts a radio show with originally Jason Sane, but now Vicki Sawyer, said Senator as well. It's an interesting figure. Yeah, that's, that's right. That's right. And a former town commissioner in Morrisville. So that's this other, other tie-in between Greater Carolina and the M-group. There's actually like a shared person there, central person there. But let me pause you real quick. Is that illegal? Is that, is that, it just, it's odd. It might hint to something deeper. Yeah, well, it, yeah, is it legal? No, it's not not illegal. But it does. give you pause in terms of like what's happening with, you know, these two or three things that are happening in state government. Because David Colble is, you know, very politically connected. This company did get $15 million that lawmakers really haven't wanted to explain as far as, I mean, I've tried, you know, reached out. And then so let's, let's move forward to the, to the liquor warehouse. So, so basically, you know, there's this need for this warehouse. A year ago, Brendan Jay Jones introduces an amendment on the floor of the House. So we are right at the point where legislation is about to go out the door. And he tells everybody, and this is legislation on construction efficiencies for buildings. And he says, hey, you know, paraphrasing. Sure. He says, I would like to amend this bill. to include a public-private partnership option for the construction of this warehouse. And he says, the chairman, Hank Bauer, asked for this. The chairman of the ABC Commission. That's right. That's right. So lawmakers says Bauer asked for it. Did Bauer ask for it? He says he did not.

And furthermore, about several weeks after that was passed, and of course, you know, all the lawmakers are on the, you know how these things work. You guys are down there, you know, they hear this, they go, oh, okay, he wants it, you know. They're always taking each other at their word about what group wants what. Yeah, so the pass is like 107 to 1, I think, is what the numbers were. Several weeks later. Hank Bauer says, and to be fair, I got this through a spokesperson. I have not had a chance to talk with Hank Bauer, you know, specifically, you know, interview him about this. So, but Hank Bauer gets a call from the lobbyist for the M group. Actually, their subsidiary, Moresville BTR, for a meeting with Brendan Jay Jones, Representative Jay Jones. And in that meeting, Bauer says that Jay Jones tells him, the only way you're going to get this through the house is through this public-private option. A private partnership option. And is this ostensibly a no-bid deal? Is this a lawmaker saying, hey, if you want to get this done, you're going to do it with my guy or my folks over here. Is that the writing on the wall? What he has said is you need to do it through this mechanism. He's not saying it has to be M group, but he's saying it has to be this mechanism. And then two weeks later, the lobbyist sets up a second meeting. And this time it is with the M group and the M group is coming in and they're making their pitch for, you know, how he would do this. And in both cases, Hank Bauer says, this is, I don't support this. This is way more expensive than us getting a loan or a grant to build this. And, you know, he's done some calculations. I'm not sure how he's come up with them. that it would cost more than $500 million to do this versus $310 million for a loan. Dan Cain with us here on Duesouth investigative reporter at the NNO. So there's a proposal for a warehouse. There is a possible line of funding, but ultimately the funding does not end up in the budget. So where do things stand right now? You know, what happened is the Senate is... pretty much an agreement with the commission, you know, about providing a loan. They passed an omnibus ABC bill that included that loan. It went over the House shortly before the budget vote, and the House just shut it down. And then the spokesperson for the House Speaker said, we're not taking this up. Yet another House and Senate impasse, as we were discussing with him earlier this hour. Clearly a theme here. Brendan Jay Jones, maybe overplayed his hand, if not misplayed his hand. But Don Vaughna thought. He's a majority leader. I don't think that's been mentioned yet. So that's a significant leadership role. And yeah, this isn't happening anymore. You know, our colleague Esther Francis asked, I think, Senate Leader Burger about this in the past couple weeks. And it's not happening this year. But a lot of things aren't happening this year anymore. in the legislature, no bill is truly dead. So it could always come back up when they're in the voting session on November. Due South, Friday News Roundup. We've got a few more minutes here with Colin, Don, Dan, and Danielle. I'm going to work in two sports nuggets and just see if it's fodder for anybody here. And if not, that's fine. The NC State Wolfpack community and basketball fans are remembering Cozel McQueen, who died this week. McQueen was a 6'11 sophomore center when State embarked on its improbable run to the...

And ABC stores why the system is set up this way. Spoiler, it's borne out of prohibition. We're going to hear from Jeremy Markovich from North Carolina's rabbit hole. That is on Monday. Then Tuesday, Jeff Jackson, the Attorney General, stops by for a wide-ranging conversation that we recorded yesterday. I don't know if this is fair or not, but I'm going to give you a minute to tell me about the Robbinsville mayor. Can we do that in a minute? Yeah, so we were discussing earlier about Graham County, which is one of the smallest, at least populous counties, way up in the mountains near Tennessee. And the mayor there is taking a leave of absence because he was charged with a number of drug charges, including possession of methamphetamine, which, you know, you don't normally see local elected officials into that kind of hard drugs. But some big mess up in Robbinsville way up in the mountains. North Carolina News, the gift that just keeps on giving, even in August we have Robbinsville. making its way onto the due south Friday news roundup. All right, big thank you to everybody who has been here on the program today. You heard from Felicia Sanmesz of BPR earlier. Dan Cain, investigative reporter at the news and observer, has been with us here for part of the hour and also hanging out have been Colin Campbell, Capital Bureau Chief here at WNC News, also host to the politics podcast, subscribe and download if you have not yet done so. Don Vaughn was in the... the chair as well. Capital Bureau chief at the N&O. She's hosted the Under the Dome podcast and sleep deprived. Hello, Danielle Pataglia, congressional impact reporter for the news and observer as well as the Charlotte Observer. My name is Jeff Tabiri. This is due south, the production of WNC and a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our producers are Stasia Brown and Rachel McCarthy. Rachel Hernandez is our intern. Danarius Thomas is the technical director. Aaron Kiever is our issue. executive producer theme music comes from Quilla. For Leone of the Inge, I am Jeff. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again Monday at noon.

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