Under the Dome: Riggs wins in final recount of Supreme Court race, but challenges remain
Good morning and welcome to the Under the Dome newsletter. I’m Emily Vespa.
A News & Observer analysis of Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s challenges to more than 60,000 ballots found that Black registered voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters, reports Kyle Ingram.
The election protests mostly challenge Democratic and unaffiliated voters, the analysis found. They also challenge an outsized portion of voters aged 18 to 25 compared to their share of the electorate: 23% to 12%, respectively.
NC GOP Communications Director Matt Mercer said the challenges identified voters by looking solely at issues that spanned all political parties and demographics. He said the State Board of Elections should be blamed for counting ineligible votes.
The final count of votes in the race on Tuesday upheld Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs’s victory, reports Kyle Ingram. That means Griffin’s protests, which the North Carolina Democratic Party has challenged in federal court, may be his only avail. If they’re accepted, it could change the race’s outcome.
The state board plans to consider the protests Wednesday. Griffin asked the state Court of Appeals to order the board to make a decision by Tuesday, but the court dismissed his request.
If the board rules against Griffin, he could appeal to the Wake County Superior Court. From there, he could eventually appeal the case to the state Supreme Court.
LARGE CROWD RALLIES AGAINST CONTROVERSIAL BILL AT MORAL MONDAY PROTEST
The Rev. William Barber excoriated Republican lawmakers for their recent efforts to strip power from incoming Democratic officials, telling a large crowd of demonstrators Monday that the bill is a “legislative coup,” reports Avi Bajpai.
Barber led a Moral Monday rally against the wide-ranging bill that moves money to a state disaster relief fund but mostly deals with taking power from the governor and other statewide offices won by Democrats in November.
““That bill does not deliver the needed aid to my community, but rather, it subverts our democracy, is a power grab, and ignores the will of the people,” said Vicki Meath, executive director of Just Economics, who said she took a bus from Asheville to be at the protest. “That is a slap in the face to Western North Carolina.”
Organizers urged the crowd to come back to the legislature and protest on Wednesday, when the House is expected to vote to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill.
WHY THE NATIONAL GUARD LEFT WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
The North Carolina National Guard is no longer working directly in Western North Carolina to support disaster recovery efforts, a spokesperson said in an email. Social media users have criticized the retreat, saying it’s evidence the state is neglecting storm survivors.
A Guard spokesperson said Western North Carolina county leaders found that its soldiers were no longer needed. The last soldier left on Nov. 23.
“All NCNG supporting efforts were turned over to the local county emergency managers, and leading governmental agencies,” the spokesperson wrote. “Many of our NCNG members, especially those who live and work in Western NC, continue to volunteer through different organizations assisting where the county and different communities see the need.”
Gov. Roy Cooper activated the National Guard on Sept. 25, two days before the remnants of Hurricane Helene pummeled Western North Carolina.
The nearly two-month response was the longest sustained natural disaster response in the North Carolina National Guard’s history, according to Brig. Gen. Wes Morrison. After Hurricane Florence in 2018, the National Guard was activated to help with relief efforts for just over a week.
“This Joint Task Force rescued over 865 people, delivered over 22,000 tons of relief supplies, cleared over 1,600 obstacles while repairing an untold number of roadways, bridges and culverts,” Morrison wrote in a message to Guardsmen Nov. 25. “As you return to your universities, colleges, places of employment and families, I want you all to know how much a difference you have made in helping others in Western North Carolina.”
MORROW MAKES MISLEADING CLAIMS ABOUT INCUMBENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Michele Morrow, a Republican who recently lost her bid for state superintendent of public instruction after defeating Superintendent Catherine Truitt in the primary, slammed Truitt on social media Monday with a host of allegations. But some of them are misleading.
Morrow claimed that “after 4 years in office 67% of 8th graders are not proficient in reading” and that Truitt, a Republican, “removed student genders from the statewide database because the ‘Biden administration told her to.’”
Morrow appears to be referencing data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the NAEP, which is administered to students nationwide every two years. In 2019, 33% of North Carolina eighth-graders scored at or above proficient in reading.
As T. Keung Hui previously reported, the NAEP has a different proficiency definition than North Carolina’s end-of-year exams. What North Carolina defines as proficient in end-of-year testing more closely aligns with what the NAEP considers a basic achievement level. Seventy-two percent of North Carolina eighth-graders in 2019 scored at or above the NAEP basic achievement level in reading.
But Truitt took office in 2021, and the 2024 NAEP results haven’t yet been released. We do know scores fell between 2019 and 2022. In 2022, 66% of North Carolina eighth-graders scored at or above the basic level in NAEP’s reading exam, and 26% scored at or above the proficient level.
Last school year, 51% of the state’s eighth-graders scored at or above proficient in North Carolina’s end-of-year reading exam.
As for the second claim, it seems Morrow is talking about a 2022 change to the state’s PowerSchool information system that blocked a student’s sex from being visible to teachers without a school’s permission. It didn’t erase the information from the system, T. Keung Hui reported at the time. The change was intended to protect transgender students from being outed at school.
WHAT ELSE WE’RE WORKING ON
With House Republicans one vote shy of a supermajority next year, they’ll need to sway lawmakers from across the aisle to override the Democratic governor’s veto. Avi Bajpai highlights four Democrats to watch who could bridge the gap.
St. Augustine’s University was again denied accreditation, the school announced Tuesday, which casts more uncertainty on the university’s future. Korie Dean has the details.
Today’s newsletter was by Emily Vespa. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
You can sign up to receive the Under the Dome newsletter at newsobserver.com/newsletters. Want your friends to get our email, too? Forward them this newsletter so they can sign up.
We want to know what you would like to see in the Under the Dome newsletter. Do you like highlights from the legislature? Political analysis? Do you have a question you’d like The News & Observer team to answer? Tell us here. You can also email us at dome@newsobserver.com.
Don’t forget to follow our tweets and listen to our Under the Dome podcast for more developments.