It Really Does Feel Close in North Carolina

The Run-Up

The New York Times

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here’s what makes North Carolina, with its 16 Electoral College votes, unique among the battlegrounds this year. Come election night, it will be one of the first of the closely fought states where the polls will close, giving the campaigns, and the public, early clues on where the night is headed. The state is probably the best opportunity for Democrats to win a state this year that they didn’t win in 2020, and the party — along with the state’s Democratic governor — is optimistic that demographic shifts in the state might favor Kamala Harris. North Carolina is still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which hit late last month, caused an estimated $53 billion in damages and upended early voting plans in the western — and heavily Republican-leaning — part of the state. It also led to a flood of misinformation about the governor, Roy Cooper, and the federal disaster response. On today’s show, how Hurricane Helene and the misinformation that followed have reshaped the election landscape in this crucial battleground state — and changed the closing messages from both parties. On today’s episode: Gov. Roy Cooper, Democrat of North Carolina

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what is this a creek river what is this this this is the pigeon river.
0:05.0	Late last week my colleague Anna spent an afternoon in Canton North Carolina
0:11.0	a little town tucked into the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state.
0:16.7	It was a bright sunny day and she was being shown around a local brewery by its owners. And where did you say the water reached?
0:24.4	Oh, can you see, um, trying to find your waterline?
0:29.8	You see the teal that goes up right at the top of that.
0:33.6	I see it.
0:34.6	Yeah, I see the waterline, I think.
0:36.3	Wow, so that's three stories high.
0:38.3	Oh my gosh, wow.
0:40.1	The brewery, just three weeks earlier, have been submerged by floodwaters from Hurricane Helene.
0:47.2	It's just devastating. It's the mud that's six inches deep on everything you own.
0:55.3	That you gotta pull out one by one
0:58.3	and make sense of the mess.
1:01.6	The death toll in North Carolina is currently around 100 and the storm caused an estimated
1:07.0	$53 billion in damage.
1:10.3	It also posed huge problems for election officials, who were gearing up for early voting in this critical battleground state.
1:18.0	The day Anna was there was the first day of early voting,
1:22.0	and a few polling places in the western part of the state
1:24.8	were still shut down. Today is the first day of early voting though I guess do you all
1:30.0	know how you're going to vote? I haven't even gone there yet, you know, right now. It's just
1:37.0	kind of one foot in front of the other. So, you know, I'll probably let my mind go there later, but we've got time and you know as far as it goes now
	...

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