Senate Polling
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley is criticizing polling that shows him far behind former Gov. Roy Cooper. Whatley blasted a poll by the conservative Carolina Journal that says Cooper is leading by 15 percentage points. He told reporters that the poll was conducted by "the worst pollster in the history of North Carolina." Carolina Journal contracts with Harper Polling to conduct its surveys, which have shown an increasing lead for Cooper since March.
"Every single poll has showed this race is tightening except for yours, which is a trash poll," he said after a campaign event about transgender athletes, in video provided by C-Span. "But the fact is that that the polls have shown that this race is absolutely tightening, that we're right at margin of error, and we're going to win because I've been to all 100 counties."
Recent polls in the Senate race all show Cooper with a lead, ranging from 5 percentage points (a poll by Quantus Insights) to 15 (Carolina Journal). A polling average from Real Clear Polling shows Cooper with a steady lead of around eight percentage points over the past two months, up from 6.8 percentage points in June. That margin is higher than most other competitive Senate races across the country.
Those numbers have prompted some national Republican super PACs to consider shifting their advertising to Senate races in other states. The news outlet Semafor reported last week that a GOP PAC called Old North Action has removed $6.5 million in ad reservations for the race. But Whatley told reporters he's talked to GOP Senate leaders and been assured his race will continue to receive funding. He noted that President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have both campaigned in North Carolina in recent weeks.
"We are going to continue to get support, right?" he said. "We just had the president down last week. We had Vice President Vance in state earlier this week. We will get the support we need to win this race."
PACs tied to President Donald Trump and the Senate Republican Caucus continue to spend millions on ads in North Carolina, and so do PACs for Democrats.
Boomtown Rankings
Two North Carolina destinations both cracked the top five on a list of the nation’s biggest “boomtowns.” The online marketplace LendingTree said it studied where people across the country are “moving, building and starting businesses.” The Raleigh area landed at No. 2 and Charlotte at No. 4 on the list published in August. It scored 50 U.S. metros across these three categories: work and earnings; people and housing; and business and economy. Raleigh dominated the work and earnings category, with a 4.4% jump in the number of workers and a 6.5% rise in median income from 2023 to 2024 — some of the highest values in the study.
Highway 12 Future
The N.C. Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division is launched a 24-hour emergency ferry service Sunday morning after storm damage forced the closure of N.C. Highway 12.
A powerful nor’easter severely damaged the highway on the Outer Banks. The storm washed out over 500 to 800 feet of pavement near the Pea Island Visitor Center, cutting off all road access to Hatteras Island. The emergency route will restore a critical transportation link between Hatteras Island and the mainland.
The service began at 11 a.m. Sunday and will run between Stumpy Point and Rodanthe. Dare County has enacted emergency entry restrictions for all Rodanthe-bound ferry departures. Access to Hatteras Island is currently strictly limited to essential personnel, critical business vendors and permanent residents.
North Carolina has spent tens of millions of public dollars maintaining NC Highway 12. Now, a price tag that could reach $1 billion may be on the horizon as transportation officials consider whether to keep repairing the Outer Banks route or pursue a major alternative. The state is studying several possibilities for an 11-mile stretch, including maintaining the road in its current location, relocating portions or building a bridge through Pamlico Sound.
“NCDOT is certainly working on longer-term solutions to this,” Tim Hass, communications officer for the North Carolina Department of Transportation's Division 1 and Ferry Division, told WRAL Friday. “But that takes political decisions. That takes money.”
Around $70 million was spent on NC 12 between 2010 and 2024 on routine maintenance and federal disaster work. That doesn't include broader beach nourishment projects along the Outer Banks.
North Carolina has known about the highway's vulnerabilities for decades. An NCDOT-sponsored study identified problem areas along NC 12 as far back as 1991. Now, NCDOT and the Federal Highway Administration are developing the Solving Access for N.C. 12 in Dare County, or SAND, Plan using federal grant money.
The study focuses on the stretch between the Marc Basnight Bridge and the Rodanthe “Jug Handle” Bridge and is evaluating potential improvements based on cost, feasibility and environmental and community impacts.
Laura Moore, a professor of earth, marine and environmental sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill whose research is contributing to the study, told WRAL Friday that every option comes with a cost. “There are no options that don't involve significant tradeoffs,” Moore said.
Keeping the road in its current location leaves it exposed to a rapidly changing shoreline. Moving it farther inland presents geographic and environmental challenges. A bridge through Pamlico Sound could provide more reliable access but would require significant funding and years of planning and construction. Moore said one concept could require a bridge roughly 17 miles long.
“It's also extremely expensive, and it takes a long time to gather the funding and go through the processes necessary to build a bridge like that,” she said. Continuing to repair the existing road carries its own long-term costs. “The shoreline is just moving extremely rapidly,” Moore said. “I think we're facing a situation now where continuing to maintain the road in that location is just not viable.”
NC 12 is the primary transportation link for communities on Hatteras Island. About 4,000 permanent residents live there, and the highway also carries tourists and other visitors.
Railroad CEO
Carl Warren no longer leads the North Carolina Railroad Company in a “mutually agreed” decision between him and the board, according to a release. Warren will continue working with the board and leadership to support a smooth transition at the 177-year-old company, though his name is no longer on the website. The group’s board of directors hired Los Angeles-based consulting firm Korn Ferry to conduct a national search for a CEO. Malcomb Coley, a former Charlotte managing partner at EY and a director of the railroad, will be board liaison to the executive team until a president and CEO is named. The NCRR is a private company, with its shares owned by the state. Its 39 employees oversee 317 miles of track between Charlotte and Morehead City’s port, providing passenger and freight service. It also offers economic development services. Warren joined NCRR in August 2020 from CSX Transportation, where he led industrial, port and commercial development across 23 states, two Canadian provinces and Mexico.
Opposition Campaign
A man used an alias and rallied people in Clemmons against a proposed asphalt plant there, all while working on behalf of a potential competitor, according to a lawsuit filed by Maymead. Maymead, a family-owned asphalt paving company based in Mountain City, Tennessee, filed the lawsuit in Forsyth County Superior Court on Monday. The lawsuit named Land Use Strategies LLC and Christopher Hopkins as defendants. Land Use Strategies could not be immediately reached for comment on the lawsuit.
Maymead said in the lawsuit that "to protect his client's market position and competitive and pricing advantage, Christopher Hopkins established and used fake names and false identities, created fake Facebook pages and websites." The goal, according to Maymead, was "an attempt to manipulate the competition for, and pricing of, asphalt in the Forsyth County region ... and to eliminate or minimize competition in the marketplace, thereby unfairly protecting the market advantage of the company that hired defendants."
Maymead's plans surfaced in late May with a legal notice listing that the company had applied for an air-quality permit. The permit was required before construction could begin on a proposed asphalt plant. The permit application was filed on July 16. The property is within the Clemmons municipal limits even though it has a Winston-Salem street address. Maymead Vice President Mary Katherine Law, who oversees the Foothills division, told the Journal in a May 29 interview that once the air quality permit is approved, the company projects beginning production by late spring 2027.
Several opponents of the Maymead plant told Clemmons Village officials in early June that the lobbying efforts of Hopkins, as well as his online professional and social media presence, appeared suspicious. They said Hopkins identified himself as Chris Sanderson, a concerned citizen who encouraged them to protest before the Clemmons Village Council, hoping that members would oppose the Maymead project or attempt to halt the sale of the property. Maymead claims Land Use Strategies and Hopkins were hired by "a yet-disclosed competitor ... to disrupt Maymead's entry into the marketplace and interfere with its acquisition of land for an asphalt plant."
Land Use Strategies, which has offices in California, Colorado and Franklin, Tennessee, says on its website: "We specialize in guiding clients through the essential pre-entitlement stage of real estate development, where political risk, community sentiment and regulatory complexity can determine a project's success or failure. We focus on anticipating challenges from community or political opposition, complex review procedures, or changing local political dynamics, and actively build the public and political support needed to secure entitlements."
Maymead said in the lawsuit that Hopkins "pretended to be a neighbor of the Clemmons property and gained entry into citizens' homes under false pretenses in order to create opposition where opposition did not exist, to disseminate information known to be false, misleading or inaccurate about asphalt plants and the process by which the air quality permit approval is achieved."
Maymead is requesting compensatory damages of at least $25,000 and that the allegations against the defendants be extended to the company that hired them once it is identified. Maymead operates 15 asphalt plants, two ready-mix concrete plants, and a fixed-base quarry operation in Mountain City. Maymead's main market is western North Carolina, southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee.
I-77 Support
Charlotte City Council reversed course and got back in line behind the prospective widening of Interstate 77. The 7-4 vote Monday came after state Transportation Secretary Daniel Johnson dangled a $400 million carrot in front of city officials — and after state legislators waved a $70 million stick at them. The stick was a threatened clawback from local governments in the region, Charlotte primarily, of the money DOT’s already spent planning the controversial project. The carrot was Johnson’s promise of $300 million in to-be-negotiated community benefits and at least $100 million of “supplemental transportation funding for the Mecklenburg County region.”
The $300 million in community benefits is money Johnson and other DOT officials are hoping they can convince a private sector builder and operator of the highway’s proposed toll lanes to pony up. The source of the $100 million isn’t specified in the memorandum of agreement presented to the City Council in advance of Monday’s meeting.
Normally, DOT’s construction money has to run through a state-law dictated prioritization scheme that dates from the early days of former Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration in 2013. But Monday’s debate didn’t focus on that particular detail, with council members instead taking issue with the General Assembly’s move this summer to give them an October deadline to reverse course.
One of the project’s opponents, Councilman JD Mazuera Arias, called the situation “a trap that has been set before us” and a matter of misplaced priorities.
“We have $650 million to subsidize billionaires,” he says, alluding to the renovation of Bank of America Stadium. “We have millions of dollars to incentivize corporations to bring their headquarters here. But yet, when we are asked how to pay for nearly $70 million on an unconstitutional mandated financial penalty, suddenly we are stuck.”
But Councilman Malcolm Graham, a former state senator, said the $300 million offer is bigger than the budgets of many North Carolina cities. “I’m a problem solver. I’m not a permanent no,” he said.
Graham was one of the six council members who voted in May to rescind council support for the project. He flipped on Monday, along with Councilwoman Joi Mayo. He says the project’s still early enough in the design phase — “only designed 10% to 15%” — for local input to have meaningful influence on the outcome. But many of the opponents in the audience chanted “no more tolls” on their way out, indicating a broader objection to a concept they and council critics question will have any real traffic-congestion benefit.
“You’ll never be mayor, dude,” one said, heckling Graham during the debate. “I’d rather be honest,” Graham responded.
Johnson’s proposal includes a preliminary framework for splitting up the $300 million, though the text stresses that the final outcome remains subject to city/DOT negotiations. Half the money is reserved for “cap and stitch treatments” of many of the highway’s interchanges — in essence, covering the interstate proper where topography allows with new structure.
His proposal also earmarks $30 million for “community facilities to address food insecurity” in a trio of west Charlotte road corridors. But it stops short of saying these will involve building grocery stores, an idea in Johnson’s first mention of a community benefits package that’s since drawn criticism from the N.C. Retail Merchants Association.