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July 14th , 2023 Len’s Political Note #574 Josh Stein North Carolina Governor
2024 General Election
Just perfect. Josh Stein has a perfectly progressive story. His dad was a lawyer. Born in New York, he grew up in DC and practiced law in DC and in North Carolina. His dad, Adam Stein, was the “principal architect” of his firm’s civil rights strategy. North Carolina’s first integrated law firm was central to addressing civil rights in North Carolina and more. By the 1980s, Josh Stein’s dad’s law firm was working on creating defense strategies for the indigent. Adam Stein was the first chair of North Carolina’s Indigent Defense Commission. Democratic Governor Jim Hunt asked him to create an office of Appellant Defender and then to serve as the state’s first appellant defender. Adam Stein became one of the founders of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, on whose Board he sat. His son, Josh Stein, is running for Governor of North Carolina in November, 2024.
Josh Stein grew up in Chapel Hill conscious of his dad’s work. He went to the local public high school, Chapel Hill High School. A student and an athlete, he played soccer. After high school, he went to Dartmouth instead of Haverford, where his father went. After college, he left the country to teach.
Josh Stein spent two years teaching history in Harere, Zimbabwe. Notes from another teacher who also taught in Zimbabwe describe the stifling, colonial curriculum and the country’s escape from that curriculum to offer an historical perspective of Zimbabwe and other former colonized country’s place in the world. Teaching would not be Josh Stein’s life – not in Zimbabwe or back in the US.
Josh Stein went to Harvard. He got a law degree and a Master’s Degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Back in North Carolina, he worked for the Self Help Credit Union, revitalizing abandoned properties into single family homes that could create a community in Durham.
Politics was always a possibility. Josh Stein managed John Edwards successful campaign for the US Senate. Then he found a mentor. Not Edwards, but the newly elected North Carolina Attorney General. In 2001, Roy Cooper appointed Josh Stein Deputy Attorney General for Consumer Affairs. He served with Roy Cooper during Cooper’s first two terms as Attorney General.
Roy Cooper had mastered being a Democrat in a North Carolina that was not at all certain it would transition into becoming a state that elected national Democrats. Part of that mastery was his close connection with the state. He had been a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina. Cooper was able to moderate his ambitions. Several times, he turned down encouragement to run for the US Senate. He seemed determined to remain Attorney General forever.
Josh Stein left the Attorney General’s office and ran for the State Senate in 2008. He was, in a way, a law and order guy. As Deputy Attorney General, he had addressed online sexual predators. His crackdown on “payday lenders” who charged exorbitant interest rates was sufficiently severe so they seem to have left the state for better pickings elsewhere. In the State Senate, his way to arrest and convict more violent criminals was to make the criminals catchable. He expanded the state’s DNA data base. He also helped make kids and other potential victims not catchable. The legislature banned the use of GPS tracking devices for stalking. He also led an effort to pass the School Safety Act, creating coordination between the state and school districts on issues of student safety.
By 2016, Roy Cooper was finally ready to run for governor. Josh Stein was ready to run for Attorney General. Josh Stein’s Attorney General campaign stressed the continuity he would bring. He would continue the good work that Roy Cooper had done. He promised a commitment to protecting abortion and support for voting rights. He was elected by 20,232 votes – 50.22 – 49.78. This was no landslide. Nor was the 2020 election, which Josh Stein won by 12,622 votes or 50.13 – 49.87.
As Attorney General, after discovering backlogs of rape test kids, Josh Stein sought funding to test those kits. The results led to multiple arrests for assault, including one for attempted murder. He was one of the four state Attorney Generals who negotiated the national opioid settlement and was the first to sue JUUL for marketing e-cigarettes to minors. During the Covid epidemic, he focused on price gouging.
Josh Stein’s relationship with the state legislature was not great. Most resonating was a vote to remove his office from representing the state. The legislature complained that he refused to appeal a ruling that a state law disenfranchising convicted felons was unconstitutional.
Running to replace Roy Cooper as governor, Josh Stein is running on continuity again. He is offering continuity with Roy Cooper’s policies as well as continuity with his parents’ goals. He points to his father’s civil rights work in North Carolina’s, to his mother’s commitment to health care, and to his family’s commitment to the ethics of Judaism. Notwithstanding the legislature’s opposition, he points to his ability to work in a bipartisan fashion.
He gets support for his bipartisan approach from Herbert Slatery, the former Republican Attorney General of Tennessee with whom he worked on the opioid settlement. Slatery said “We both had an equal amount of disgust for what the companies had done to foster and enhance the epidemic. “It didn’t really make any difference whether he was a Democrat….and I was a Republican…. . We were both trying to do our best to solve a problem.” Josh Stein’s version of that sentiment was that “Opioids do not ask victims if they’re rural or urban. They don’t ask if you’re Black of white. They don’t ask if you’re old or young. They don’t ask if you’re Democrat or Republican. They just come in and take over someone’s life.”
Josh Stein’s probable opponent is the African American Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson. Robinson speaks with the cadence of a preacher. In North Carolina, during his campaign, conscious of his reputation, Robinson has moderated what he says. Away from the state, supporting Donald Trump, though, he said the country needs a President who puts America first, unlike Joe Biden who puts ice cream first. He promised he would make North Carolina more like Texas and Florida which are prospering, unlike Democratic led states that are “falling apart.”
Even in his excursion out of state, Robinson did not mention his opposition to abortion, which he had compared to murder. He focused on education. School sports should not allow boys to run against, swim against, or wrestle against girls. That, of course, was milder than his pre-campaign references to the transgendered who he had described as “filth.” Schools , he said, should cooperate with parents’ wishes and avoid “pornography.”
In his out of state speech, Robinson did not refer to his past anti-semitic statements either. Here’s what he said previously about the movie “Black Panther.” It was “created [for Marvel comics] by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists.” Speaking to a predominantly Black audience, he said the movie was “created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.”
Mark Robinson is no moderate. It would not take much work to find similarly offensive comments of his about gay men and women, about the deaths during Vietnam protests at Kent State, and even about the surviving children of mass shootings.
Regardless of the candidates, statewide elections are close in North Carolina. The very closest was in 2020, when the appointed Democratic Chief Justice Cheri Beasley was defeated by 401 votes when she sought election to that position.
Josh Stein is a good fund raiser. We do not yet have reports about Mark Robinson’s 2023 fund raising. So far in 2023, Josh Stein has raised nearly $6 million. Part of being a good fund raiser is his capacity to attract donors from all over. Take this campaign on. Reasonable governors are important everywhere in the country. Democratic governors are crucial in gerrymandered “purple” states like North Carolina. Contribute to Josh Stein’s campaign.
Three candidates to support for Governor in November, 2023. The Kentucky governor is a Democrat and an incumbent, leading or tied in recent polls The outgoing Louisiana governor is a Democrat. The Democratic candidate will certainly make the run off. Mississippi’s Republican governor is so unpopular, Elvis’s Democratic baby cousin was only three points behind in the most recent Mississippi poll.
Incumbent Andy Beshear Kentucky, Formerly, the Attorney General. Len’s Political Note #533
Shawn Wilson Louisiana, Formerly the State Secretary of Transportation Len’s Political Note #549
Brandon Presley Mississippi, Formerly one of three elected public service commissioners. Len’s Political Note #535
Ohio’s August 2023 referendum
Help defeat Ohio’s August referendum which if passed, would require a supermajority of 60% to pass future referendums. The August referendum was designed to foil Ohio’s November referendum to ensure abortion rights in that state. The Ohio Democratic Party will use funds you donate for a coordinated effort to defeat the August referendum which, according to polls, is too close to call.
