State Senate District 8 covers Brunswick and Columbus counties, and a small carve out in downtown Wilmington.
The candidates’ responses are presented without edits (except for formatting). Below are the responses from Democratic candidate Katherin "Katie" Randall.
What is your stance on abortion — and what, if any, changes would you make to existing state law which bans abortion after 12 weeks, with exceptions for fetal abnormalities, health of the mother, and rape/incest?
Having been through pregnancy myself, I’m a firm advocate for protecting medical privacy and letting people make their own reproductive decisions without interference from the government. I support changing NC state law to make abortion legal up until the point of fetal viability (20-23 weeks), which was the law in our state for over 50 years. The vast majority of abortions (about 93%) take place within the first 12 weeks. However, I have known women who struggled to get an appointment or raise the money for abortion care within that time, and these delays caused them to go past 12 weeks into the second trimester. The option should be available to them without government interference.
I know this is a polarizing issue. I used to consider myself anti-abortion, before I went through a difficult pregnancy and realized no one should have to go through that experience unless they choose. But almost everyone agrees that a major goal should be to reduce the amount of unplanned pregnancies in the first place. In a study that analyzed the reasons people seek abortion care, 73% of participants said that they needed an abortion because they could not afford a baby. Another study found that about half of all abortion patients had a family income at or below the federal poverty level. Raising the NC minimum wage would put more low-income women in a position to keep unexpected pregnancies and make sure they have a real choice, not one constrained by poverty.
What steps will you take to help create more affordable housing in your role in the legislature?
First, we need to raise the minimum wage in North Carolina. Top earners have seen their wages rise steadily; meanwhile, the minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. With this stagnated wage, a household with one full-time worker could only afford a rent of about $400 before exceeding the recommended ⅓ of incoming spent on housing. North Carolina workers should never have to worry about having a safe place to live.
Second, we need continued and additional investments directly into our housing policies. The General Assembly recently renewed funding for the Workforce Housing Loan Program through the NC Housing Finance Authority, which is a good step, but gaps in affordable housing remain. We need more investment in the NCHFA so we can expand the public-private partnerships that provide additional affordable housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income families. We also need to make sure the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is extended as the existing units come up on the end of their 30-year affordability period. By 2030, over 15,000 affordable housing units in our state are expected to age out of their period of mandated affordability, and if there is not an extension, rents may increase and put more North Carolina families at risk of being priced out of their homes.
How will you address homelessness in your role in state government?
There is often a misconception that most homelessness happens because of addiction or mental illness. However, housing experts note that homelessness happens because people can’t afford housing, and then addiction and mental illness often follow. Homelessness is a public health issue, not a criminal one. Not having a safe place to live is incredibly stressful and traumatic, and it is not a problem that can be solved through incarceration.
At the state level, we need to implement the aforementioned housing solutions to make sure we have enough affordable housing and programs to help people keep the housing they have. We also need to continue to make grant funding available to cities and counties for holistic support to get people back on their feet, including investments in rehabilitation-oriented transitional housing and permanent housing with wrap-around support.
There are organizations in Wilmington doing amazing things to address homelessness through state and local collaboration, like Eden Village and the Good Shepherd Center. However, Brunswick and Columbus Counties do not have these kinds of permanent or transitional housing solutions. Currently, there are no homeless shelters in these counties where support staff could assess long-term needs and solutions for the increasing number of people seeking housing resources. We need state support in these rural counties as well as in the more populated areas of NC.
Another important point about addressing homelessness is making sure that NC homes are able to withstand the increasing frequency of severe storms. Under pressure from the NC Home Builders’ Association–an organization which has donated $4.3 million to North Carolina politicians over the last 30 years–Republican lawmakers have repeatedly rejected building standards that are meant to increase safety, like not building homes on steep slopes or below anticipated flood lines. Experts say these lax standards likely contributed to the catastrophic damage suffered in the western part of the state during Hurricane Helene. This weakening of building standards, combined with legislation to weaken protection for the wetlands that act as natural flood barriers, leaves many North Carolinians at higher risk of losing their home in the future.
What’s your stance on funding public education? Specifically, what changes, if any, would you support for per-pupil funding, the private school voucher program, and accepting federal funding?
I want North Carolina to be known for having some of the best public schools in the country. Right now NC ranks almost last in the country for per-pupil spending and is one of the worst states for public teacher pay. Meanwhile, our Republican-majority legislature recently passed a bill that would use hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for private school vouchers. This is a huge blow to rural counties–like Columbus County, which is in my district–where private schools are almost nonexistent. Instead of providing more educational opportunities, it takes money out of rural public schools and would leave a lot of North Carolina kids more disadvantaged.
Public schools should be one of our top funding priorities, and that should include teacher salaries. For the 2024-2025 school year, the General Assembly set the salary for a first-year teacher at $41,000, which is not a living wage for a parent in any county in the state. Expecting counties to bridge the salary gap for a living wage unfairly disadvantages poorer counties, who will struggle to retain teachers if wages are higher in the next county over. Every teacher in North Carolina should be making a living wage, particularly since they do some of the hardest and more important jobs in the state.
What changes, if any, would you make to funding for transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc) and public transportation (like WAVE)?
If we’re talking about infrastructure, the first thing to mention would be the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, which connects the New Hanover notch of Senate District 8 to Brunswick County. The bridge was built in 1969 and needs replacing in the near future. Recently the Biden administration awarded a grant of $242 million toward the cost of replacing the bridge, which is excellent; however, that grant will only cover about 50% of the anticipated cost.
There has been discussion about exploring a toll option for the bridge, both to make the project more appealing for NCDOT priority and to cover the additional infrastructure cost. I believe it’s the responsibility of the state legislature to find the additional funding to replace the bridge without enacting a toll. A toll would disproportionately affect the working-class residents of Brunswick and Columbus Counties who drive into Wilmington for their jobs and doctor’s appointments. Since the bridge is a necessary thoroughfare for the port (and therefore the state economy), this responsibility should remain with the state.
Would you support an independent commission to draw legislative boundaries? Why or why not?
Absolutely. The last redistricting debacle with the partisan-drawn maps is how I ended up running to represent all of Columbus County, all of Brunswick County, and a small gerrymandered area of New Hanover County. Conveniently, the gerrymandered “notch” includes most of the majority-Black (and usually Democrat-leaning) neighborhoods of Wilmington, including the Northside and Southside of downtown. Grouping the Democrat-leaning votes with two historically conservative counties means Sen. Michael Lee’s seat becomes safer in the rest of New Hanover County. By gerrymandering these districts, Republican legislators have perpetuated the disenfranchisement of Black voters that has been a shameful stain on the legacy of the South. We need a truly independent commission to draw legislative boundaries so that we avoid partisan gerrymandering and the ugly, racist consequences it brings.
Would you work to repeal the state law that says you are your public records' custodian? If not, why do you believe you should be exempt from the public records laws that apply to so many other local and state officials?
Elected officials should be accountable to public records laws, period. It’s especially important to be held to a higher standard of transparency when you are the one making the law! Republican lawmakers added this public records exemption for General Assembly members to the 2023 state budget at the last minute, and it was passed largely along party lines (Sen. Rabon voted in support). I would definitely work to get this exemption removed so that members of the General Assembly would again be subject to the same public records law as the governor, local mayors, and other elected officials.
How would you support economic development in the Cape Fear region (and what kind of development would you like to see)?
I would approach economic development with two (perhaps unconventional) focus areas: raising the minimum wage and fully funding our public schools. The $7.25 minimum wage has not been raised since 2009, and if you adjust that for inflation, it’s at the lowest spending power since the 1950s. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and other labor productivity growth, it would be over $20 per hour now. Instead, more than two million people in North Carolina get paid poverty wages.
Raising the minimum wage in our state means that local residents have more money to spend in the local economy. Economic analysis suggests that states with higher minimum wages have faster job growth in leisure and hospitality industries, which are two essential parts of our local economy. And research from the Economic Policy Institute shows little to no job losses from minimum wage increases; rather, raising the minimum wage reduces staff turnover and increases worker productivity, which decreases businesses’ costs of hiring and training new staff. The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment found that raising the minimum wage led to substantial decline in household and child poverty.
Improving our public school funding, including our teachers’ salaries, has a two-fold benefit. In Columbus and Brunswick Counties, the school districts are the counties’ largest employers. Raising teacher salaries increases their spending power in the Cape Fear region. Additionally, high-quality schools attract a variety of working professionals–in particular, the medical providers that both counties desperately need–because they want to live somewhere with a great education for their children.
Would you like to see state taxes go up, down, or hold steady?
Continuing to lower tax rates for higher income earners leads to unbalanced budgets in our state and is an incredibly short-sighted way to run a government. The recent tax cuts passed by the General Assembly result in more than $8 billion less in state revenue each year, and those cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthiest North Carolinians. I would like to see North Carolina move from a flat tax rate to a progressive tax rate so that higher income earners can contribute a higher percentage amount in taxes. If we do stay at a flat tax rate, I would like to see the tax rate remain at the 2023 rate (4.75%) at minimum. I would add a removal of the tax cuts on capital gains earnings that disproportionately benefit high-wealth families, plus an expansion of Child Tax Credits for low- and moderate-income families.
I don’t support lowering income taxes and relying on sales taxes instead to compensate. Increasing sales taxes disproportionately affects lower-income families and contributes to income inequality. We need tax income to fund our public schools, infrastructure, parks, and other public amenities that make our state a great place to live, but we also need to address the growing wealth inequality between the highest- and lowest-earning residents of North Carolina.
What other issues are you hoping to focus on?
Rural healthcare is an issue that is particularly important to me. Folks in Columbus County should have easy access to preventative care, updated healthcare facilities, and quality healthcare providers. One thing we can do in the legislature to address this is revisit NC’s Certificate of Need policy, which restricts where health facilities can be built (and disproportionately affects rural areas). Improving public schools in the county also helps address this issue, because medical professionals want to live where their children can have a high-quality education.