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Incumbent Dollar Faces Rematch With Baker in House District 36
Publisher's note: The author of this post is Kristy Bailey, who is a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.
RALEIGH Incumbent state House Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, faces a familiar challenger in this year's race for House District 36 — Raleigh Democrat Lisa Baker, who last ran against Dollar in 2012.
Both Baker, a Franklin County native and former Tupperware executive who has lived in Raleigh for more than 30 years, and Dollar were unopposed in the spring primary election. Dollar beat Baker in the 2012 general election by a margin of 10 percent, garnering 55 percent of the vote to win a fifth term.
District 36 includes Cary, Swift Creek, and portions of Fuquay-Varina and unincorporated southeastern Wake County, and leans Republican with 36 percent of the electorate. Unaffiliated voters comprise 33.5 percent and Democrats 30.1 percent. Whites account for 84.7 percent of voters and women 51.4 percent. Voters preferred President Barack Obama in 2012, but also cast more votes for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
Baker said that public schools, the environment, and women's issues rank high among the topics of particular interest to voters in her district. Meanwhile, Dollar, a Burlington native and self-employed media consultant, said jobs continue to be the No. 1 issue in his bid for re-election.
"It's an issue I've been working on ... policies to lower tax rates and lessen regulations so we can grow our economy, and [attract] the kind of high-quality jobs we want for our area," Dollar said. He noted there were announcements for 3,000 jobs in the past year alone with MetLife and HCL Technologies.
Baker said she opposes legislative overreach, such as a law the General Assembly passed in 2011 that requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and describe the fetus in detail to the woman before terminating her pregnancy.
"It's about a woman's right to make a decision for herself, and the right to be given information so she can make an informed decision," rather than one based on emotions, Baker said. "I'm not saying abortion should be used for birth control. What I'm saying is that government shouldn't get between a woman and her doctor."
Dollar voted to pass the Woman's Right to Know Act in July 2011. The Senate overrode then-Gov. Bev Perdue's veto, 29-19, the same month. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles overturned the law in January, ruling that it violated the constitutional right of free speech.
Baker is a strong proponent for raising teacher pay to the national average.
"We are No. 51 [in the country] in lots of areas, and we are losing good, quality teachers to other states," Baker said. She said Wake County teachers have told her they had to enroll in federal assistance programs such as WIC, and take second jobs to make ends meet.
Dollar countered that the formerly Democratic-controlled state legislature's "neglect" in cutting funding between 2000 and 2010 lowered average salaries in comparison to other states.
"I've helped lead an effort to provide the largest teacher pay raise in a decade, increasing by an average of 7 percent; modernizing the teacher compensation scale; increasing K-12 education funding that the Democrats cut by over $700 million," Dollar said. Republicans increased funding for K-12 education by $983 million over the last three years.
"It's plugging a huge hole the Democrats left for us," he said. "They were using one-time federal money [to balance the education budget]. In the midst of recovering from a deep recession, we've had to reverse the trends on teacher pay and we've added back $1 billion."
Dollar believes that, rather than rely on incentives, the state should create a regulatory structure that entices businesses to relocate or expand here, while Baker supports the use of taxpayer-funded incentives, as long as they're offered across the board rather than to a favored business.
"Small businesses can't compete as much as the larger [ones] for these type incentives," Baker said. "They tend to lean more toward large corporations. I think we need to make sure we are covering all the opportunities that are presented to us in North Carolina."
Dollar concedes that incentives have sometimes been unavoidable in luring companies to North Carolina absent broad regulatory and tax reform.
"I have voted to make sure we have 'clawback' protection — provisions where, if jobs are not created, the state gets its money back, and money goes out only for real jobs created," Dollar said. He said some incentive programs are "unfortunately" necessary to compete with other states.
Dollar said he opposed the final version of the most recent incentives bill, which failed in the House, 45-54, because it called for the creation of a Jobs Catalyst Fund that would have been overseen by the secretary of commerce.
Continuing reforms of the tax and regulatory structure in North Carolina can create "a level playing field" not "dependent on incentives," he said.
Baker, who favors alternative energy expansion and opposes hydraulic fracturing (fracking), hedges on whether she'd support taxpayer-funded subsidies for renewable energy, saying she wants a better understanding of how North Carolina's tax dollars are being used.
"As a citizen running for a citizen legislature, I want to listen and understand what people's needs are, and I want to make sure what the taxes we do collect are paying for," Baker said.
While subsidies for renewable energy are in the process of being phased out, Dollar said he believes they needed to be extended for a short period of time.
"Ultimately, they need to be on a path of being phased out," he said. "I think the key is making sure they have access to the power grid, to the market for the product. There have been some renewable [energy sources] that have moved along such as solar that have created a lot of my jobs in my district; some of the others haven't come along as strong," such as wind and bio-waste, which farmers support.
Another area of strong renewable energy is hydroelectricity, such as a dam project on Lake Jordan just outside his district, Dollar said.
"I also believe 'all-of-the-above' policy. I particularly think offshore exploration for natural gas has the greatest potential," Dollar said. He supports nuclear energy production as clean, safe energy.
Baker offers a stark contrast to her Republican opponent in supporting expansion of the state's Medicaid program.
"I don't think we have anything to lose by doing it," she said. "We have over 500,000 people who don't have the things they need for chronic disease. It's detrimental to our community. There are a lot of people in dire straits because we didn't take [federal money for Medicaid expansion]. It's not necessarily a Republican or Democratic thing."
Dollar said he voted against expansion, reasoning that it was the least of the problems state legislators needed to address.
"We were looking at a payment system that was not functional in any real sense, a brand new eligibility system that was coming on, as well as still determining what type of reform we were going to put forward," he said.
"Frankly, we had a department with a $700 million hole in its Medicaid program we had been working on trying to fix," Dollar said. He believes ultimately there will be tremendous pressure to expand the program.
"Obamacare cut $700 million out of Medicare in North Carolina. Hospitals have taken the biggest hit from that. The design of Obamacare was to lower Medicare reimbursement rates and put [funding] into coverage of what, in many cases, has been uncompensated care for lower-income individuals who didn't otherwise qualify for Medicaid," Dollar said.
"As far as Medicaid is concerned, where they're really getting the money from is Medicare over the next eight years," Dollar said. "What physicians and hospitals are being paid is going to go down. It's shifting money around."
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Challenger seeks Medicaid expansion, higher education spending
RALEIGH Incumbent state House Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, faces a familiar challenger in this year's race for House District 36 — Raleigh Democrat Lisa Baker, who last ran against Dollar in 2012.
Both Baker, a Franklin County native and former Tupperware executive who has lived in Raleigh for more than 30 years, and Dollar were unopposed in the spring primary election. Dollar beat Baker in the 2012 general election by a margin of 10 percent, garnering 55 percent of the vote to win a fifth term.
District 36 includes Cary, Swift Creek, and portions of Fuquay-Varina and unincorporated southeastern Wake County, and leans Republican with 36 percent of the electorate. Unaffiliated voters comprise 33.5 percent and Democrats 30.1 percent. Whites account for 84.7 percent of voters and women 51.4 percent. Voters preferred President Barack Obama in 2012, but also cast more votes for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
Baker said that public schools, the environment, and women's issues rank high among the topics of particular interest to voters in her district. Meanwhile, Dollar, a Burlington native and self-employed media consultant, said jobs continue to be the No. 1 issue in his bid for re-election.
"It's an issue I've been working on ... policies to lower tax rates and lessen regulations so we can grow our economy, and [attract] the kind of high-quality jobs we want for our area," Dollar said. He noted there were announcements for 3,000 jobs in the past year alone with MetLife and HCL Technologies.
Baker said she opposes legislative overreach, such as a law the General Assembly passed in 2011 that requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and describe the fetus in detail to the woman before terminating her pregnancy.
"It's about a woman's right to make a decision for herself, and the right to be given information so she can make an informed decision," rather than one based on emotions, Baker said. "I'm not saying abortion should be used for birth control. What I'm saying is that government shouldn't get between a woman and her doctor."
Dollar voted to pass the Woman's Right to Know Act in July 2011. The Senate overrode then-Gov. Bev Perdue's veto, 29-19, the same month. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles overturned the law in January, ruling that it violated the constitutional right of free speech.
Baker is a strong proponent for raising teacher pay to the national average.
"We are No. 51 [in the country] in lots of areas, and we are losing good, quality teachers to other states," Baker said. She said Wake County teachers have told her they had to enroll in federal assistance programs such as WIC, and take second jobs to make ends meet.
Dollar countered that the formerly Democratic-controlled state legislature's "neglect" in cutting funding between 2000 and 2010 lowered average salaries in comparison to other states.
"I've helped lead an effort to provide the largest teacher pay raise in a decade, increasing by an average of 7 percent; modernizing the teacher compensation scale; increasing K-12 education funding that the Democrats cut by over $700 million," Dollar said. Republicans increased funding for K-12 education by $983 million over the last three years.
"It's plugging a huge hole the Democrats left for us," he said. "They were using one-time federal money [to balance the education budget]. In the midst of recovering from a deep recession, we've had to reverse the trends on teacher pay and we've added back $1 billion."
Dollar believes that, rather than rely on incentives, the state should create a regulatory structure that entices businesses to relocate or expand here, while Baker supports the use of taxpayer-funded incentives, as long as they're offered across the board rather than to a favored business.
"Small businesses can't compete as much as the larger [ones] for these type incentives," Baker said. "They tend to lean more toward large corporations. I think we need to make sure we are covering all the opportunities that are presented to us in North Carolina."
Dollar concedes that incentives have sometimes been unavoidable in luring companies to North Carolina absent broad regulatory and tax reform.
"I have voted to make sure we have 'clawback' protection — provisions where, if jobs are not created, the state gets its money back, and money goes out only for real jobs created," Dollar said. He said some incentive programs are "unfortunately" necessary to compete with other states.
Dollar said he opposed the final version of the most recent incentives bill, which failed in the House, 45-54, because it called for the creation of a Jobs Catalyst Fund that would have been overseen by the secretary of commerce.
Continuing reforms of the tax and regulatory structure in North Carolina can create "a level playing field" not "dependent on incentives," he said.
Baker, who favors alternative energy expansion and opposes hydraulic fracturing (fracking), hedges on whether she'd support taxpayer-funded subsidies for renewable energy, saying she wants a better understanding of how North Carolina's tax dollars are being used.
"As a citizen running for a citizen legislature, I want to listen and understand what people's needs are, and I want to make sure what the taxes we do collect are paying for," Baker said.
While subsidies for renewable energy are in the process of being phased out, Dollar said he believes they needed to be extended for a short period of time.
"Ultimately, they need to be on a path of being phased out," he said. "I think the key is making sure they have access to the power grid, to the market for the product. There have been some renewable [energy sources] that have moved along such as solar that have created a lot of my jobs in my district; some of the others haven't come along as strong," such as wind and bio-waste, which farmers support.
Another area of strong renewable energy is hydroelectricity, such as a dam project on Lake Jordan just outside his district, Dollar said.
"I also believe 'all-of-the-above' policy. I particularly think offshore exploration for natural gas has the greatest potential," Dollar said. He supports nuclear energy production as clean, safe energy.
Baker offers a stark contrast to her Republican opponent in supporting expansion of the state's Medicaid program.
"I don't think we have anything to lose by doing it," she said. "We have over 500,000 people who don't have the things they need for chronic disease. It's detrimental to our community. There are a lot of people in dire straits because we didn't take [federal money for Medicaid expansion]. It's not necessarily a Republican or Democratic thing."
Dollar said he voted against expansion, reasoning that it was the least of the problems state legislators needed to address.
"We were looking at a payment system that was not functional in any real sense, a brand new eligibility system that was coming on, as well as still determining what type of reform we were going to put forward," he said.
"Frankly, we had a department with a $700 million hole in its Medicaid program we had been working on trying to fix," Dollar said. He believes ultimately there will be tremendous pressure to expand the program.
"Obamacare cut $700 million out of Medicare in North Carolina. Hospitals have taken the biggest hit from that. The design of Obamacare was to lower Medicare reimbursement rates and put [funding] into coverage of what, in many cases, has been uncompensated care for lower-income individuals who didn't otherwise qualify for Medicaid," Dollar said.
"As far as Medicaid is concerned, where they're really getting the money from is Medicare over the next eight years," Dollar said. "What physicians and hospitals are being paid is going to go down. It's shifting money around."
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