It’s time for a fact check of North Carolina politics. One of the races in Tuesday’s primary getting a lot of attention is in the 26th Senate District near Greensboro. That’s where Senate leader Phil Berger is facing a challenge from Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. An ad attacking Berger accuses him of killing a bill that would have banned gender-related surgeries for minors. For more, Paul Specht of WRAL joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.
Marshall Terry: First, remind us why this local race is getting so much attention statewide and even on a national level.
Paul Specht: That's because legislative leaders in North Carolina and other states rarely lose elections, much less party primaries. That’s potentially what could happen in this district here, right outside Greensboro.
That’s where Senate leader Phil Berger faces longtime Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. We've seen people write about this from The New York Times to The Washington Post. Even President Trump has weighed in. In a social media post in December, he endorsed Berger while saying at the same time that Page had been a longtime supporter and both are outstanding people.
Terry: What is this bill the ad says 'Berger killed in 2021?' And did he actually kill it?
Specht: Senate Bill 514, introduced in early April of 2021, would have banned sex-reassignment surgery for people under 21 and medical professionals who violated the law could have had their license revoked or face civil penalties.
The ad says that Berger killed the bill, and it refers to a story that the Associated Press wrote later that April. That's when Berger's spokesman Pat Ryan came out and said we're not going to hold a vote on the Senate floor on this bill, and that's because we do not see a pathway for it to become law.
What the ad does not mention is that Berger's office had done some political math. At the time, Roy Cooper was the governor. He's a Democrat. People expected him to veto this bill if it made it to his desk. Republicans did not have enough members to override a veto.
Berger’s spokesman, Pat Ryan, whom I mentioned earlier, is now a public relations consultant. I spoke to him about this. He said: We saw the writing on the wall here. Should we go through the motions here just to make him veto it? Or should we focus on other things? They decided to do the latter. That's what this ad leaves out.
Terry: So that happened in 2021, but didn’t lawmakers eventually pass such a ban?
Specht: That's another thing this ad leaves out. Fast forward to 2023. That's when Republicans had gained enough seats to override any veto by Roy Cooper, so long as every Republican voted in line. That’s exactly what they did. In June of 2023, a nearly identical bill banned sex-reassignment procedures on minors. The topic that this ad touches on is banned. It fails to mention that. That's a huge omission in our editor's eyes, who vote on ratings in these PolitiFact Truth-O-Meters.
Terry: How did you rate the claim in this ad?
Specht: There's a small element of truth here in that the bill never made the floor. However, the political math here is on Berger's side. Democrats were likely not going to vote against the governor. Just two years later, when Republicans did have the numbers they needed, they pushed through exactly the law that this ad talks about. That’s why we rated it mostly False.
These fact checks are a collaboration between PolitiFact and WRAL.
