Name as it appears on the ballot: Lisa Grafstein

Age: 55

Party affiliation: Democratic

Campaign website: lisagrafstein.com 

Occupation & employer: Civil rights attorney, Disability Rights NC

Years lived in North Carolina: 31+

1. What in your background qualifies you to represent the people of North Carolina effectively? What would you cite as your three biggest career accomplishments?

As a civil rights lawyer for 26+ years, I have seen that we need to make some fundamental changes if we want a healthier and more just society. I have experience working on some of the most important issues we face, including healthcare, voting rights, and economic and racial equity. I am running for the North Carolina Senate because I believe in public service, and that we are here to make a difference. I have spent my career trying to do just that – advocating for people with disabilities, for workers facing unfair treatment, and for people whose civil rights have been violated.

The three career accomplishments I am most proud of are: 1. Being a mentor to younger lawyers in my current position at Disability Rights NC and helping them develop into effective disability rights advocates who are making a difference for the disability community; 2. Winning cases that have made a difference in clients’ lives – from individual employment discrimination cases to ensuring access to Medicaid for thousands of workers with disabilities; 3. Being respected by my peers for my integrity and hard work, including being elected to serve as president/chair of several statewide organizations, and being named among the top lawyers in the state.   

Based on my background and commitment, I have been endorsed by the Sierra Club, Equality NC, NC AFL-CIO, Lillian’s List, Emily’s List, NC Asian Americans Together, Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, and the Progressive Caucus of the NC Democratic Party. A full list can be found at https://lisagrafstein.com/endorsements/.

2. What do you believe to be the three most pressing issues facing the next General Assembly? What steps do you believe the state should take to address them?

The three priorities I have focused on in my campaign dovetail with some of the most pressing issues we face as a state. They are:

1. Economic Justice. We need fair tax policies that support public goods like education, affordable housing, public transit, and climate justice. We have relentlessly cut taxes instead of funding the public goods that our communities need to thrive. The move by the General Assembly to phase out the corporate income tax beginning in 2025 will cost us billions in lost revenue unless we stop it before then. Economic justice also requires that we have living wages, and an end to anti-union legislation.

2. Access to Healthcare. Medicaid Expansion. North Carolina has some of the best healthcare facilities in the country. But not everyone has access to healthcare. For years, Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly have refused to approve Medicaid expansion. As a result, 600,000 people have gone without affordable healthcare, the state has lost out on billions of dollars in federal funding, and too many hospitals and medical providers in rural areas have closed or have reduced capacity. Behavioral Healthcare. Improving healthcare includes addressing unmet needs in our state’s behavioral healthcare system for those with mental illness, developmental disabilities, or substance use disorders. My work as a disability rights attorney has included helping people access behavioral healthcare services and making sure they are able to live and work in their communities. Lack of access to behavioral healthcare keeps people out of the social and economic mainstream of the community. Reproductive Freedom. The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. The promise of Roe was never fully realized for many women for whom geography or poverty made the choice illusory. But overturning Roe would signal a retreat from equal rights. It will be up to individual states to step in. 

3. Voting Rights. Our democracy has been eroded by extreme gerrymandering and efforts to make it more difficult to vote. We need a non-partisan redistricting commission. All voters should have ample opportunities to vote, in person and by absentee ballot. Our electoral system must be equitably funded so that we have strong processes and adequate staffing at every level and in all locations. I have worked for voting rights for many years, including litigating voting access cases, registering voters, and serving as an Election Protection monitor. I have volunteered for and run campaigns for others under North Carolina’s short-lived publicly financed system and under its current privately funded system. My experience has given me an in-depth understanding of the state’s electoral system, which I would use to help shore up our elections system and ballot access. This is our only means of keeping our democracy alive.

3. To what extent do you support municipalities exerting local control over issues such as regulating greenhouse gas emissions, criminal justice reforms and police oversight, and passing development-regulating ordinances?

I support enabling local communities to act locally based on the best interests of their residents. This includes local ordinances banning discrimination, effectuating local emissions regulations, reforming local criminal justice and policing practices, and managing growth and housing affordability through regulation of development. We should reverse the politicized trend of stripping localities of the ability to enact progressive policies. We saw this happen with HB2, and we have seen it recently with issues around masking and efforts to inject culture wars into our schools through strawman arguments about CRT and the teaching of gender concepts. The effort to centralize control is not based on principles of governance, but on principles of power and control. For example, in the context of regulating development, local communities have vastly different needs, and should not be hamstrung by state-level efforts to dictate local policy. Local governments should be able to use tools like inclusionary zoning and impact fees if those tools would enable them to better manage growth – and they should not be required to use them if those tools are counterproductive in their communities. Local governments need to be equipped to respond to the needs of their communities.   

4. Do you support raising North Carolina’s minimum wage, and if so by how much? If not, what other initiatives would you take to support low-income families in North Carolina?

I support increasing the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour. But there are many other steps we can and should take, including other issues covered here, like addressing the housing crisis, providing access to healthcare through Medicaid expansion, and expanding access to reliable public transit. I also strongly support elimination of North Carolina’s so-called “right to work” law, which inhibits the ability of unions to organize; we know that the presence of a union reliably raises wages and improves working conditions and is ultimately good for business. Finally, Republican control of the General Assembly has resulted in a gutting of our unemployment benefits system, which is now among the worst in the country; unemployment benefits are critical when workers are between jobs, particularly those who are low-income and lack emergency funds.

5. With rent, property taxes, and home sale prices all rising, what, if anything, should the state legislature do to address this growing affordability crisis?

We have an affordable housing crisis AND a crisis of housing affordability. We need about 200,000 more affordable housing units statewide. We must do better in funding tools like the NC Housing Trust Fund, which provides support for affordable housing options, and we should rebuild community development programs, which have been gutted in recent years. The legislature should also consider allowing local options for zoning, giving local governments the ability to ensure new affordable housing units are built into growth. The problem of housing affordability, especially in Raleigh, is partly due to growth, which is managed at the local level. But it is also caused by investment firms buying up homes, by some estimates accounting for 1 in 5 sales in recent months. When investors own a significant part of the single-family housing stock, home buyers are quickly priced out of the market. We can pursue tax policies at the state level that discourage this practice by adjusting the tax code to make the hoarding of housing stock an unattractive investment. On the other side of the ledger, income has simply not kept pace with price increases. Wages are up slightly, but not enough to meet the nearly 30% increase in median home prices in the Raleigh area. For many people, access to housing depends on increasing wages. Finally, we can give local governments more ability to manage growth if we invest in high quality regional public transit.

6. Do you believe that the state government has an obligation to prevent the impacts of climate change? If so, please state three specific policies you support to address climate change.

Yes, of course state government must work to address climate change, adapting to the effects and working to slow the effects. We should be investing more in renewable energy, including making solar a greater energy source used by state and local governments, and we should incentivize the shift to solar in the private sector. We should reinstate the Renewable Energy Investment Tax Credit. I also support protecting our forests from being harvested for wood pellets. Finally, developing our public transit systems will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly if we invest in transit that is built on clean energy.

7. Would you support an independent process for drawing new legislative and congressional districts?

Yes, I support a non-partisan redistricting commission. Having constant change in districts, and ongoing litigation, causes people to disconnect from the process. Polarized districts make it harder for people to hold their representatives accountable, and make people believe that their vote doesn’t matter. I have worked on voting issues in various contexts for many years, including registering voters, serving as an Election Protection monitor, and litigating voting access cases. In all these contexts, it has been clear to me that people are much more engaged when we make participation in our democracy easier and more meaningful.

8. Does the General Assembly have a constitutional obligation to comply with the state Supreme Court order in the Leandro case to fully fund public schools and give every child in North Carolina a sound basic education?

Yes. Our system of separation of powers requires respect for all branches and is not a license for the General Assembly to thwart citizens’ constitutional rights. We have known since the 2002 appeal in the Leandro case that the state is violating students’ rights by not providing them with a sound, basic education. Our courts gave the state ample time to comply with the ruling, and our General Assembly repeatedly refused to take adequate actions. The original Leandro opinion in 1999 was clear that the legislative and executive branches should have a chance to do the right thing first, but that the courts are the arbiters of the rights protected by the North Carolina Constitution and would act if necessary. Governor Cooper is in agreement with the plan that the courts ordered to be implemented, but the General Assembly has refused. In 2021, the trial court once again said North Carolina is failing and ordered the state to provide $1.7 billion to schools from an available $6 billion surplus, but the Republicans in control of our legislature are refusing to comply. At this point, it is well within the scope of the role of the courts to order the use of surplus funds to provide every child in North Carolina with the education that they have a right to.

9. The U.S. Supreme Court may issue a ruling this summer that guts, or even overturns, Roe v. Wade. As a state lawmaker, would you support legislation that limits or prohibits abortion in North Carolina, or punishes/criminalizes abortion providers or patients?

No. We cannot accept any roll back of our rights, including the right to control our own bodies. As President of the NC Association of Women Attorneys and the Women’s Forum of NC, I have worked with women across North Carolina who are determined to move our state forward. My earliest cases as a lawyer involved sexual harassment and gender discrimination. I represented women who refused to back down in the face of power. We will continue to fight back.

10. Should North Carolina expand Medicaid?  Where do you stand on increasing the number of slots for the Innovations Waiver for special needs individuals?

Medicaid Expansion. We must expand Medicaid to cover the approximately 600,000 people caught in the coverage gap. The lack of insurance can be devastating on an individual level but is also economically and socially harmful to our state. As the pandemic has shown us very clearly, individual health and community health are connected. People who cannot take care of their health cannot work and take care of their families. We have lost out on billions of dollars in federal funding, and too many hospitals and medical providers in rural areas have closed or have reduced capacity, further harming access to healthcare. My work as an advocate for people with disabilities has taught me about the very real consequences inherent in delaying action. We have to do this now.

Innovations Waiver Slots. I am lead counsel in a case called Samantha R. v. North Carolina which is about access to services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), including access to Innovations Waiver services. Innovations Waiver slots are sorely needed for people with I/DD, some of whom have been waiting over a decade for services. The waiting list has grown to over 15,000 people, which is more than the number of people currently being served by the Innovations Waiver. Although the NCGA approved some additional waiver slots for this year and next year, those additional slots will not even keep up with the growth in the waiting list, let alone reduce the waiting period. Services for people with I/DD, including those with autism, are critical and should be available as early in life as possible. The average waiting period is now at least 9.5 years, which is inhumane. It is also a waste of resources because it is more cost-efficient to provide people with the support they need than it is to address the consequences when people go without services, including unnecessary institutionalization.

11. Do you support reforming North Carolina’s marijuana laws? Do you support full legalization? Please explain your position.

I am in favor of legalization of marijuana for medical use and support the decriminalization of marijuana use by adults. There is little reason to continue criminalizing marijuana, and it is clear that making possession and use a crime has resulted in disproportionate harm to BIPOC communities.

12. Are there any issues this questionnaire has not addressed that you would like to address?

Additional information about my positions and qualifications can be found at lisagrafstein.com. If readers have specific questions, I would welcome those. My email address is lisa@lisagrafstein.com. Thank you.