Political Junkie Ken Rudin

WUNC | By Laura Lee,

Published September 12, 2014 at 12:16 PM EDT

Governor Pat McCrory says there are big problems with legislature’s approach to Duke Energy’s coal ash cleanup. He will not sign the measures they passed, but he will let them become law. He is expected to challenge them later. Plus democratic Senator Kay Hagan says she will not participate in the Time Warner Cable debate with her challenger, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis. Organizers say the debate will proceed without her. Host Frank Stasio talks with political junkie Ken Rudin about coal ash, the debates and other political news around the state.

Updated: The original audio incorrectly stated that Senator Hagan declined a third debate. She has agreed to a third debate but declined an invitation for a fourth debate.

Laura Lee

Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

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