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Warnock, Walker Make Final Push Ahead Of Tomorrow's Runoff; FBI Investigates "Targeted" Substation Attacks In Monroe Co., NC; Mayor John Strickland (D) North Carolina Discusses About The Number Who Lost Power; Economists Warn Of Recession Possibilities Next Year. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired December 05, 2022 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Now, remember if Warnock wins, this will give Democrats a 51 seat majority that will no longer require vice president Harris to break ties.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: It would also allow Democrats more control of key committees. Both candidates are in a full court press to get out to vote. Today, Sen. Warnock was in Georgia Tech praising young voters for their support and former President Trump will hold a virtual rally for Walker tonight.

CNN National Correspondent Dianne Gallagher joins us from Atlanta. So how are Walker and Warnock using this last day?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn and Victor, they are trying to reach as many of those voters who haven't yet cast their ballots as they can today. We're not just in the final day. We are in the final hours of this runoff election.

Sen. Raphael Warnock hitting several events around Atlanta today. He's maintained this aggressive schedule throughout the four week runoff period trying to hit as many events and many different types of events as he can. Herschel Walker, the Republican has had a relatively late schedule for the runoff period. But that changed today with five separate events, mostly in the northern part of the state, that's actually where he was about 200,000 votes when he finished behind Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

Some of that from that area right there trying to turn out their base. More than 1.8 5 million people have already voted in that early voting period. But today, the message is if you've already voted, get your friends to vote, get your family to vote, ask strangers to vote, they need to see turnout.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Matter of fact, call your father and your mother, your sister and your brother, called Lottie, Dottie and everybody. Tell them his time to vote. Tell them that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children.

HERSCHEL WALKER, (R) U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IN GEORGIA: All of you who has already voted already called 10 of your friends to go vote or you can pick up your friends to go vote and all of you that got to vote tomorrow, carry someone with you that hadn't voted to vote or go with somebody that had voted to vote, you all know who to vote for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: And we talk a lot about data, we talk a lot about outreach, but there's also what you see behind me right now, the weather. We're expecting rain and cold tomorrow here in Georgia as well and that's something that campaigns know in the past can depress turnout. So again, they're trying to energize people to power through that and show up.

BLACKWELL: All right. Dianne Gallagher at the final hours there, thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's bring in Lisa Rayam. She is host of Morning Edition on Atlanta's National Public Radio station, WABE. Lisa, great to see you.

Okay, let's just look at the numbers.

LISA RAYAM, HOST, "MORNING EDITION" ON ATLANTA'S WABE RADIO (NPR): Great to see you.

CAMEROTA: So - I mean, they're record breaking already, so here's - here are the numbers, basically 18 - more than 1,868,000 voters have already voted in Georgia and that compares to the total on November 8th, so basically half of voters have already voted, if you look back at what it looked like during the midterms.

RAYAM: Right.

CAMEROTA: So is there any way to tell who's more energized: Democrats or Republicans?

RAYAM: Well, here - early voting, typically, the Democrats turn out in droves and that certainly did happen in this early voting period. So all eyes are on guess what, tomorrow. That's typically when the Republicans show out in force.

Now, in terms of campaigning, I think maybe Warnock you could say had the edge this weekend because he packed in those campaign visits. Herschel Walker did a few, but not as many as Raphael Warnock and you just heard him, now is the time to vote. Tell your mother, your grandmother and everyone.

So the momentum in this race is coming down to the wire and we're waiting to see what will happen at the polls tomorrow. Again, we're hoping - Warnock is hoping that he can capture that Republican vote. He's trying to get Independents and young yes and that black female. But tomorrow is the big day for Republicans, so he's reaching out to them as well.

Herschel Walker is doing status quo. He's not giving those interviews that you would expect during this late hour, but he is doing some stopping. So we're going to wait and see what happens tomorrow. CAMEROTA: So Lisa, we all remember that there was this controversial new voting law passed in Georgia after the 2020 race. So in 2021, basically, I think they eliminated things like Sunday, early voting and you'll remember the Democrats feared and claimed that this would lead to voter suppression. Has it been proven now the Democrats fears were misplaced, I mean, given that so many people are voting?

RAYAM: I don't know about misplaced, but they certainly are trying the system.

[15:05:02]

Again, you've noted that high voter turnout, they're there. You're not hearing of any complaints at this point or not very many. The only complaint you're hearing is long lines last week when the early voting period started and even when it ended, so that dominates the news last week.

But nothing fishy, so to speak. So I think right now it is - the system is working in everyone's favor, because you're not hearing those complaints that you heard in 2018.

CAMEROTA: Herschel Walker did give an interview today, I believe, to Politico. So I'll read you a portion of what he said, because it's getting some attention about voters.

He said, "They're not less motivated because they know right now that the House will be even so they don't want to understand what is happening right now. You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stole things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him."

So basically, some have wondered, does he know - of course, he knows he's running for Senate, not the House. But he seems to think that he's the deciding vote in the House. So how do we explain that?

RAYAM: Well, how do you explain how they kept him from reporters from giving interviews like that, that causes so much concern (inaudible) Warnock has played up that kind of misinformation or disinformation that Herschel Walker seems to speak on a regular basis.

So I'm very surprised that he gave that interview because they had been guarding him oh so closely up until to the election tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Is there anything that has markedly changed for voters in Georgia since the November 8th midterms? Is there anything that you think - I mean, are people dug in or is there something that has changed in the past couple of weeks that would change their votes?

RAYAM: I think people realize just how important this race is now typically going into a runoff, you hear oh voter turn off, it slacks off and people aren't interested and they would be tired after the Thanksgiving holiday. But here in Georgia, the issues matter and people are concerned about inflation, people are concerned about the recession, the pending recession, people are concerned about voter rights and they certainly are concerned about Roe v. Wade and its impact that it could have here in Georgia.

So people are about the issues right now. So I think that's what's driving them to the polls, especially the young people, especially women.

CAMEROTA: Lisa Rayam, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for taking time to give us a lay of the land in Georgia. We'll talk soon.

RAYAM: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: CNN's special live coverage of the Georgia runoff election starts tomorrow at 4 pm Eastern.

BLACKWELL: North Carolina's Governor is expected to give an update soon about that attack on the power grid in his state. The FBI gas now joined the manhunt for the person who started shooting at two electrical substations in Moore County.

Now, the local sheriff declined to call the attack domestic terrorism, but he did say that this was intentional. About 34,000 households still do not have power and state of emergencies, they are in effect for Moore County.

CAMEROTA: Hospitals are working off of generators right now, school is closed, a shelter is open. One local mayor told us what she would say to the person responsible for this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR CAROL HANEY, SOUTHERN PINES, NC: There is very little to say that you can print. It is a selfish act. It is cruel. There's so many people that are hurting. The revenue stream is been stopped. If you have health issues, it is critical. It is just a horrible, horrible terrorist in my opinion at - cowardly to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now from Moore County. So Whitney, is it going to be days for them to get their power back?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Sorry, Alisyn, I think I lost you. What was your question?

CAMEROTA: How long will people - all these 10s of 1000s of people be without power?

WILD: Well, Duke Energy tells me that they won't be able to fully restore everybody until Thursday. This is a tough situation, Alisyn. It was down to the 30s overnight last night. It's going to get down to the 40s tonight. If there's any good news here, it's that the temperatures are supposed to tick up above what is average for this time of year.

Later in the week, we'll probably see seven - 60s to 70s around here normally. It's between the 30s and the 50s, so that's a little bit of a bright spot here and what is and otherwise really terrible situation that is going to last several days. The investigation continues, as you pointed out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Bureau of Investigation all involved.

[15:10:00]

This is an all hands on deck review to try to figure out who did this and why. That motivation is still unclear.

Social media over the weekend had been buzzing that this was somehow connected to a drag race that was set to take place around the same time the power went out 7 pm Saturday night. Although, law enforcement is saying that there is no connection at this point between that drag show and this power outage, so that's the latest on the investigation. We continue to push law enforcement for answers and we'll keep you updated on that.

Meanwhile, again, here in Moore County around 7,000 people were - had their power restored overnight, so now the total people are rather households who are out of power totals around 33,000. So it's slowly ticking down, Alisyn, the hope is they'll be able to get more people in coming days, back to you.

BLACKWELL: A lot of work to do on several fronts. Whitney Wild for us there in Moore County, thank you.

Let's bring in now Mayor John Strickland of Pinehurst, North Carolina and Jonathan Davis. He's the President of FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. Good to have you.

Mr. Mayor, let me start with you. We just heard from the mayor of Southern Pines who said that 100 percent of the homes and businesses there lost power, what's the percentage where you are and how many the percentage of people and businesses that have lost power?

MAYOR JOHN STRICKLAND, (D) PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA: Same, it's a hundred percent. And although there have been some restorations in recent hours, basically, the southern part of Moore County here in Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Aberdeen are without power at this point in time.

Luckily, however, many of our homes do have at least partial generators to support the homes and some of them are able to share that power with neighbors, so that's been a very nice result of people sharing with each other and trying be helpful.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Davis, what's the situation at the hospital? I mean, how long can you run on generators? We see it looks dark behind you.

JONATHAN DAVIS, PRESIDENT, FIRSTHEALTH MOORE REGIONAL HOSPITAL: Yes, so I'm in an area that's not on emergency backup power. And most of - all of our patient carriers are on emergency backup power.

We have 60,000 gallons of diesel fuel to tanks 30,000 each. And we - those tanks last three days and we refuel. So we can go in perpetuity, so all of our patient areas are - have emergency power and we're prepared to - for many days.

BLACKWELL: Are procedures being postponed? Is care or service being altered at all?

DAVIS: Yes. All of our elective procedures, we have called patients, so we rescheduled those yesterday and have done that again today. We make that call about noon, and reschedule and push those cases out. We will look to the weekend to make up some of those cases, to make sure our patients get in before the end of the year.

And other than that, we are made up - our health system has four hospitals across the region. Three of those hospitals do have power. So we're working with those facilities to make sure where there are urgent but non-emergent needs, those patients are getting their needs met across our health system at FirstHealth.

CAMEROTA: Mayor, back in January, the Department of Homeland Security warned that the U.S. would see domestic extremists target electrical infrastructure. Is that what you think happened here?

STRICKLAND: Well, I'd leave characterization of the attack to our safety officials, but this is clearly an act that was intentional, very forceful and an act of vandalism to create a situation where the citizens of Pinehurst and Moore County are lacking heat and other support services at the present time.

I want to emphasize, however, that in Pinehurst and I think this is true across the county, all of our public safety activities are in effect. The police departments are cooperating across the county and all of our safety we feel as insured at this time.

BLACKWELL: Jonathan, we spoke with, again, the Mayor of Southern Pines who's mentioned her own mother, 98 years old who had to go somewhere else because of the lack of heat, the lack of power. Are you getting people coming into your hospitals who are in need of a plug in CPAP machine or oxygen machines that don't have power and they need somewhere where they can charge those? What's the impact of the people coming in?

DAVIS: Yes. We opened our command centers early Sunday morning, myself and several others came in Saturday night after we heard about the power outage and made rounds. But early Sunday morning, we made a plan to make sure all of our community had the ability to either charge their medical devices or have alternative resources such as oxygen, et cetera. And so we used some of our hookups to allow and some of our facilities that had emergency backup for people to come use those facilities. Since then, our rec (ph) center a number of public service as mentioned earlier: police, fire station, et cetera, have opened up as well and provided some backup across our county.

[15:15:10]

CAMEROTA: Mayor, I don't know if you've just heard our reporter, Whitney Wild's reporting on how social media was buzzing about what might have been the motivation behind this attack. Do you have any information on if it was targeted at some show or something that was supposed to be happening at that hour of night?

STRICKLAND: I don't have any information that would confirm that. I think that's best left to the sheriff and the other parties investigating this. What I'd like to emphasize, though, is the fact that we're very resilient community here and we have plans that have been in effect for some time to handle these sorts of difficulties when they occur, largely, of course, down here from hurricanes and ice storms and things that that happen.

So we're prepared for this and we never have seen something with quite the impact or the duration. But we'll be able to see this through and support our community throughout whatever the number of days it takes until Thursday to correct situation.

Just keep in mind, people are at home, they're - most of them are cold, don't have power for most of the day. We have open facilities here at our village hall and the fire station to provide some social time and a charging station for people to use and that's been busy all day long.

But we need to keep in mind, the traffic lights are out. So after dark, and certainly during the day, people need to be very, very calm and courteous when they're driving and my experience so far has been that they have been when cars come up to an intersection.

But we do have a curfew in place from 9 pm to 5 am daily and that's to support the safety of our community and not to have people out in a dangerous situation.

BLACKWELL: How about schools? Do you know when schools will be - reopen and kids can go back?

STRICKLAND: Schools are closed now. I think they'll make the decision on a day by day basis based upon the fact that power is on or not. And that will probably be a decision made for the best of the whole of Moore County, not just Pinehurst since we have a county school system here, so they're the ones that will make that decision.

BLACKWELL: All right. Mayor John Strickland and Jonathan Davis, thank you both. Stay warm. Stay safe.

CAMEROTA: So today, the same-sex marriage fight is back in front of the Supreme Court, the case and how the court's decision could impact millions of people next.

BLACKWELL: And over the counter painkillers for children are becoming harder to find across the country as the U.S. is facing a surge of respiratory illnesses.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:22:05]

BLACKWELL: Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a major case over LGBTQ rights and free speech. All right. Here's the case, a Colorado web designer said that she wants to expand into weddings, but she does not want to work with same sex couples.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Ariane de Vogue is outside the Supreme Court. So Ariane, what are the takeaways from today's arguments?

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN U.S. SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Right, the court is back at that intersection between LGBTQ rights and religious liberty. And today the conservative justices, they seem sympathetic to arguments put forward by that graphic designer, her lawyer. She wants to celebrate marriages, she wants to expand her business, but she does not want to work with same-sex couples and she's come up against this public accommodation laws.

But the justices, the conservatives really looked at this as a free speech case and they said that maybe if a business person creates something that's custom or a piece of art, then they cannot be compelled to express a message that they don't believe in, so suggesting that they would rule in her favor. And the liberals pushed back hard, the three liberals on this court.

For instance, Justice Ketanji Jackson said, well, what about a photographer who sets up a business in a mall with children sitting on Santa's lap and wants to take pictures but only wants white children to sit on Santa's lap, would that be allowed?

And Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she pushed hard on the limiting principle here, what would it mean for people who are opposed to interracial marriage or people who opposed to people with certain disabilities, take a listen to what she said in court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... ensure that in ...

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, SUPREME COURT: So, what's the limiting line of yours - of yours? Justice Kagan asked you about another website designer. But how about people who don't believe in interracial marriage? Or about people who don't believe that disabled people should get married? What's - where's the line?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DE VOGUE: And liberals, of course, are very worried about this. They saw last term when the Supreme Court overturned that abortion case. And in that abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested maybe the court should revisit gay marriage, their decision from just 2015. So all eyes are on this important case that I'll probably be decided at least by July.

BLACKWELL: All right. Ariane de Vogue there watching the - those oral arguments, thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: So a group of economists is warning that there's a more than 50 percent chance of a recession next year. The National Association for Business Economics - economics - economics, I'll go (inaudible) also predicts near zero growth.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Matt Egan is with us now. So the recession fears, what's fueling it?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: This can all get tied back to high inflation, right? The Federal Reserve has been trying all year to put this inflation fire out, right? They're lobbing these massive interest rate hikes trying to cool this economy off they're not trying to cause a recession.

[15:25:03]

But the fear among politicians, investors, lawmakers is that they may accidentally cause a recession. And so that explains these new gloomy forecasts from NABE. Three headlines out of this survey they see near zero growth of 0.3 percent next year. That is down from almost 6 percent last year. That's basically nothing.

Unemployment rate they see going from 3.7 percent today, to 4.5 percent late next year. That translates to the loss of millions of jobs. Also, they see just a one in four chance of a soft landing - they - many of them expected downturn.

Also out today, CEOs surveyed by The Business Roundtable, they had this composite where they survey CEOs on their expectations for hiring, spending. Sales expectations, that index is down to a two year low, dropped every quarter this year and not to pile on.

We should also note that markets are down this afternoon. The Dow was off by about 500 points around one and a half percent, NASDAQ is down by more than 2 percent.

Ironically, though, this sell off is not being driven by concerns that the economy is falling off a cliff. It's the opposite. New numbers out today on factory orders, service sector activity point to a hotter than expected economy which is raising yet more concerns that the Fed is going to have to do more to get inflation under control.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Matt Egan, thanks for the update.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, Matt.

EGAN: Thank you, guys.

BLACKWELL: Tampa's Police Chief is resigning after flashing a badge to get out of a traffic stop. What she's now saying about that incident.

CAMEROTA: And a dirty game, what Harry and Meghan are saying about the royal family in a new trailer for their Netflix documentary.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)