By Miles Layton

Miriam Rollin is a joy to talk to — smart, compassionate, and a leader who will fight for others. Rollin has campaigned near and far from Susan Inglis’ front porch at The Homestead to a campaign rally at a church in Roper – where I first met her. Story’s featured photo comes from Rollin marching in Saturday’s parade at the Scuppernong River Festival. As to her life and career, I like this quote — “I fought for 40 years for disadvantaged kids and families.”

Rollin spent four decades pushing lawmakers, courts and agencies to do more for children. Now the Democrat wants to take that fight to the N.C. House.

Rollin is running in House District 1 against Republican Ed Goodwin of Chowan County, who is seeking reelection. She sat down with the Albemarle Observer to talk about her background, her campaign and where she differs from the incumbent.

Rollin said she would like to debate Goodwin face-to-face so voters can compare their records and plans. So far, she said, no debate has been scheduled.

Rollin, who lives in Duck with her husband, Mike, describes her career in a sentence. “I fought for 40 years for disadvantaged kids and families,” she said.

That work took her to Congress, state legislatures and the courts. Her policy issues included early childhood education, after-school programs, K-12 schools, mental health and in-home visits for at-risk new mothers.

For 16 years, she worked for the national nonprofit Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. Its membership included 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors. “In a bipartisan way, our organization fought for things that the research shows were effective in reducing later crime,” she said.

Rollin is also a lawyer. She earned her law degree at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she built most of her career with national nonprofits working on federal and state policy. She worked for the National PTA. Her first job was with a national student organization fighting student aid cuts, a cause she said was personal because she relied on student aid in college.

She was a prosecutor in Brooklyn “during the height of the crack epidemic in the late 1980s,” she said. She handled mostly child abuse and family violence cases. She also served as a guardian ad litem for abused and neglected children.

Settling on the Outer Banks

Rollin and her husband had been visiting northeastern North Carolina for decades. They bought their first property here in 2011 and their current home in 2019, “just before COVID,” she said. “Thankfully, because we couldn’t have afforded it after,” because as everyone knows, housing prices have skyrocketed.

They moved full time after both retired in December 2022. Their child, Sam, still lives in Northern Virginia.

Retirement could have meant a quiet life near the water. Rollin, though, had already tried local politics. She ran for the Duck Town Council last year and came up four votes short of one incumbent and 10 votes short of another. “It was an educational experience as well,” she said.

She planned to spend this year helping other candidates. Then she learned the Democratic nominee for District 1 had dropped out and no one had signed up to replace him. She started calling around. “I thought the representative couldn’t and shouldn’t run without opposition,” she said.

No one stepped forward, so she did. “Ultimately, I talked with some folks, and I stepped up to the plate,” she said. That was in early August.

Rollin said she has talked about affordability since the day she entered the race. She called a recent gas tax move a start but not enough. “There’s so much more that we could do,” she said. She pointed to health care, housing and child care. In parts of northeastern North Carolina, she said, some areas lack health care options altogether.

Education is another dividing line. Rollin said North Carolina ranks 51st among 51 states (including D.C.) for education funding effort, measured as education spending relative to economic output. She tied that to the state’s pitch to employers.

“North Carolina prides itself on attracting business, which is great,” she said. “But that’s not going to last if we don’t have workers that are actually prepared for the workforce.”

She said teachers are leaving for neighboring states. “I do not see my opponent taking action to do anything about that,” she said.

Rollin said she is also troubled by changes to election law. She cited House Bill 958, which would have allowed more challenges to votes after the fact. The governor vetoed it, but she expects the legislature may try again. “Who knows? Most likely, the way they’ve done with all the other bills, they may come back and pass that over his veto,” she said.

She objected to the way the district is drawn as well. It includes only the northern and western half of Dare County, and traveling from one end to the other means crossing counties outside the district. “I don’t think gerrymandering should happen by either party,” she said. In a rural region, she said, “it should be whole counties rather than carving them in half.”

Asked about the environment, Rollin criticized a bill she said Goodwin supported. She described it as “an anti-affordability bill and a bad environmental bill and a conflict of interest, so all three, all in one bill.” She said it would let power companies charge customers for facilities not yet built and drop an earlier climate goal. She noted that Goodwin had received a campaign donation from a political action committee of power companies.

She also criticized state limits on local governments, including the ban on down-zoning and the prohibition on impact fees that could help towns and counties pay for water, sewer and school costs tied to new development. She is wary of a proposed property tax limit constitutional amendment, too. “We need someone who’s going to fight for policies that are actually going to help localities and counties to be able to do what they need to do for their people,” she said.

The Winton ICE facility

Rollin was asked about the former detention site in Winton, now planned by federal immigration authorities to hold detainees. She tied her answer to state legislation requiring local jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE. She said that Goodwin supported it.

Rollin said she does not fault local law enforcement. She described them as “wonderful, well-trained” officers who “would never do” what she said ICE agents are doing.

She said conditions inside such facilities are poor. “The conditions are horrifying,” she said, and she pointed to a rise in deaths in ICE custody over the past year and a half. “Something’s wrong,” she said.

She said people held there should be treated lawfully. “The facilities where we hold people who are lawfully detained should not be providing such bad care that people die,” she said.

Her bottom line on Winton was blunt. “I think it’s inappropriate for North Carolina to be housing these facilities that are likely to become concentration camps because that’s what the other ones have become under ICE control,” she said.

Why vote for her

On farming, Rollin said she hopes to hear more from farmers before and after the election. She said agriculture is central to the district’s economy. “You saw the corn, and now you’re seeing all the cotton ready for picking,” she said, adding soybeans and peanuts to the list. She said farmers are being hit hard by fuel costs and tariffs. The state legislature can’t set federal policy, she said, “but we can advocate federally, and work for affordability in N.C.”

On LGBTQ issues, she kept her answer short. “I think people have a right to love who they love and to be who they are,” she said.

Asked for her closing pitch, Rollin returned to the word she used to start the interview. “I’m a fighter,” she said. “I was a fighter for forty years for disadvantaged kids and families. I’m going to be a fighter in Raleigh for House District One.”

She said she saw little of that from the incumbent, citing a Currituck Chamber of Commerce candidate forum where each candidate had three minutes. “His three minutes said nothing in terms of things he had accomplished as a legislator, policy-wise,” she said. “Right now, we kind of have a legislator that plays follow the leader.”

Her priorities, she said, are affordability, health care availability, fair election rules and education funding. She also wants a stronger voice for the region. “Rather than northeastern North Carolina being an afterthought, we should have someone in there who’s really fighting for resources here,” she said. “There’s a lot of need in this district.”

She said the campaign trail has been rewarding. She has visited every county in the district, spent four days at a fair and attended library fundraisers, parades and community meetings. “The people have been fabulous and warm and welcoming,” she said.

Election is November 3 with early voting starting Thursday, Oct. 15.