NC governor’s latest approval rating + Stein’s record on Cabinet confirmations

AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.

Hello and welcome to our Under the Dome newsletter. This edition focuses on the governor. I’m Capitol bureau chief Dawn Vaughan.

Elon University Poll has a new politics poll out, and among the questions they asked North Carolina adults is what they think of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s job as governor. Here’s the exact question, and the results:

“Do you approve or disapprove of the job Josh Stein is doing as Governor of North Carolina?”

If you look at our most recent voter registration data, of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters, nearly 2.32 million are Democrats, nearly 2.33 million are Republicans and 3.12 million are registered as unaffiliated. So the people who approve of Stein include more than just those from his own party.

Not everyone pays close attention to our state leaders’ actions — I know that’s shocking for those of us who do! — so the 30% of unsure respondents likely fall into that category.

This past week, Stein shifted the job of one of his top leaders — now-former Department of Public Safety Secretary Jeffrey Smythe — after his confirmation hearing stalled for eight months. Smythe was moved into a newly created job in Stein’s administration as a homeland security senior adviser.

Smythe was appointed to the DPS role in December. Stein criticized the Senate for taking so long to even hold a hearing. And under a provision in a budget technical corrections bill, Smythe would have lost his job at the end of the year if not confirmed.

Top Republicans in the Senate and House wrote the technical corrections bill. There was other stuff in the bill that Stein wanted, but getting that meant also getting the provision that would boot out an unconfirmed Cabinet member. Stein moved Smythe’s job one day and signed the bill the next day, citing funding for Western North Carolina and other programs, while calling the executive power shift provisions “petty.”

The Senate, led by outgoing Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, controls when a confirmation hearing is held. The law requiring Senate confirmations is about a decade old. Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed it into law in December 2016, just before Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office in January 2017. The provision survived multiple court decisions.

Apart from Smythe, Stein’s Cabinet secretaries have all been confirmed — and all of the Senate votes were unanimous.

Here are the agencies they lead, and when the Senate confirmed them:

Thanks for reading. Be sure to listen to our Under the Dome podcast. I host new episodes on Tuesdays. You can also watch our podcast recordings on YouTube. On our latest episode, I was joined by congressional impact reporter Danielle Battaglia.

Reach me at [email protected] or the entire politics team at [email protected].

This story was originally published August 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline “NC governor’s latest approval rating + Stein’s record on Cabinet confirmations.”