Democrat Jessica Bichler’s television ads say Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, sponsored a bill that rolled back testing for water contamination after Chemours polluted the Cape Fear River. Lee’s lawyers call the claims false in a takedown letter.
The spots are running in Senate District 7. According to the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Partisan Index, District 7 is one of three Senate toss-ups. Republicans need two of those three, plus the lean-Republican seats, to keep the 30 votes required for a veto proof majority. Lee is also the Senate majority leader and, Carolina Journal reported in April, an early frontrunner to succeed Phil Berger as president pro tempore.
According to AdImpact, one of the ads claims that after Chemours polluted drinking water in southeastern North Carolina, Lee sponsored legislation to roll back water contamination testing. A fact-check memo from the Lee campaign on Bichler’s ads calls the testing claim false. The same claim appears in a second spot as a bill “to dangerously limit testing.”
The bill in question is the 2018 Water Safety Act (SB 724), which became part of the 2018 North Carolina state budget. Before that, North Carolina had no statewide PFAS monitoring program. Section 13.1 of the budget put $5 million into the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory to sample public water supplies, funded a PFAS mass spectrometer and staff at the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and required the polluter to replace contaminated private wells. It also let the governor shut down a facility unlawfully discharging chemicals.
A separate ad, paid for by Majority Rising NC and not by the Bichler campaign, says Lee “sided with corporate polluters and their lobbyists” and “wrote a water safety bill that doesn’t make polluters pay a dime for the clean up.” It cites the 2018 budget and the 2026 Water Safety Act (SB 1043). Lee’s attorney, Craig D. Schauer, sent stations running the ads a takedown letter calling those lines false. Senate Bill 1043 dealt with detection, research, contaminant limits, and discharge restrictions.
Chemours has spent nearly $1.2 billion complying with a 2019 consent order with DEQ. On Sept. 10, Attorney General Jeff Jackson and DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson announced a deal with Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva: $455 million to the state and 11 local governments over 15 years, plus a $135 million reserve. About $55 million of the state’s share goes to the Emerging Contaminant Mitigation Fund, which was created by Lee.
This is the third straight cycle that Senate District 7 has produced an ad fight. In 2022, Democrat Marcia Morgan ran a spot called “Serving Others” claiming Lee used his seat to get rezonings and special-use permits for real-estate clients. Lee and his law firm sued. Morgan’s campaign pulled the ad and the case was settled in 2023, and Morgan wrote that the accusations “were not based on actual facts” and that she had followed consultants from the Senate Democratic Caucus.
In 2024 the demand ran the other way. Democrat David Hill sent Lee and the Senate Majority Fund a cease-and-desist over mailers saying he “strongly supports sex change surgery for kids.” Lee’s lawyer, Craig D. Schauer, said the campaign would keep running the claim unless Hill publicly reversed his position. Hill did not, and Lee won that race by nearly nine points.
Lee told Carolina Journal in May he is running again because the work is not finished.
“District 7 has always been one of the most competitive seats in the state, and I take nothing for granted,” Lee said. “The outside money will come, the attacks will come; they always do.”