(WGHP) -- Democrat Josh Stein is following the blueprint laid out by the current Governor Roy Cooper by spending multiple terms as the state’s attorney general before running for the top job. Stein stays mostly on the big issues when he talks about his policies, including what a governor and the government can do to help with rising prices, and he starts with housing. “We, as the state, can incentivize local governments to allow for the production of more housing and of all types: single family, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, condos, apartments, special needs housing for mental health and substance abuse, and we can be doing so much more,” Stein said. But the issue that gets him most animated is public education. In particular, spending on public education. Stein opposes using tax dollars for what the state calls opportunity Scholarships in which tax money “follows the student” as its Republican advocates like to say. It is very popular with lower-income families that feel trapped in underperforming schools, but the state took off the income cap on the program and opened it to all families in 2024. Stein thinks it’s a bad idea for several reasons. “There’s no testing, measurements to know whether kids are learning anything. There’s not curricular requirements. There’s no teacher certification requirements. There’s no requirement that these schools not discriminate against ... certain kids. That is the wrong-headed thing to do with scarce public dollars when ... the legislature has dropped North Carolina to 48th in per-pupil funding investment. It’s a disgrace,” Stein said. “We are not paying our teachers enough. If we want to recruit and retain the best teachers, we have to pay them more. I’ve got kids aged 20-25, so we have a lot of friends with kids similarly aged. My wife talked to four of our friends this summer. Kids all going into education. Two in Virginia, one in South Carolina and one in Colorado because they could not justify starting their career in the state of North Carolina, their home state. We pay our starting teachers less than every state that borders North Carolina. We’ve got to do better by our public school teachers, by our public schools and by our kids ... If we do that, we’re doing right by all of us because if you educate children well, you’re opening doors for them, whether they go to college or start their career ... you’re helping all of us because they are the workforce of tomorrow," Stein said. Cooper has had a lieutenant governor of the opposing party, and we asked Stein how that would work for him if Republican Hal Weatherman wins the office this time around. “I don’t know Hal personally. I don’t believe we’ve ever met,” Stein said. “If he wins ... I’ll reach out to him, see if we can’t work together.” Much of Stein’s attention as with all of the council of state is on helping the people in the mountains who are dealing with the flooding from Hurricane Helene. “Folks who are out there struggling, help cannot come soon enough for them. They’ve lost their home. They’ve lost their car. Many of them lost their businesses, and too many of them lost their loved ones. So they’re dealing with incredible pain and anguish, so we have to do everything we can to help people get back on their feet, and it’s going to take months ... to help communities come back, and we as North Carolinians must resolve to not forget them, to continue to put them at the top of our list and make sure that they can come back, and I will do that as North Carolina’s next governor,” Stein said. “In terms of the after-action evaluation, yes we need to do that, but we are still in the active response mode trying to make sure that cell phone towers are back up ... There are still 10s of thousands of North Carolinians that don’t have power. Roads are still blocked. Hundreds of buildings ... are washed out. People are still missing," Stein said. See more from Josh Stein in this Your Local Election Headquarters report from Bob Buckley.