Barry Smith - In the Loop

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue is hosting her primary night party at the North Raleigh Hilton. I’m at the Hilton, and folks are starting to trickle in. It’s mostly press and campaign staff right now, with a bluegrass band warming up in the background.

Campaign workers seem optimistic. They’re planning on a big night. Late surveys showed their candidate up on Treasurer Richard Moore by as much as 18 percentage points.

Signs on the highway outside the hotel make it obvious that this is where Perdue will be tonight. Democratic state Superintendent June Atkinson has rooms in the same building.

An interesting side note: A sign in the men’s bathroom, with a Bev Perdue patch on it, reads in red and blue letters, “THANKS PERDUDES.”

Tuesday night could be a big one for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and state Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue. Both have sizeable leads in the latest Public Policy Polling survey.

Meanwhile, the race for the Republican nomination for governor is tight.

The PPP shows Obama, the Illinois senator, with 53 percent. Former first lady and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has 43 percent. Obama leads Clinton by 63 percent to 34 percent among those who have already voted.

In the race for the Democratic nomination for governor, Perdue has 51 percent, compared to state Treasurer Richard Moore’s 33 percent.

The GOP gubernatorial race is much closer. Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has 39 percent. Johnston County state Sen. Fred Smith has 35 percent.

One week from today, we’ll go to the polls, well, those of us who haven’t already cast our ballots in early voting. A recent Public Policy Polling survey gives us an insight into how things are going.

The most recent poll shows that former first lady and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has halved the lead of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential preference primary. However, Obama still maintains a 51-39 percent lead.

In the race for governor, Democratic Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue now leads state Treasurer Richard Moore by 14 points, 47 percent to 33 percent.

The GOP gubernatorial race has tightened. Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory now leads Johnston County state Sen. Fred Smith by just 5 points, 36 percent to 31 percent. Neither of the other major GOP candidates, Salisbury attorney and activist Bill Graham and former N.C. Supreme Court justice Bob Orr, have reached double digits.

In the race for U.S. Senate, GOP incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole and Guilford County state Sen. Kay Hagan appear to have comfortable leads for their party’s nomination.

PPP plans one more poll before next Tuesday’s primary.

A watchdog group is calling on boards of elections across North Carolina to be prepared for an onslaught of voters in the May 6 primary and at early voting sites which open across the state on Thursday.

“It’s like preparing for a hurricane and a week-long rock concert at the same time,” Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said in an press release sent out by email. “Officials need to plan for every contingency, add extra personnel, anticipate where bottlenecks will happen and keep educating the public about changes in conditions.”

The admonishment reminds me of election night in November 1980, when, as a reporter for the Burlington Times-News, I was at the Alamance County Courthouse and learned that there had been a ballot shortage in Rockingham County. That was the election where Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter for president.

The ballot shortage was significant to us because, at the time, Rockingham County was in the same congressional district as Alamance County and there was a close race for the congressional seat between incumbent Democratic Rep. L. Richardson Preyer and Republican challenger Gene Johnston.

I ended up traveling to Wentworth, the Rockingham County seat, that night to get results from balloting and cover the ballot shortage. I spent the night in a Reidsville hotel and wrote my stories the next morning. We were an afternoon paper then, so that gave me time to get the full story in the paper the next day.

It appears that the turnout by the Reagan Revolution surprised the local elections board. Elections officials said that the ballot shortage was actually more of a ballot distribution problem. Ballots were redistributed and voters who had originally not been allowed to vote because the precinct ran out of ballots got to do so by the end of the day.

If my memory serves me correctly, sheriff’s deputies offered those voters rides back to the polling places if they needed them.