Barry Smith - In the Loop

Both major party nominees for governor were in the Legislative Building today. Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the GOP nominee, met with Republican legislators and joined their press conference before the session got under way. He said he would return next week to help push anti-gang legislation.

Democratic nominee Beverly Perdue was also at 16 W. Jones St. Perdue, the state’s lieutenant governor, gaveled the Senate session to order as the 2008 short session of the General Assembly got under way.

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.

I’ve gotten a handful of comments about my column, along with a previous blog post regarding the N.C. Republican Party’s ad trying to link Democratic gubernatorial front-runners Bev Perdue and Richard Moore to presidential candidate Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In my column and blog, I posed a couple of questions:

1. Should Obama’s pastor be a factor in the North Carolina gubernatorial election?

2. Is it appropriate to hold a candidate responsible for the political views of a religious leader of the candidate’s chosen affiliation?

One email regarding my column said it was “a stretch” when I mentioned that other candidates in the past have been asked to square their views with those of their religion. Another suggested that someone who sits in the same church for 20 years and listens to such views and doesn’t change churches either agrees with the views or “is just plain stupid.”

A response to a previous blog post had some not-too-kind words to say for the N.C. GOP.

My above two question remain.

Should Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore be connected to Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? The North Carolina GOP thinks so.

The state Republican Party is sponsoring an ad chiding the two for endorsing Obama. The ad shows Wright delivering one of his controversial messages and identifying him as Obama’s “spiritual mentor.”

“They should know better,” the ad says of Moore and Perdue. “He’s just too extreme for North Carolina.”

Click here to see the ad on YouTube.

Should Obama’s pastor be a factor in the North Carolina gubernatorial election?

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.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue has decided to take her negative ads off the air. Will others follow suit? Don’t count on it.

Perdue’s new ad touts her positive approach.

“Wherever I go people ask me, ‘Can’t we stop the negative campaign?’” Perdue says. “The simple answer is yes.”

The response from the campaign of her opponent, state Treasurer Richard Moore, was not so positive.

Said Moore campaign manager Jay Reiff: “This is no surprise given that the Perdue campaign had to pull their last negative ad because it was untrue and even her ‘positive’ TV ad has been called misleading by the Associated Press. How about a pledge to tell the truth?”

I think that vigorous debate, including communications which help voters understand inconsistencies in a candidate’s record, are helpful to voters. But the debate and ads don’t have to be carried out in a way that rip each other apart and cause voters to get discouraged.

Will the days of a candidate referring to a rival as “my worthy opponent” ever return?

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has expanded his lead over New York Sen. and former first lady Hillary Clinton in the race for the North Carolina Democratic Primary.

According to the most recent Public Policy Polling survey, Obama leads Clinton by 55 percent to 34 percent. The 21 percent margin is up from a week ago, when Obama led by just 1 percentage point. The gains followed a major speech by Obama in Fayetteville, where he talked about the war in Iraq, and a speech on race in Pennsylvania.

Up until a few days ago, it looked as if Barack Obama was surging in Ohio and Texas, which have their primaries on Tuesday. The latest survey however, by Public Policy Polling, shows a strong stand by Hillary Clinton in both states.

Clinton is leading Obama by 50 percent to 44 percent in Texas and by 51 percent to 42 percent in Ohio.

In the GOP contest, presumed nominee John McCain is leading Mike Huckabee by 50 percent to 33 percent in Ohio, with Ron Paul garnering support from 10 percent of Republicans. In Paul’s home state of Texas, Paul has 6 percent. McCain leads with 50 percent, compared to Huckabee’s 38 percent.