About
Trail Mix, the campaign blog of the Winston-Salem Journal, is a conversation about North Carolina's elections in 2008. Come here for news and analysis on the U.S. Senate race, the governor's race and all the other statewide races. We'll also follow John Edwards as he makes his second run for the White House.
Trail Mix is written by James Romoser, the Journal's Raleigh reporter. Got a tip? E-mail me at .
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John Edwards will reportedly break his long silence tonight and endorse Barack Obama for president.
The Huffington Post reports (and others confirm) that Edwards will endorse Obama at a campaign rally in Michigan this evening. The apparent start time for the rally is around 6:15 p.m.
(Pictured above: Obama and Edwards on the campaign trail earlier this year.)
The Libertarian Party will be on the November ballot in North Carolina.
Tomorrow, the party plans to turn in 72,000 certified petition signatures to the State Board of Elections, making Libertarians officially eligible to field candidates alongside Democrats and Republicans.
The N.C. Libertarian Party has long complained about North Carolina’s restrictive ballot-access laws. Few other states require third parties to collect anywhere close to the number of signatures that North Carolina requires. Running the necessary petition drive in North Carolina took nearly four years and $128,000, the party said today. (Defenders of the current system say it keeps the ballot from becoming cluttered with minor candidates.)
The Libertarians have been on North Carolina’s ballot before, but they have never received enough votes to automatically get a place on the ballot four years later. This year, thanks to a new state law, the party must get at least 2 percent of the vote (down from 10 percent) in the gubernatorial election in order to guarantee a place on the ballot without having to petition in 2012. Mike Munger, the Libertarian candidate for governor, believes that 2 percent is well within reach — and he says he would consider that a victory.
The first few general-election polls conducted after last week’s primary suggest that North Carolina’s top two statewide races could be close contests.
Of course, it’s very early; these candidates, just coming out of primary fights, still have six months of campaigning to do. But at this point, several recent polls are showing dead heats or nearly dead heats in the general election races for governor and U.S. Senate.
In the race for governor, Public Policy Polling shows Republican Pat McCrory and Democrat Beverly Perdue in a tie, 45 to 45. One big boost for McCrory, pollster Tom Jensen writes, is that he is getting more crossover appeal than Perdue, who may have been hurt by her bruising primary battle against Richard Moore. Another poll, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, shows McCrory with a surprising lead over Perdue, 45 to 39.
In the Senate race, Democratic challenger Kay Hagan has been saying for months that Elizabeth Dole is vulnerable in November. Hagan starts as a clear underdog, but appears to making up ground quickly. PPP shows Dole leading Hagan by just five points, 48 to 43 — a much smaller margin than the 17-point gap PPP showed in its previous general-election poll between Hagan and Dole. And Rasmussen shows Hagan actually leading by a smidgen, beating Dole 48 to 47.
From today’s print edition (the better-late-than-never version): Although Hillary Clinton did worse than expected in last week’s primary, most of the other women running for statewide office won their races. It started with Beverly Perdue, Kay Hagan and Elizabeth Dole, and continued right on down the ballot. If the trend continues in the general election, 2008 will be a landmark year for women politicians in North Carolina.
... And one of those women politicians is Winston-Salem’s Mary Fant Donnan, who is running for commissioner of labor. Donnan says that her understanding of the struggles of rural workers is spurring her to run for the post. (She was the top vote-getter in last week’s primary by a slim margin and is likely headed for a runoff.) The Journal‘s Lisa Boone has a profile.
Both Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns are aggressively lobbying uncommitted superdelegates today, cherry-picking the most favorable trends from the North Carolina and Indiana races to argue for their candidate. Clinton is meeting today in D.C. with undecided supers.
Here in North Carolina, as already noted, eight out of the state’s 19 superdelegates remain uncommitted. Two of those superdelegates have not yet been chosen; they will be named at the state party’s convention next month.
The other six undecided N.C. superdelegates are:
Congressman Bob Etheridge
Congressman Brad Miller
Congressman Mike McIntyre
DNC member Carol Peterson
DNC member Muriel Offerman
DNC member David Parker
Etheridge and Miller have no plans to endorse today, Media General’s Sean Mussenden reports. But Miller appears to be leaning toward Obama. “In four weeks, if Sen. Obama ends the contest with a 150 or 160 delegate lead and Sen. Clinton ends up as the nominee, Sen. Obama’s supporters will not think that it ended fairly. I think that will be a hard breach to heal,” Miller told Mussenden. And Under the Dome cites more evidence of Miller’s true preference.
Offerman, meanwhile, said she intends to wait a little longer. The Obama campaign called her today in the wake of Obama’s big North Carolina victory last night, but Offerman said she is not quite ready to make up her mind. She said she was “very impressed” by Obama’s showing yesterday, but she told Trail Mix, “I’m still thinking of letting the primary season run before I make a final decision.”
“The charge for superdelegates is that we consider what’s good for the country as well as our state,” Offerman continued. “And we haven’t heard from all the primaries, and who knows what’s going to happen in Michigan and Florida?”
Offerman would not say who she personally voted for in the primary — although she did let on that she didn’t vote for Mike Gravel.
Jerry Meek, North Carolina’s state Democratic chairman, endorsed Barack Obama this afternoon.
Meek, who is also a superdelegate, said in a written statement:
“Although my position as State Chair has led me to remain neutral through the primary, I’ve quietly celebrated as Barack Obama offered new hope to millions of Americans who have lost faith in the American dream after years of disastrous Republican policies. Rarely does a public servant emerge with Barack Obama’s ability to unite our country and produce real change.”
Meek also said that Obama would carry North Carolina in the general election.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton picked up a different North Carolina superdelegate: Congressman Heath Shuler, who had said on Monday that he would endorse whichever candidate won his district in western North Carolina. As expected, Clinton won the district.
Obama now has the backing of eight superdelegates from North Carolina, while Clinton has the backing of three. Eight other superdelegates (including two who will be chosen at the state party convention) are still outstanding.
The votes have been counted (full results are here), and the theme of yesterday’s primary seems clear: no major upsets. Like this year’s NCAA tournament, all of the No. 1 seeds advanced.
Barack Obama put to rest all of the talk about Hillary Clinton’s late surge in North Carolina, trouncing her by double digits and strengthening his bid for the presidential nomination.
Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory, the favorites in the gubernatorial primaries, each won by large margins. Now those two — who have opposite approaches to state government — face off in a general election. Perdue and McCrory do have one thing in common: they are each trying to break a barrier. Perdue wants to be the first woman governor; McCrory wants to break the “Charlotte curse.”
Two races went down to the wire. The Democratic primary in the 5th Congressional District is too close to call and will come down to provisional ballots. Roy Carter had a razor-thin lead over Diane Hamby. Both are fighting for the right to run against Congressmwoman Virginia Foxx. And in the Democratic primary for commissioner of labor, Winston-Salem resident Mary Fant Donnan appears headed for a run-off.
Across North Carolina and in Forsyth County, voter turnout was colossal.
RALEIGH — Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory will face off in the general election to be North Carolina’s next governor.
With about half of the state’s precincts reporting results, Perdue has a large lead in the Democratic primary over Richard Moore, and McCrory is handily winning the Republican primary over Fred Smith. Both Moore and Smith have conceded the race.
Moments ago, Perdue finished her victory speech at a rally in Raleigh. “Tonight is a victory for our message of opportunity, education and standing up for the middle class,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kay Hagan won a resounding victory in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, ensuring that she will run against Elizabeth Dole in November.
Full results of all the state contests can be found here.
So much for a late night of watching presidential returns.
North Carolina’s polls just closed, and all of the major networks are already calling the state’s primary for Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton leads in early results from Indiana, but the race there is initially too close to call.
Pictured above: Obama meeting with supporters in Raleigh earlier today.
“I think a lot of women do vote for women. I get that pretty frequently.”
-- Janet Cowell, a candidate for state treasurer, on the success of many female candidates in North Carolina’s May 6 primary
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