News-Record.com

U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal stopped by my office today and chatted for more than an hour about life, campaigning and living in the news cycle of the past 36 hours or so. He is running, in case you haven't heard, for the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole.

We covered a lot of ground and I'll be writing a Q&A from the interview for this coming Sunday's paper. In the mean time, here are a first few raw cuts of audio for your listening pleasure:

• * Neal is a Greensboro native and I asked him what he recalled about growing up in the city. He talked at length and this is a six-minute cut of that answer. Around the 3:45 mark he talks about standing in two different lines for the Sunday matinee at the movie theater, something that seems to have been formative for him.

• * The sub-prime mortgage lending crisis will likely still be on the minds of Washington by 2009 should Neal get elected. Click here to listen to us talk about what Congress should be doing on the matter.

• 

• * Much has been written about Neal being an openly gay candidate. Since it seems to be all the rage this news cycle, click here to listen to the 13 minutes we talked about this and related items. At the end of the take, there is one question he wouldn't answer. The other voice you hear toward the beginning of that clip is Neal's campaign manager, Thomas Mills.

• * Now the really controversial question: eastern or western 'cue? You've got to like a candidate who is willing to laugh at your dumb questions. Although he hedged on the styles, he did take a stand on the critter: "Barbecue is pork not beef."

More to come.