News-Record.com

So after all the hemming and hawing Coble comes out and endorses Romney anyway.

Boy, Ol' Howard sure can milk a story, can't he?

Give him credit, though. The conventional wisdom is that McCain is the GOP front-runner, so Howard's not betting on a horse that's already in the stable.

While he may be endorsing someone for president, Congressman Howard Coble is NOT dabbling in foreign affairs.

This story came my way courtesy of a Google alert and seems to suggest that Coble would sponsor legislation to recognize Somaliland. A version of the post seems to be making the rounds on the Internets. It reads in part:

Rep. Howard Coble's office said it is willing to offer support, whether it means writing a letter of support to the Department of State or actually seeing that this bill is introduced in the House...

Not so, says Coble's chief of staff, Ed McDonald.

Although Cobles office did meet with a representative of a group called "Friends of Somaliland People," Cobles staffers told them that if anyone was going to write a letter it should be someone on the Foreign Affairs Committee and really needed to be aimed at prompting executive branch action.

Cross-posted from Decision 2008.

-=-=-=-=-

I was roused from my post-Super Bowl stupor last night by and ad for Crib to College, a nonprofit founded by Crumley and Associates.

The law firm is owned by Republican AG candidate Bob Crumley. The firm does heavy advertising for itself, including on the back page of the phone books.

Now, call me skeptical, but this got me to thinking and digging a little bit.

Crumley formed the Crib to College nonprofit in 2006, shortly after his 2005 declaration that he would run for Attorney General in 2008. (Yes, he's been running for nigh on three years.)

The ad for the scholarships features Crumley in a lot of the visuals and mentions his name several times. It sure as shooting looked to me to be a couple half steps short of a campaign ad. Could the foundation and its on-air advertising be taken as a way to boost his public profile around the state?

Crumley told me I'm taking the coincidence the wrong way. After 2006, the law firm realized it wasn't getting the number of applicants that it wanted for the scholarship. So in 2007 and again this year it began advertising the scholarship.

Crumley said his company has been doing public service work, such as drivers education, for years and that the formation of the nonprofit had to do with the expanding its community outreach efforts.

"Totally coincidental in terms of timing," Crumley said.

Alright. Fair enough. Still, advertising is advertising. Has he given any thought as to cutting back ads for the foundation or the law firm as he runs for AG.

Short answer: no.

"The company has been advertising for a long, long time. The company is going to continue to advertise, I guess forever...It's two separate things and the campaign will do its thing and the law firm will do its thing," Crumley said.

For those wondering if there's a law against this sort of thing, yes and no.

If you're a sitting member of the Council of State - the AG is a member - you can't do publicly-funded Public Service Announcements except in case of a national emergency, said Gary Bartlett, who heads the state board of elections.

So, for example, Democrat Roy Cooper can't do a bunch of ads for his department's fraud prevention efforts this year as a way to build his name recognition and good will.

Crumley, however, is pretty much in the clear to do ads for his foundation and his law firm.

The state can't regulate anything that doesn't have the "magic words," Bartlett said. Those would be words like "vote for," "support," "oppose," or "defeat." Anything else is, at best, an issue ad, which is dicey if not impossible for the state to regulate anyway. Advertisements for private businesses or foundation don't get close to coming into the SBOE's purview.

So there's nothing the state can do to put Crumley's foundation and business ads off the air, regardless of how they may or may not help his campaign. As for Crumley, he emphasized the foundation had nothing to do with politics.

"I don't want to see a really good program politicized for my benefit or anybody's benefit," he said.

Officials at the DMV met with us scruffy press types Tuesday to talk about changes in the way drivers licensees get issued.

Meanwhile Cone says I should develop a sense of humor about this, which would be fine if there was anything humorous there.

From a PR Newswire release:

North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, a former businessman and pro-growth champion on Capitol Hill, has agreed to become the new Co-Chairman of the Senate Boating Caucus. Senator Burr replaces former Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who recently retired from the U.S. Senate, and will serve as co-chairman alongside Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.).

Now before you think Burr is going to don a little sailors cap and start having people call him "Commodore," this has more to do with business than regattas. More from the release:

"I love the outdoors so I'm pleased to be a Co-Chair of the Senate Boating Caucus," Burr said. "Like all North Carolinians, I know that boating is a great way to enjoy our state and we share that with many families across our country. The boating industry is an important part of North Carolina's economy that is continually growing," Burr added.

North Carolina is home to more than 60 boat manufacturers that generate more than 7,300 jobs statewide. With more than $649 million in new retail sales and services in the powerboat, motor, trailer and marine accessories market in 2006, North Carolina is the fourth biggest marine market in the U.S. There are currently more than 370,000 registered recreational boats in North Carolina.

"The National Marine Manufacturers Association applauds Senator Burr for taking on the responsibility of co-chairing the Senate Boating Caucus and thanks him for his strong representation of the recreational marine industry and boating community in North Carolina," said Scott B. Gudes, NMMA vice president of government relations. "We look forward to working with him to promote pro-boating policies on Capitol Hill."

Over at D-2008, I've been busy with debate coverage (click here and here for summaries, audio and links to more posts).

I thought it was interesting to hear Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory talk about "good trends" in mental health care and the smack down that followed from the other three Republican candidates. McCrory struck me as unprepared on that particular issue.

Also, I spoke with Jim Neal about the Village Voice story, as conversations continued at the original post.

Oh, and Rep. Howard Coble says he has no regrets about his Romney endorsement coming just days before Romney dropped out.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was making the rounds at form Gov. Jim Hunt's Institute for Emerging Issues shindig this morning, a case of bipartisanship in action if there ever was one. (Hunt is a Democrat, Burr is a Republican.)

Burr was an unexpectedly hot commodity because of stories like this one, which mentioned him as a potential VP candidate for Arizona Sen. John McCain.

I watched him talk to no fewer than five or six broadcast reporters who all asked him about the same thing. So I asked him for a tally: exactly how many times had he been asked today about the Veep-stakes.

"Too many," Burr said.

As he conceded in the Associated Press story, were he to be asked Burr wouldn't turn down McCain. But he neither expects to be asked nor does he think it's an issue on McCain's mind right at the moment.

"One, it's premature for the question to be asked because he (McCain) hasn't won the nomination to be asked," Burr said. "Two, any responsible candidate is going to wait to see who they run against before they go through a thought process on vice presidential candidates. Three, I don't expect to get a call."

Burr gave the keynote to forum's lunch crowd today, and he didn't escape unscathed by campaign talk. Gov. Jim Hunt told the audience that Burr had been on the stump for McCain in New Hampshire, without socks.

Burr explained to the crowd - facetiously I think - that New Hampshire electioneering laws required that voters approach someone on the stump first, not the other way around. So what better way to attract questions?

"People said, 'Are you crazy? You haven't got any socks on,'" Burr said, getting a laugh from the crowd. With the ice thusly broken, he could then go on to pitch for McCain.

By the way, Burr was at the forum to talk about energy policy. The thrust of his lunch-time speech was that the United States needs to develop its own supply of energy, both through traditional means - such as coal and nuclear - and through developing new technologies.

The upside, he said, was that North Carolina could develop new companies and jobs around these emerging industries.
"We're all for conservation, we're all for new technologies, we're just not for it right now," Burr told the crowd. "And the question is, if not now, when? The rest of the world changes at exponential rates and it requires us to stick our history behind us and to look forward and figure out where we go."

Click here to listen to his speech.

As has been noted elsewhere, Mike Easley sounds like he's running for something.

Now the man says he doesn't have an interest. He's been asked three years in a row about a U.S. Senate run and put the kibosh on that. He's never really jumped up and said, "heck yes," when asked about cabinet level work. I think talk of a VEEP slot may actually make him break out in hives.

But consider this quote from Easley's speech at the Emerging Issues Forum today:

"Essentially, we have two choices," Easley said. "We can work toward energy independence, or we can put the United States of America at risk. We can put our economy in jeopardy, we can be controlled by other countries."

Sounds rather national in it's scope, no?

Click here to listen to yourself.

After his speech, Easley was asked if he was building a case for some kind of national office, Easley deflected the thought:

"No. I think energy is a national issue, it’s an international issue for that matter," Easley said. "Everybody is trying to be as innovative as possible to solve the energy problem in America. But we want to lead in North Carolina."

Click here for my story on Easley's battery announcement Tuesday.

Also, Jim Neal and Kay Hagan were making their campaign pitches in Greensboro Tuesday.

On today's calendar: Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue will hold a fundraiser in downtown Greensboro at The Depot.

I popped into a meeting of the North Carolina Economic Development Board this morning, attracted by an agenda item on the drought.

The state is in the process of trying to determine the price tag for the drought in North Carolina, said Stephanie McGarrah, assistant secretary of commerce.

"No other state has been able to do that," she said.

That said, there is some economic cost already to the drought, and it is more than just what governments are spending interconnecting water systems or making contingency plans she said.

Farmers, Christmas tree growers, those who make their livelihoods in the landscaping business are already suffering. Basically, all the businesses that rely on stuff growing are in trouble.

"We haven't seen any problems in terms of it affecting recruitment or retention yet," McGarrah said.

Yet.

But think about it. If you're looking at moving your company somewhere, are you going to move to place that potentially could run out of water? What if your company uses water in some of its manufacturing processes? It wouldn't matter what kind of tax breaks the state offered if you couldn't carry out your business or convince your core workforce to move here.

This was actually one (and possibly the only) upside to textile manufacturers leaving Greensboro in droves. The city's water use fell by hundreds of thousands of gallons in the later 1990s and early 2000s because companies weren't drawing on the municipal system as much.

Lots of industries could be affected, McGarrah said. From the motel/hotel folks to anyone in the food processing business to power companies to microchip manufacturers could be affected in some way. All of those industries rely on water in some way. Even those that don't use large amounts but need it to be a certain quality could be affected as municipal water systems draw from lower down in reservoirs than usual.

All of a sudden, I don't feel as bad about my lawn looking scruffy.

I completely missed this until this morning when I was running through the candidate list (PDF) from the SBOE.

Ada Fisher, who has in the past run against Mel Watt in the 12th Congressional District, and as late as December said she would again, has filed to run for the N.C. House instead.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has its annual review of budget earmarks out.

Earmarks are those little (or not so little) bits of funding that members of Congress set aside and make sure get to the home folks. Some folks call it pork, others call it "valuable local economic development projects." It's all a matter of perspective.

You can look through the whole thing at the TCS website, but I'm going to dive in an pull out some info on our locals.

Let's start with Congressman Howard Coble:

Amount requested alone or alone and with Senators: $5,289,500
Amount of Total Earmarks, requested solo and with others: $1,2737,500
Some of the Projects:

• * YMCA of High Point, NC, Archdale Trinity Branch in Archdale, NC, for construction of a YMCA facility, $147,000
  
• * Alamance-Burlington School District, Burlington, NC for the Professional Development Academy, $146,000
  
• * Sandhills Teen Challenge, Carthage, NC for substance abuse treatment services, $97,000

Coble had two projects he requested in conjunction with Brad Miller:

• * Elon University of Law, Juvenile Justice Intervention and Mediation Clinic, Greensboro, NC, $235,000.
• * Autonomous Anti-Submarine Vertical Beam Array, $1 million. (This one went to General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.)

Miller himself had $9.6 million in earmarks, $2.2 of which he either requested on his own or in conjunction with Senators (read: no other house members involved). Some samples from his list:

• * FRESH (Field Renewable Energy System Hybrids) Li Ion Battery, $1 million. (AFRL/PRPS).
• * WakeMed Health & Hospitals, for the Emergency Operations and Regional Call Center, $170,000.
• * To Interact, for renovation and build out of a shelter for victims of domestic violence, $147,000.
• * Person Memorial Hospital, Roxboro, NC for facilities and equipment, $331,000.

Rep. Mel Watt has signed onto $23.8 million in earmarks, although only a tenth of that are items that he signed onto by himself. Some samples of those:

• * University of North Carolina, with East Carolina University, for the program in Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease, $570,000.
• * University of North Carolina at Greensboro, for a teletherapy program to address the shortage of speech language pathologists, $68,000.
• * Intermodal Transportation Facility (Winston-Salem), $392,000.
• * Klumac Road grade crossing separation (Salisbury), $300,000.

The big money seems to be on the Senate side.

Elizabeth Dole did $147 million in earmarks either on her own or with others. Of that, she did $4.8 million in solo requests, with no other Senator or House member involved. Samples from that group:

• * FHWA; Ferry Boats and Terminal Facilities, $2.3 million, North Carolina Statewide Ferry System.
• * University of North Carolina at Wilmington, for nursing programs including military veterans, clinical research, and distance learning, $205,000.
• * Aquatic Plant Control - Lake Gaston, $512,000.

Sen. Richard Burr signed on to $116 million in earmarks, $2.8 million of those without another Senator or House member involved. In that latter group:

• * City of Rocky Mount, for renovations to the former Booker T. Washington High School, $137,200.
• * Clayton Pedestrian Grade Separation, $360,150.
• * Gaston College, Health Education Institute, Dallas, NC for nurse training programs, including facilities and equipment, $146,000.

The State Auditor's office released a review today of Operation Sickle Cell, a nonprofit run by Rep. Mary McAllister.

Because of the politics involved here, this wasn't exactly your standard-issue audit.

Rep. Mary McAllister heads the agency found herself last summer in front of the State Board of Elections, fined for some questionable book keeping. At one point, her name was coming up in the same context as Rep. Thomas Wright, of Wilmington - not a good thing 'round these parts.

McAllister seems to be done with her SBOE troubles, but the review of Operation Sickle Cell has and will get quite a bit of attention because she heads it.

The audit found some things that should be troubling to any nonprofit board of directors but are fixable. Better policies can be put in place, the board can take better minutes, employees can be told to get the political campaign fliers off their computers. No money was found to be missing or misappropriated.

However, the thing that looks the worse, the thing that has and will generate the most attention is finding #1 from the audit:

OPERATION SICKLE CELL BLOCKED READY ACCESS TO THE OFFICE OF THE STATE AUDITOR IN VIOLATION OF STATE LAW AND THE GRANT CONTRACT.

Say it with me kids: The cover-up is always worse than the original transgression.

The Auditor's office went to the court, and got, a subpoena to look at the group's computers. Operation Sickle Cell disputed the auditor's statement on this, writing in part:

At no time did Operation Sickle Cell refuse to cooperate with OSA, except with respect to the agency’s requests to have a Superior Court Judge determine the appropriateness of the subpoenas issued by OSA. Operation Sickle Cell understands that it must balance its privacy rights and the privacy rights of its clients against the responsibility of OSA to review grants of public funds made to private corporations.

You can read the whole back-and-forth by clicking here.

The upside of this for McAllister is that the audit is out there now and the news cycle it has prompted will be done before the election cycle hits full stride and way before the legislative session.

For those who have been paying attention to the news on Mental Health reform (such as this or this), the following from DHHS will set some tongues-a-wagging:

RALEIGH - North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Services (MH/DD/SAS) Director Mike Moseley today announced that he is retiring.

"I've accomplished a great deal in my three decades of public service to the State of North Carolina," Moseley said. "There have been a lot of changes in the state system during my tenure, and I'm proud of what I've done to move things forward for the people who depend on this system for their care."

Moseley has been one of the leaders responsible for shifting the state from a government provider model to a mental health system that relies largely on private health providers.

The release from DHHS notes: "Moseley will leave the Division effective Feb. 29, but he plans to work another 90 days at the department level as part of the transition starting March 3."

For those who don't believe in coincidences, I would note that the N+O is getting ready to roll out a big series on mental health this weekend.

Remember video poker? You know, the little machines that used to be convenience stores and the like. They were one of the industries that former House Speaker Jim Black was known for protecting before he got sent up the river.

Background here and here.

Well among the biggest spokesmen for the industry - at least among the folks who I talked to a few times - was Rockingham County's George Trent.

An excerpt:

Instead, legislators should start a system of statewide regulation of the machines, said George Trent, of Reidsville, speaking for the N.C. Amusement Machine Association.

Statewide registration would eliminate the confusing county-by-county regulatory system and make it easy for authorities to identify illegal machines, Trent said.

His Trent Brothers Music Co. owns a number of video-poker machines.

The machines are owned mainly by family-run businesses that provide employment for law-abiding residents, Trent said. They are harmless fun when operated according to the law, he said.

"If we can get rid of the illegal machines, the majority of our problems would be gone," Trent said.

Trent's name is among those picked up by the ALE today in an "illegal slot machine" sweep.

New release: here.

Trent was not only a donor to his industry PAC, but gave political donations to Rep. Nelson Cole and Sen. Phil Berger, among others.

Also worth noting: he has been charged with the big-boy crime of operating a "continuing criminal enterprise," which is a class H felony.

And I'm trying to confirm, but I believe video poker machines would now, under the law, fall into the definition of an illegal slot machine "or device where the user may become entitled to receive any money, credit, allowance, or any thing of value..."

PBDE is the acronym for Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, a category of flame retardant used in a whole bunch of stuff, including the computer I'm using to enter this blog post and the couch I'm sitting on right at the moment.

According to researchers, it's also found in household dust, drier lint, human hands and accumulates in fish and humans. Oh, and it has apparently been linked to thyroid issues and may affect neurological development.

I have a story coming for Sunday's paper about some Greensboro-are legislators - Rep. Pricey Harrison Sen. Stan Bingham and Sen. Katie Dorsett - who plan to offer some legislation to ban it's use in North Carolina.

Click here to read the newspaper story.

Wikipedia has a pretty good primer of PBDEs, although it's fairly technical stuff so source elsewhere as well.

A few more things: There are three main varieties of PBDEs, all named for their chemical makeup. The penta and octa varieties are no longer manufactured in the United State, but the deca variety is. The problem with deca is that it can be broken down by sunlight and the metabolism of certain critters (definitely fish, maybe humans, possibly bacteria) into its more toxic cousins.

Washington and Maine have passed laws restricting the use of the deca form of PBDE.

If North Carolina is going to pass a ban, or anything approaching it, the legislation will have to proposed by the ERC, one of the myriad of committees that meets during the interim between legislative session. The rules that govern the legislative short session that begins in May don't allow legislators to introduce bills willy nilly like they can at the start of long sessions, which start in odd number years.

Harrison said that her impression is that the ERC is leaning toward doing so, although they have yet to hear from folks like the manufacturers of PBDEs, which is supposed to happen in March.

Some companies such as Dell have announced they are phasing out use of the chemical. But given the fights that went down in Maine and Washington, I'd expect some pushback here as well.

One more bit of oddness connected to this. The furniture industry, tobacco industry, chemical industry and a whole bunch of government regulators have been fighting over flammability standards for years. The debate initially had to do with whether it makes more sense to make a fire-safe cigarette or fire-safe furniture. (Really.)

This story by the Washington Post provides good outline of that debate.

PBDEs factor in because they are, in fact, really good at stopping fires. The problem is they have to be present in such quantities that they pose all the health problems, accumulate in the environment, etc...

True fact: PBDEs have been found in polar bears.

Cross-posted from D-2008.

So I have story for Sunday - click here to read it - that seemed like a really good idea when I thought it up a week ago. I'm less sure right now, in part because I ended up having to hack the substantive bit that got me interested in writing it.

The premise is this: after talking to and watching the Internet posts of progressive/liberal/activist left Democrats, it seems they are lining up more behind Chapel Hill investment banker Jim Neal rather than Greensboro state Sen. Kay Hagan.

Now, there is a natural danger in writing about any one group of people. First off, not all members of the group will adhere to your thesis. Progressives are even less cohesive and consistent by their nature. Also, this is a story that requires some measure of nuance, which a 30-inch newspaper story doesn't always get at real well.

That said, I don't think the thesis is completely off base.

Neal sounds more like a progressive on the stump than Hagan does. His campaign thus far has been engineered around a robust web presence and talking in front of any gathering of more than five people who will sit still for him.

And Neal tends to take more black-and-white stands on the issues of the day, while Hagan is a bit more scholarly/circumspect in her approach in exploring new issues.

A good example of this, the bit I had to cut. Check out David Allen's blog post, which started tongues-a-waggin' in the liberal blogsphere. And it lead to this:

After hearing Hagan speak about the wiretapping bill now before Congress, Allen said he could not vote for her. Among other things, the bill would give phone companies immunity for illegal acts they may have committed in cooperating with phone taps requested by the Bush administration.

Democrats, Allen said, should be pushing back against that bill.

"What I get tired of is people like Kay Hagan telling me why it can't be done," Allen said.

Interviewed Friday, Hagan did not offer a yes-or-no answer as to whether she would have backed the Senate version of the wiretap bill to which Allen objects.

"I think it depends on which amendment you're looking at, and which bill you're looking at and we've got to look at all of that and see what's best for North Carolina," she said.
Neal was more definitive when asked.

"I was disappointed that the Senate buckled on the issue of retroactively granting immunity to the telecom companies," Neal said. Allowing lawsuits, he said, would allow lawyers to probe what kind of pressure the Bush administration used and figure out why some companies felt they had to cooperate and at least one did not.

Others who I spoke to for this story agreed that the telco issue would be a big issue for progressives.

Also worth noting is there were several people - all from Guilford County - who I approached for this story who either declined to talk to me or agreed to do so if their names weren't used. Both Hagan and Neal have Guilford County connections and it seems some were afraid of offending one or the other.

Update: Tom Jensen at PPP points to a post he wrote about a Survey USA poll that showed liberals in North Carolina slightly favoring Hagan over Neal. As he wrote then, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense given the tenor of the race.

But it does jibe with something James Protzman, better known as Anglico out there on the Internets shared. He said that activist, vocal liberals seem to be favoring Neal. But the next layer, those who may share progressive values but are not as active or outspoken, are split. Maybe that's what the Survey USA poll got at. Maybe not...I've been gun-shy about polls as of late.

Let me first say I've been covering politics at some level or another off and on for about a dozen years, from towns of under 1,000 residents to Congressional campaigns. I take nothing, and I mean NOTHING, about a campaign personally. Everyone has different ways they want to go about their job, I have my way, and we see how things work out.

Now to the news of the day:

Dome reports that Kay Hagan showed up to file the paperwork necessary to get on the ballot today. Lots of candidates make this a big production and I largely ignore these little shows because: 1) everyone does them and quite frankly there's too many political critters out there for me to attend every one; 2) the candidate is displaying no more skill than those he or she should have acquired by the third grade, namely the ability to fill out a form and follow directions.

Hagan was apparently escorted by her new campaign manager, Crystal King. Dome details the following exchange:

Kay Hagan has hired a campaign manager.

And here's the first and last quote you might hear from her:

"I do not go on the record," said Crystal King, unprompted, to two reporters Monday after one of them asked her name, David Ingram reports.

King had just started to usher Hagan out of the State Board of Elections after filing as a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Not exactly a warm greeting.

Huh.

So let's flashback to last week when I was working on a a piece about Hagan, Jim Neal and progressives.

I had originally given Hagan a buzz on her cell phone in the morning and ended up talking to her later in the day. But in between, campaign spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan gave me a call to chat me up. Fair enough.

After learning what the story I was working on was about, Flanagan took it upon herself to get me a written quote. (This is another story, but when I KNOW a candidate or other live human is available to spend five minutes on the phone, I don't typically deal in written quotes. They sound phony, pre-thought-out and half the time don't address the question.)

What's relevant in this case is who the quote is from: Crystal King, who Dome says doesn't go on the record. That struck me as odd, or at least calls into question by what she meant.

So in the interest of full disclosure - and at the risk of aggravating people I would really like to keep talking to me - here is Flanagan's e-mail, which contained a quote from King, which was very definitely on the record.

Hi Mark -- good speaking with you earlier. Looking forward to meeting you soon!

Statement below from Crystal King, Kay's campaign manager:

"Progressives are an important part of the Democratic community, and their desire and energy to replace a Washington politician like Elizabeth Dole is just as strong as Kay's And the Hagan campaign is doing everything thing we can to earn their votes in the primary -- and have them as a foundation for a winning general election campaign. The issues Kay's been highlighting: changing course in Iraq and reinvesting in America, taking care of our vets, and finally getting something done to make health care more affordable will appeal to voters all across the state of North Carolina."

The quote also mentions that Hagan will be announcing more campaign staff and a re-launch of the website in coming days.

What to make of this? I'll leave that to y'all.

I've stayed away from writing about the back-and-forth between Treasurer Richard Moore and Lt. Gov Bev Perdue in their race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Part of that has to do with the fact I'm little more fascinated (and my paper has local interest) in the Senate primary, and part of it is the constant back-and-forth is less than illuminating at times.

But, let's jump into the fray today.

Bev Perdue has hammered away at Richard Moore with a varient of the Main Street versus Wall Street line for a good while now. Consider this example documented by the Tavern's bard keep during a debate earlier this year:

Do you want a candidate who’s from Wall St., or a candidate who’s from Main St.? Richard has raised about a million and a half dollars from Wall Street and from folks he does business with, with the pension fund...

Well, word got around to the Moore campaign today that Perdue was herself visiting some Wall Street types. His campaign hasn't generated a statement on it yet, but suffice it to say they don't think Perdue should get a free pass.

It's not hard to see their point. If taking money from Wall Street types is a bad thing, then why should any candidate do it? Might this not show that Wall Street has other interests in giving to political candidates other than those who deal with pension funds.

In an e-mail, Perdue campaign spokesman David Kochman writes:

She went to New York to visit the White House Project, a national non-profit that helps elect women candidates. While she was there, she met with several Democratic donors, some of whom are in the financial industry.

The bottom line is, 92% of Bev Perdue's money has been raised in North Carolina. Unlike Richard Moore, who's taken $1.5 million from vendors associated with the pension fund and is sole fiduciary, Bev has no control over how the pension is invested.

(As an aside: Click here for more info on the White House project.)

Also worth noting is that Perdue's campaign won't have to report how much money she raises on this trip to the State Board of Elections until April 28, eight days before the election. That means that if she does raise a significant sum, we scruffy media types will only have a week to note it, probably less since those forms can be lengthy and it takes a while for the full version to make their way into the public ether.

So is there a right and wrong here? That's probably not for me to say.

But it is worth noting that a candidate who has used "Wall Street" as a slur against her opponent is herself raising money from the financial industry.

Update: A few more updates from both campaigns. First this from Moore's campaign:

"The hypocrisy of Beverly Perdue fund-raising on Wall Street, after months of bashing Richard Moore for the same - is exactly why North Carolinians will begin asking, 'Does Beverly Perdue really have the character and consistency to be governor?'"

And here's more from Kochman, who I pressed a little bit more on why it was okay for Perdue to raise money in New York and not Moore:

For a candidate who has nothing to do with the pension to meet with Democratic donors in New York, a couple of whom happen to be in the financial industry, is VASTLY different than the sole fiduciary of the pension fund raising more than $1.5 million from people he does business with.

In a separate e-mail, he added:

And just to clarify, this was not a big fundraising swing. She only had a few small meetings, most of her time was spent with women’s groups, there were no fundraising events, and she left at noon. She's already been back in NC for a few hours.

Greensboro Rep. Alma Adams' office sent notice a couple days ago that she has received yet another award. This is the W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists, a predominately African American organization founded in 1935.

She'll take home the hardware March 21 during a lunch time ceremony at the Koury Center in Greensboro.