News-Record.com

Only one Libertarian, Paul Elledge, filed to run for Guilford County Commissioner before the extended filing period ended Tuesday at noon.

Elledge, 30, is a Greensboro resident and telecommunications transcriptionist, according to his blog. He is also at least 30 years younger than the two Democratic incumbents and two Republican challengers running for the two at-large chairs.

State Board of Elections director Gary Bartlett ruled in late May that Libertarian candidates could go on ballots after receiving a petition with the minimum 70,000 names needed to get the party on the ballot. That required a special filing period for Libertarians to get on board in time for November's General Election.

Speaking of Libertarians, the local party is holding its regular meeting Thursday.

We'll get more on Elledge as we press on with election coverage.

I wrote back in February is the about a Bob Crumley commercial that seemed as if it might have some campaign implications.

Crumley is a Republican Greensboro-area lawyer running for Attorney General against Roy Cooper, the Democratic incumbent.

I noticed this weekend that Crumley is running a new ad. The tag line refers people to his law firm's web page. But you tell me: does the ad seem more like a commercial one might use in a campaign?

The U.S. Senate race here in North Carolina officially has the third with the addition of Libertarian Chris Cole.

Over the past two weeks, the editorial department has been interviewing school board candidates (at-large and District 3) for its endorsement process. Check out the questionnaires for Sandra Alexander, Michael McKinney, Darlene Garrett and Mike Stone. I will upload audio files in the coming weeks.

Update: From a story in today's paper:

"If I had never done advertising before and all of a sudden came up with television ads, you might have an argument there," Crumley said. "But I'm not doing anything that I didn't do before."

[snip]

"You can't watch that thing without thinking it's an ad for someone running for office," said Bob Phillips, who heads the North Carolina branch of Common Cause, a public-interest advocacy group that has lobbied for more stringent campaign finance rules.

Click here for the whole thing.

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Related to Bob Crumley's image ad, the state Democratic Party has filed a complaint against Crumley. The complaint, filed with the SBOE and signed by the party's executive director, reads in part:

Without disclosure of who is paying for the advertisements and how much is being spent, voters will have no information regarding the sponsorship of this apparent effort to influence the 2008 election.

Clearly, the sponsoring entity is violating the law, and I ask that the Board investigate these advertisements and any other communications for which disclosure is required.

Click here for the full letter.

More in tomorrow's paper.

For those who haven't seen it, here's the ad:

Zogby has done a red/blue/purple map of the country based on its polling.

The map is available at the firm's website and is interactive. If you click on North Carolina, here's the data it spits out:

State: North Carolina Summary: Obama - 47% McCain - 38% Barr - 4% Nader - 1% Someone else - 4% Undecided - 6%

19% lead among Independents fuels Obama lead. McCain margin with Born Agains (+14%) not as great as in most other states.

Electoral Votes: 15, Too close to call

That "too close to call" line means we get coded purple.

For those who love them a political gimmick:

GREENSBORO, N.C. – State Senator and U.S. Senate Candidate Kay Hagan (D-Guilford) will be at Steve’s Friendly BP gas station in Greensboro on Friday to meet consumers and talk to them about how current gas prices are affecting their families and their budgets. This is Kay’s third gas station stop; she has already spoken with drivers in Raleigh and Wilmington. Kay has also released a comprehensive energy plan that calls for creating clean, green jobs in North Carolina, increased fuel economy standards, and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.

A gallon of gas is currently $4.11 per gallon nationwide. When Elizabeth Dole took office in 2003, the average price of gas was $1.52 per gallon.

FRIDAY
WHO: State Senator and U.S. Senate Candidate Kay Hagan (D-Guilford)
WHAT: Kay meets consumers at a local gas station to discuss the effects of high gas prices
WHERE: Steve’s Friendly BP, 603 Green Valley Rd, Greensboro
WHEN: 12:00 noon, Friday, July 10

State senate candidate Don Vaughan has already done one pretty big fundraiser this year.

He'll do a second on July 23 in Greensboro, featuring Jim Hunt:

Sunday voting is official in Guilford County.

That means that, though voters get one Sunday, they lose one Saturday to vote.

As the AP reports, state Treasurer Richard Moore has endorsed Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue in the race for governor by way of an e-mail. Here's the text:

Dear Friend,

As you know, Bev Perdue and I had a tough, spirited primary campaign. And while the outcome was not what we had hoped for, one thing is clear: the differences between Bev Perdue and me pale in comparison to our differences with Pat McCrory.

Our country and our state are at a crossroads. This November’s election will have a dramatic impact on how we meet the many challenges facing us. So many of the issues that Bev and I both believe in – economic opportunity for all North Carolina families...world-class public schools…health care for every child in our state...and securing our energy future – are at stake in this election.

That's why we all need to work together, as a unified Democratic Party, to elect Bev Perdue as our next governor. She'll continue to stand up for North Carolina's families and to make sure they have a voice in Raleigh.

Join me in supporting Bev Perdue. Visit www.BevPerdue.com to contribute, sign up for her campaign's email list, and find out more about Bev's vision for North Carolina's future.

Sincerely,

Richard Moore

P.S. Keep up with the latest news about Bev's campaign – log on today to www.BevPerdue.com to join the campaign's email list.

That "tough, spirited primary campaign" was one filled with some pretty nasty accusations hurled at one another. And this e-mail makes it feel like there's still some hang-over there. After all, the Republican candidates all got together in person to embrace their standard-bearer, Mayor Pat McCrory.

There's no photo op and handshake here. Given that lack of political kabuki, it would seem to me there is no love loss.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has a new home in downtown Greensboro.

The staff has decamped from Elm Street's Cheesecakes by Alex, where they worked during the search for a new building. Obama's campaign met in a building on W. Friendly Avenue during the primary.

The new location opened for business Sunday across the street at 318 S. Elm St. A small staff is conducting voter registration and signing up campaign volunteers.

Setting up a Greensboro headquarters follows Obama's much-touted emphasis on winning over previously Republican states across the South. North Carolina is one of the states Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean will visit in a southern bus tour this month. Dean is set to visit Greensboro, Raleigh and Charlotte July 25.

The time and location of Dean's visit is not yet set, but we'll keep updates coming as information is made available.

Update: The NC Republican Party has issued a press release denouncing Dean's Southern tour and claiming that the DNC chairman is out of touch with Southern voters.

"It doesn't surprise me that Barack Obama would send Howard Dean to the South to do his bidding," said state party chairwoman Linda Daves, according to the e-mail release. "Dean might want to be careful though. There is a distinct possibility that in rural North Carolina, he may run into those 'bitter' voters who cling to their guns and religion, the ones Barack Obama has talked about in the past."

We would like to point out that Dean doesn't actually plan to stop in rural North Carolina, limiting his visit to three of the state's largest cities.

Update 2: The DNC has confirmed times and locations for Dean's three North Carolina stops. He'll be at the state Democratic Party headquarters in Raleigh at 9 a.m., Greensboro's Governmental Plaza on Greene Street at noon, and in Charlotte at 3:30 p.m. at the Margery Thompson Professional Development Center.

Update 3: Not to be outdone, Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan today announced a three-week "Victory 2008 Tour." The trip includes North Carolina alongside swing states Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and others.

Duncan will use the opportunity to discuss voter registration and Republican fundraising efforts. No word yet on his mode of transportation.

The folks at Democracy North Carolina put out this week a table that showed how many new voters registered in each county since the beginning of the year.(XLS)

The Democracy NC folks were making the case that with all the new voters registered, counties would have to be ready for an onslaught this election season and should be ready to make use of early voting. Guilford County already has a pretty robust early voting program, with more than a dozen locations available in the run-up to an election.

From a horse-race analysis perspective, the numbers are enough to raise an eyebrow. Of the 12,654 new voters since Jan. 1, 9,061 registered as Democrats and another 3,690 registered as unaffiliated. You can very well chalk up the positive movement there in part to the Obama campaign coming in and getting its voter registration folks on the ground.

But in the Republican column, the party actually had 106 fewer people registered as Republicans six months into the year than it started with in 2008. Were I running the party or a county-wide candidate, that would make me pretty unhappy.

I don't think that's enough to base any predictions on, but those kinds of trends would be useful to anyone trying to build an argument that Democrats are surging in Guilford while the Republicans are having to work to hold their ground. They would also be useful to any local or statewide GOP machinery trying to make the case that it was time for a big voter registration effort.

Overall, I'm not sure the new voter registration numbers should have anyone jumping out of their skin yet. New registrants, while big in numbers terms, are still only 3.7 percent of all voters in Guilford County. What we don't know about that 3.7 percent is whether they're more or less likely to vote, more or less likely to keep to a party line when they do vote or whether they'll vote for the top five offices on the ballot and stop or keep going.

The Public Radio program Marketplace just did some stories on leadership PACs that you can find here. Handy links to data on the PACs is here.

Click here for the page listing all the North Carolina contributions they found.

This is one of those projects that lays out how things work and shouldn't be surprising. If you check out the latest story, it sort of explodes the myth of Obama not taking lobbyist donations. From that story:

STEVE HENN: When Barack Obama turned down federal funds for the general election, he boasted to his legion of small donors that his campaign had found a better way.

BARACK OBAMA: Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you've fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20 -- whatever you can afford.

STEVE HENN: It's true Obama's campaign hasn't taken money from lobbyists or political action committees run by corporations and unions. But his own Leadership PAC has.

Leadership PACs are a carbon copy of corporate and union PACs. Their primary purpose is to raise money and share it with other party members facing tough election fights.

Obama's PAC is called the HopeFund and it has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Washington lobbyists and special interests. Obama's not the only one with a Leadership PAC. John McCain and nearly all the other candidates who competed in the primaries run these PACs, too.

And the reality is that politicians use this money for all sorts of things, not just to contribute to others' campaigns.

Worth digging into if you have the time.

Democrats aren't afraid to fight for North Carolina, DNC Chairman Howard Dean told a Greensboro crowd at noon Friday,

Dean - stumping for Barack Obama at Governmental Plaza on Greene Street mid-way through his Southern-state "Register for Change" bus tour - told the crowd that they can help the Illinois senator win by registering neighbors and friends to vote.

"When I ran four years ago, I used to have a slogan that you have the power," he said. "As it turns out, you do have the power. You have more power than Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly ... you do."

He told the crowd of about 200 - many of whom left with packets of registration forms - that Obama's stances on health care, the war in Iraq and the economy match the needs of Southerners.

More after the jump.