N.C. governor's candidates gearing up for '08 election

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ For the first time since 1992, the year he won his first term as state attorney general, a presidential election year will pass in 2008 without North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley running for statewide office.

But the race to replace the outgoing incumbent, who is barred by law from seeking a third consecutive term, figures to focus plenty on his record in the Executive Mansion.

"It's largely a referendum on how people view how North Carolina is doing, and certainly Gov. Easley's term is part of that," Chris Fitzsimon, the executive director of NC Policy Watch, a liberal political watchdog group based in Raleigh.

Both of the Democratic candidates are part of Easley's executive branch, and their ideas on education generally expand on those he championed. The three announced Republicans all complain that Easley failed on several fronts during his eight years as North Carolina's chief executive, from signing bloated budgets to failing to lower the state's high school dropout rate.

"Probably the single greatest failure has been a lack of vision," said Bob Orr, the former Supreme Court justice who for years has criticized Easley's strong support of using targeted tax incentives to attract businesses to the state.

Fred Smith, a Johnston County state senator and home developer who has been essentially running for governor since 2005, has said state government and the public education system should be run more like a business. And Bill Graham, a Salisbury attorney, pledges to shake up the establishment in Raleigh that Easley has overseen as governor. Both have tapped their personal wealth to get out their message.

"The question is, are we going to keep doing the same old thing or are we going to move off in a new direction with new leadership?" asked Graham, who vaulted himself into the governor's race after leading a fight against a higher state gasoline tax in 2006.

Whoever emerges from the May primary as the GOP nominee is likely be an underdog against either Democratic candidate — either Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue or State Treasurer Richard Moore. Democrats will have held the Executive Mansion for 16 years when Easley leaves office in 2009, and only two Republicans have been elected governor in the past century.

"It's the Democrats to lose, but they could lose it," Fitzsimon said. "We also don't know how bruising this (Democratic) primary will be."

There's also a wild card in seven-term Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a popular Republican who has commissioned polling on the race and said he's considering leaping into the already crowded GOP field.

"Little interest, support or enthusiasm has made any one candidate stand out or seen as a candidate of real change," McCrory told supporters in a recent e-mail.

The only announced Libertarian candidate is Duke University professor Mike Munger. A new law requires that he receive only 2 percent of the vote on Election Day — instead of the previous 10 percent — to keep the party on ballots statewide for the next four years.

History suggests that for McCrory or any of the GOP candidates to win, they'll need to focus on pocketbook issues, raise enough money to be heard on the broadcast airwaves, and get a boost from a strong presidential candidate sitting above them on the ballot.

"They've got to focus on kitchen table issues and not ideological issues," said Paul Shumaker, a longtime Republican consultant who doesn't work for any of the current GOP candidates. "They just can't say (state government) is broke, they've got to say how they're going to fix it."

With a ledger of policy positions that are largely similar, Moore and Perdue spent much of the fall sniping at each other's personal history. Moore's campaign has highlighted inconsistencies in Perdue's resume, charged that she's shaded her views for political expediency and questioned whether she would be willing to make tough decisions as governor.

"I want the buck to stop on my desk," Moore, the treasurer since 2001, said recently when criticizing a Perdue budget reform proposal that called for lawmakers to vote up or down on the recommendations of a study commission. "Clearly, she does not want to do that. She wants to pass the buck. I think that is a vital difference in our campaigns."

Perdue's camp, meanwhile, has labeled Moore a flip-flopper, and recently detailed his role leading a state government panel that approved debt used by Roanoke Rapids to build a music theater that struggled to succeed under the leadership of Dolly Parton's brother. "I think the differences are huge between the treasurer and me," Perdue said.

Held in a presidential year, the governor's race could turn on the national election. Should New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton win the Democratic nomination, for example, her polarizing history could turn off some conservative Democratic voters. But she might also top a Democratic slate led by three women, should Perdue and state Sen. Kay Hagan, who is running for U.S. Senate, win their primaries.

"It could be an interesting dynamic that we've never seen before in North Carolina," said Democratic consultant Tim McKay, who isn't working for either Perdue or Moore.

On the other side of the ballot, the GOP could suffer if the war in Iraq further wears on President Bush's approval ratings and creates a Democratic surge similar to that seen in 2006, when the party regained control of both the U.S. House and Senate.

Easley doesn't plan to make an endorsement — although to judge from his reaction to a November decision by the state's community colleges to admit illegal immigrants, it might not be wanted. All five of the announced candidates were quick to declare their opposition to the policy, which Easley embraced because, he said, he was unwilling to condemn those immigrants "to the underclass."

"The taxpayers want us to support the rule of law and use taxpayer money for what it has been intended," Smith said. "If we're going to pick and choose what laws we're going to follow, than this is a slippery slope."

But the outgoing governor believes the underlying issue that led him to support the community college policy — the need to educate the state's children to compete in a rapidly changing economy — will ultimately drive the choice of voters as they pick his replacement.

"They will gravitate to that support," Easley said. "I think that's the key to winning."