GOP legislators outfox governor

This column was published in the Wilson Times Sept. 7, 2019.

North Carolina Democrats are entitled to feel good about themselves after two successful elections. In 2016, their gubernatorial candidate, Roy Cooper, won the governor’s seat, but his effectiveness was stymied by powerful personalities in the state legislature, who held a veto-proof majority and used a lame-duck session in December 2016 to pare away powers traditionally wielded by the state’s chief executive, leaving Cooper as a governor with relatively few executive powers.

In 2018, Democrats set their sights on taking enough legislative seats away from the Republicans to make the Democratic governor’s veto power an actual power. Democrats succeeded in what has been called a “wave election,” and Cooper soon made it clear that he wouldn’t be shy about vetoing legislation he didn’t like. Democrats won nine previously GOP seats in the House and six formerly GOP seats in the Senate, enough to prevent overrides of his vetoes.

But Democratic officials have made some strategic errors since last year’s election. Gov. Cooper misjudged the tenacity of the GOP legislative leaders. As usual this year, the legislature’s budget and the governor’s budget did not match. Among other expenditures that they disagreed on were teacher salaries and expansion of Medicaid.

Cooper found the legislators’ budget unacceptable, so he vetoed it. He called for negotiations with the GOP leadership. Speaker of the House Tim Moore and Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger have essentially told Cooper, “Go negotiate yourself.”

Republicans have done all they can to minimize gubernatorial powers, and Cooper’s adamant demand for negotiations on the budget is going nowhere, adding to the GOP’s aim to make the governor appear irrelevant. That perception won’t help Cooper win re-election next year.

GOP leaders displayed their shrewdness and strategic thinking by introducing individual parts of the legislature’s vetoed budget and bringing these individual bills up for a vote. Piecemeal is a poor way to plan spending, but it can have some political effectiveness. Among the popular bills passed while this stalemate continues is one giving raises to state employees — raises that had been on hold because of Cooper’s budget veto.

Cooper is likely headed for a difficult re-election bid in 2020. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, with Cooper’s success (thanks to then-Gov. Pat McCrory taking a more conservative turn after taking office, having campaigned as a pragmatic moderate in 2012). Being out-played by legislative leaders is not Cooper’s only political problem in 2020.

As Hurricane Dorian aims for the N.C. coast, the Cooper administration has spent only seven percent of Federal Emergency Management Agency block grants to aid recovery from last year’s Hurricane Florence. Cooper says the problem is that the feds have not issued rules and standards for spending block grants to help Florence victims. That may be true, but the Cooper administration has done a poor job of explaining exactly what the problem is and how the governor aims to fix it.

Cooper may also come to regret another veto he issued, this one on a bill requiring North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention requests. Some newly elected Democratic sheriffs, including sheriffs in urban counties have announced they will not do ICE’s work for them, but in a generally conservative state that has been dramatically changed by hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many of them undocumented, cooperation with ICE doesn’t sound so bad to many voters. Expect this issue to be discussed in the 2020 election for governor.

Cooper has found himself outfoxed by a strategic-thinking GOP while he has focused on playing to the Democratic base.

McCrory finally accepts the facts

Gov. Pat McCrory has accepted the fact that he lost the 2016 governor's race and has conceded to Attorney General Roy Cooper, the next governor of North Carolina.

McCrory's concession has relieved my worry that he and his GOP colleagues might be plotting a slick move of having the General Assembly declare an election deadlock to give McCrory another term, despite what voters did.

McCrory was the big loser on the state's ballot. Fellow Republicans won statewide elections for U.S. Senate and president, but McCrory lagged far behind his 2012 success. A pre-election hurricane gave McCrory an opportunity to be seen carrying out his responsibilities and empathizing with residents, but that wasn't enough to save him from his self-inflicted wounds. 

The moderate mayor of Charlotte joined hands with the harshest conservatives in the legislature and passed an unnecessary bill that infuriated gay rights supporters across the nation. The legislation was passed in unprecedented haste, and McCrory angrily defended the bill and denied, despite all evidence, that the legislation hurt North Carolina's economy, its prestige and its reputation. It appears obvious that House Bill 2 hurt McCrory's re-election bid, bringing out voters who might not have cared otherwise. McCrory and attorney general candidate Buck Newton, a sponsor and defender of HB2, were the only Republicans in prominent statewide races who failed to win.

The voters have unleashed their anger at McCrory, but little will change so long as the General Assembly has a veto-proof Republican minority, most of them ensconced in gerrymandered safe seats that make them immune from Democratic challengers.

McCrory has an unbeatable election strategy

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's election strategy seems apparent now, two weeks after the election. He is determined to win the election by taking it out of the hands of voters and giving the Republican-dominated state legislature the power to determine the election victor.

Democratic challenger Roy Cooper leads McCrory by more than 6,000 votes — a margin that has grown as county election boards continue to count absentee and provisional ballots. McCrory's campaign has challenged voting in more than half the state's counties. Thus far, each challenge has been rejected by Republican-dominated county boards of election. Still, McCrory and his soldiers persist in claiming the election isn't settled until every complaint is heard and every vote counted a second time. This week, he called for a recount, even though the first count remains incomplete.

The secret weapon of an incumbent governor in danger of losing an election is an obscure provision in the state constitution giving the legislature the final authority to determine an election victor when electoral squabbles drag on and the election results remain contested. If McCrory and his crew can drag out the vote count just a few more weeks, the General Assembly, with veto-proof Republican majorities in both chambers, can declare McCrory the winner, no matter what the vote totals say.

An election like no other

My greatest fear before the election was that some angry Trump supporters would follow through on their promise to go armed to the White House and take over the government if Trump lost. A Trump victory resolved that fear but didn't eliminate all protests and violence. Small protests with some rioting broke out after Hillary Clinton conceded.

A smooth transition of power has been the greatest attribute of American democracy over the past 240 years. Even when the change was abrupt, as it was after the elections of 1800, 1876, 1912, 1976, 1980, 1992, 2000 and 2008, there was no rioting and few, if any, public protests.

The 2016 election has shaken not only the leadership in Washington but also the entire political, polling and commentary industries. The polls had it wrong. Nearly every poll showed a Clinton victory -- usually a close win but a win nevertheless. But Trump was able to win nearly every battleground state, some by wide margins. The polls had it wrong, not because they were pulling for the Democratic nominee but because their data were wrong; data were insufficient or distorted by the difficulty of polling in the 21st century. At a time when a majority of people use cell phones instead of land lines, it's increasingly difficult to find a representative sample of the electorate. Pollsters will be examining their techniques and strategies to try to make polling great again.

The armies of political consultants also took a beating. Clinton had hundreds of data analysts, organizers, managers, publicists, graphic designers and other consultants guiding her campaign. She had the greatest "ground game" in history, we were told. Look where it got her! The political consultants, like the pollsters, missed the working class anger that fueled the Trump bulldozer.

They should have known better. Working class anger has been around for a while. Twenty-five years ago, as NAFTA was signed, workers worried but didn't have the power to stop the free trade stampede. The loss of industry, retailers and just basic prosperity in small towns have left millions feeling crushed by the global economy and the politicians who set the table for it. Trump tapped into that anger without offering a viable solution. The anger and frustration were so great that supporters were willing to overlook his insults, misogyny, narcissism and lack of knowledge. All that mattered was getting back at the political establishment that had done them wrong.

Political pundits, including highly regarded conservative writers, backed away from Trump. They couldn't abide the bombastic posturing and the ignorance of policy details that Trump's supporters willingly overlooked. As a result, many, including George Will, David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer, exposed Trump's lack of qualifications and urged his defeat. These writers had relied on what the polls said and failed to get out of Washington into the "flyover states" to see how fiercely upset the working class voters were.

At the state level, N.C. Republicans rode the Trump wave, with the exception of Gov. Pat McCrory, who was apparently undone by the "bathroom bill" he had championed. Unofficial results show Democrat Roy Cooper with a slim victory over McCrory, who lost Charlotte, Raleigh and other urban centers. Voters took revenge on McCrory for the unnecessary law that has cost the state an estimated $600 million in investments.

Unfortunately for those voters who wanted revenge, they could knock off McCrory but not the supermajority of Republicans in the General Assembly. Running from gerrymandered districts, legislators didn't have to contend with an electorate diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, party affiliation and political philosophy that McCrory and other statewide candidates did. GOP dominance in the legislative branch is unabated. So long as the General Assembly remains overwhelmingly in GOP hands, nothing will change.

In this strangest of election years

Four weeks from the election, and things are going from bad to worse. Donald Trump, miffed at Speaker Paul Ryan's decision not to campaign with him, is calling Ryan names and waging war against the political party that nominated him. In Trump's mind, he is bigger than the Republican Party. He's bigger than anyone, than any organization, than any standards of conduct.

 The video tape of Trump's offensive comments about women, which was released last Friday, has been the most tumultuous event of this presidential election season. It topped his insults toward former presidential nominee John McCain, toward women celebrities and toward other Republican candidates.

What is astounding, but shouldn't be, considering the pattern of this campaign, is that Trump's loyal supporters, including women and highly religious voters, have dismissed his offensive remarks as meaningless. They say they are not offended! Nothing signifies the great divide in the electorate than this: his loyal followers are willing to accept any sort of misbehavior, any sort of petulant tantrum, any sort of offensive speech or action in order to elect Trump, a candidate whose campaign has been built not on understanding of the issues or the offering of detailed solutions but on 144-character quips and retorts.

Some of this myopia owes, no doubt, to his supporters' distrust of Hillary Clinton, whose life has been a swirl of controversy for 25 years. Many, perhaps even a majority, of the people who will vote for Clinton have some degree of discomfort with her honesty, openness, forthrightness and character. But they will swallow their doubts in order to avoid a Trump presidency.

On the state level, Hurricane Matthew may be the best thing that has happened to Gov. Pat McCrory this campaign cycle. The hurricane gave the governor a chance to display leadership and appear frequently in news broadcasts. He took center stage at hurricane updates, and he urged North Carolinians to obey evacuation orders and avoid hazardous situations. Less senior state officials could have handled the briefings, but McCrory, in his uniform-like Public Safety  shirt, took the podium. He's not the first governor to take advantage of a news opportunity (Jim Hunt perfected the procedure), but McCrory, trailing in the polls, needed the spotlight.

Thou shatl not legislate in haste

Legislate in haste; regret at leisure.

The N.C. General Assembly is back in session, surrounded by pro- and anti-HB2 protesters clamoring over the so-called "bathroom bill" passed hastily last month. Both sides have fortified their positions for this battle, and even Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the hurriedly passed legislation, has called for a revision — but only a modest one.

Meanwhile, opposition to the bill has taken a more serious trajectory than a series of protests in and around the legislative building. Businesses and performers have canceled their commitments in North Carolina, saying they don't want to be a part of a place where the government dictates who uses which bathroom — an interpretation HB2 supporters say is erroneous. These cancellations have hurt the state economically, and that's a language everyone understands.

Even those rallying in favor of HB2 understand the loss of millions of dollars in revenue, but they blame the news media and deliberately misleading interpretations of the law for the losses to the state's economy.

It's difficult to say how this battle will turn out in the short legislative session. There will be attempts to repeal HB2, but repeal will be extremely difficult in a legislature so gerrymandered that most legislators need not worry about challenges from the other party.

The dispute over the full meaning and intent of HB2 will drone on through the legislative session, but one lesson might be learned from all of this: Do not rush to legislate; give the process time to work through the interpretations and nuances of any bill. Otherwise, you might be surprised by the vehemence of opposition from not only political opponents but also by businesses, performers and tourists.

The irony of state policy on sales taxes

There is a good deal of irony in the governor's vow to veto a bill that would distribute the state sales tax differently, sending more of the tax money to counties based on population and less to counties based on point of sale. Gov. Pat McCrory accused the legislation of being more "tax and spend policies of the past" — a fourth-degree insult in Republican circles — that would "cripple the economic and trade centers" of the state.

The legislation would change the way the sales tax is distributed. Now, most of the revenue goes to the county where the money is spent. If approved, the new rule would distribute more of that revenue — but not all of it — to counties based on population. The result would be more tax revenue for struggling rural counties and somewhat less for metropolitan areas, where rural residents often go to shop. The Charlottes and Raleighs would lose revenue; the Griftons and Taylorsvilles would gain. Current distribution is skewed in favor of urban counties.

The irony is that North Carolina and many other states have campaigned for years to require online and direct-mail retailers to return sales taxes to — note this — the states where the buyer lives. North Carolina has been largely successful in this. Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla of online retail, now disburses sales taxes to North Carolina when N.C. residents make a purchase.

McCrory has supported this sales tax principle, that the buyer's residence should determine where the sales tax goes, and retailers should be required to charge sales tax for whatever state in which the buyer resides. With a hodge-podge of state and local sales taxes to keep track of, this requirement is a challenge to online retailers.

But when it comes to sales taxes charged by brick-and-mortar stores in North Carolina, McCrory is now saying the buyer's residence should not matter: the point of sale should determine where the sales tax money goes. This favors the large cities and urban counties and hurts the decaying rural counties, where downtowns are filled with vacant storefronts and failed businesses because they can't compete with the glitzy style and mind-numbing variety of shopping experiences in urban areas. The state accommodates this demolishing of rural businesses by building ever-more express highways from rural counties to urban centers, where rural residents now spend most of their money.

If the residence of the buyer is relevant to nationwide online retailing, it should be relevant to in-state retailing as well.

Cut taxes and cut taxes again

Just a year after revamping the state tax code and reducing the state income tax by 0.25 percent, Republicans in the N.C. Senate want to cut taxes again, by another 0.25 percent. Gov. Pat McCrory counsels his GOP colleagues to give last year's tax cut time to determine its full impact on the state's economy and taxpayers, but the Senate leadership seems determined to cut taxes again.

Isn't a tax cut the panacea for all political, governmental and economic problems? 

If a tax cut every year is the solution (whatever the problem might be), where does this strategy end? If cutting taxes is the answer, what then is the ideal level of taxation? Zero?

Staunch libertarians have asserted that nearly all government functions can be replaced by free enterprise and free, untaxed citizens. If you are concerned about crime, get together with your neighbors to hire a neighborhood police force. You'll also need to hire prosecutors, judges and prison guards. And, as U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis asserted not long ago, sanitation standards can be be eliminated; just post a notice in the restaurant that the staff is not required to wash hands after using the bathroom. "Caveat emptor!" Free citizens who do not want to contract food poisoning or worse will protect themselves, and offending restaurants will eventually go out of business.

So if lower taxes are good, and still lower taxes are even better, no taxes must be best. Coming soon to a legislative chamber near you.

Governor's vetoes have a strategic purpose

Gov. Pat McCrory has vetoed two bills passed by the General Assembly, a legislature dominated by members of his own Republican party. The vetoes came on two bills that were pushed by Republican conservatives and opposed by liberals, including many Democrats in the General Assembly. One bill provides harsh civil penalties for employees who photograph or video activities at a job site — a bill aimed at animal rights advocates and whistle blowers who report on unethical or unseemly practices in farms and slaughterhouses but also applying to virtually any business in the state. The other bill allows state and local employees to opt out of performing marriages when the employee cites religious conviction for refusing to do the job.

What gives? Has McCrory gone bleeding heart on his GOP comrades?

Not at all. What is happening is the approach of 2016, just seven months away, when McCrory will almost certainly seek a second term and will almost certainly face a serious Democratic opponent, most likely Attorney General Roy Cooper. Unlike his GOP colleagues who can feel safe in passing bills opposed by a majority of North Carolina voters, McCrory won't be protected by a gerrymandered district that almost guarantees a Republican victory. McCrory will have to run statewide, where the electorate is more diverse and a good deal less conservative than the well-protected members of the legislature.

McCrory has been around the block enough times to know that he will need not only the conservative, GOP base but also the moderate Democrats and independent voters who hold the key to statewide elections. If he's going to win those moderate voters, he's going to have to distinguish himself from the more conservative GOP legislators. The most notable and newsworthy way of doing that is to veto a few bills.

State GOP proposes dangerous tax plan

The new legislative leadership is ready to go boldly where others have feared to tread — into the hazardous, murky arena of tax reform. Unfortunately, the Republicans running the N.C. General Assembly aren't planning reform, they're planning revolution.

GOP leaders say they want to abolish the state income tax, both individual and corporate. They would replace the tax that brings in the majority of the state's revenue with a broad-based sales tax on everything, including currently untaxed services and food. Eliminating the state sales tax on food was one of the signature achievements of the legislature during the 1990s. Then Rep., now Judge Milton Fitch Jr. of Wilson led the fight to abolish the sales tax on food. The sensible argument was that food is a necessity, and for low-income residents, the food tax is a heavy and unequal burden. Eliminating the tax on groceries (residents pay only the 2 percent local sales tax at the supermarket) gave an instant boost in disposable income to the poor.

Now legislative leaders want to abandon that approach, which helped those in need throughout the state. Not only would they re-impose the state sales tax on food, they would raise the total sales tax rate from 6.75 percent to more than 8 percent. This hike in the sales tax rate is necessary to replace revenue from their goal of eliminating the income tax, which they argue is too high. N.C. rates are higher than most neighboring states, and GOP legislators say that hurts economic development. But a higher sales tax hurts the economy by discouraging purchases of all kinds.

What they are truly proposing is a massive shift of the burden of financing state government from the more able to the less able. The sales tax is widely recognized as a regressive tax: Its burden lies heavier on the poor, who spend a larger portion of their income buying the necessities of life. The state income tax is only slightly progressive (higher rates for higher earners), but it at least places its burden more equitably on the better off. Only a handful of states go without an income tax, and for good reason. The income tax applies directly to earnings, taxing people in proportion to their earnings. The sales tax may seem equal, but it shifts tax burden to the lower-income, who will pay a far higher portion of their income on taxes than will higher-income earners.

With comfortable majorities in the Senate and House and one of their own in the Governor's Mansion, Republicans might be able to get what they want. North Carolinians, especially those who are not well off, had better hope that cooler heads, such as Gov. Pat McCrory, will prevail. Reform the income tax. Make it simpler and fairer for all. Reduce rates incrementally if at all possible. But don't crush struggling workers with the burden of supporting a disproportionate share of state government expenses.

Gov. Perdue pulls a surprise

Bev Perdue did what's hard to do these days: She shocked the political establishment. Perdue announced Thursday that she would not run for re-election as governor, and that took both Democrats and Republicans by surprise. They had expected her to run, and many, if not most, had expected her to lose.

Perdue said she decided to devote her time to improving education, her pet policy priority throughout her years in the Governor's Mansion. But she also must have decided that she was likely to lose and didn't want to go out a loser. Who could blame her.

Bev's surprise opens doors for plenty of Democrats. Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton has already thrown his hat in the ring. Richard Moore, former state treasurer who lost to Perdue in the primary four years ago, might be interested. Erskine Bowles, who lost two bids to be U.S. senator and settled for a much better job as president of the UNC system, has been touted as a potential candidate. Others have taken themselves out of consideration. Attorney General Roy Cooper says he likes the job he has. Four-term Gov. Jim Hunt, who was as intense as ever when I saw him this week, says he's not interested.

Pat McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor who lost a hard-fought battle with Perdue in 2008 and has been running for the same office ever since, might be tempted to send a thank-you note to Perdue. Running against nobody or against a gaggle of little-known Democratic hopefuls, should prove even easier than running against Perdue. He was far ahead of her in the polls.

President Barak Obama offered conciliatory remarks about Perdue's decision. He undoubtedly knows that without his get-out-the-vote effort in '08 and the surge in African-American voting on his behalf, McCrory would have whipped Perdue. Perdue owes Obama, and her getting off the Democratic ticket might do Obama a favor. Perdue was not increasing Democratic turnout with her below 50 percent favorability rating, so if Democrats can come up with a more popular candidate, it might help Obama hold North Carolina in the fall. He'd like to hope so, anyway.

Perdue's problem has been that, although she is the state's first woman governor, she is not much of an innovator. She has been a traditional, old-time Democratic politician. She harped on education, and she embraced most traditional Democratic causes. But can you think of a single original, innovative idea she has put forward?She has been a foot soldier for the party, and she kept marching until it became her turn to head the ticket. It was her misfortune to face a new Republican legislature that didn't much care for her priorities. Perdue's proposal earlier this month for a sales tax increase — just for the chil'ren, you understand — hit the ground with a thud and didn't bounce at all. If Perdue intended to hang her re-election on that proposal, it was smart of her to bail out.

Perdue can help herself by vetoing budget

Republicans rode into town determined to make big changes. After more than a century in the legislative minority (except for a brief period in the 1990s when they controlled the House), Republicans held substantial majorities in both the House and Senate. They promised big — no tax increases, a budget passed long before July 1, improved schools, a better business climate.

Three weeks before the end of the fiscal year, the budget is finally on Gov. Bev Perdue's desk, and the best thing Perdue might do is veto it. Perdue has complained that the budget shortchanges education, and the chairman of the state Board of Education has vehemently complained about the budget, which, among other things, eliminates teacher aides after kindergarten and phases out the Teaching Fellows scholarship program. With five Democrats voting for the budget, Republican leaders have a veto-proof majority in the House. Nevertheless, Perdue has nothing to lose in vetoing the budget. She can make her point more effectively than she has in all the speeches and press conferences while challenging Republicans to stand behind their actions. Perdue's criticism of Republican budget cuts has resulted in an uptick in her popularity ratings, although she still has a long way to go to get re-elected. Pat McCrory, who is running hard to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee again, has to hope that Perdue will quietly let the budget pass.

Legislative Republicans have done more than pass a budget that undoes much of the educational strategy and tactics of the past 20 years. They have unashamedly aligned themselves with business interests to the detriment of the public in bill after bill. The broadband bill, pushed hard by the giant national corporations that have virtual monopolies in most areas, forbids new municipalities from getting into the broadband business, as Wilson and a few other cities have done. Although titled with other words, the bill is really a monopoly protection bill. Most North Carolinians will not have the option that Wilson residents have, to choose a cheaper, faster cable TV and Internet provider. Republicans pushed a bill that would prohibit Raleigh and other cities from ensuring that rental housing is safe and habitable. Republicans even tried to prohibit the Department of Transportation from forbidding left turns on some highways because some business people complained that the left turns, though dangerous, were good for business. They even tied the extension of unemployment benefits to budget cuts, making out-of-work North Carolinians pawns in a game of political chicken.

Republicans may be able to proclaim that they have won majorities and passed a new kind of budget, but Democrat Perdue can only help herself by vetoing the Republicans' budget. By 2012, as voters realize how cozy Republican legislators are with big corporations and how little they care about the plight of individual voters, the GOP gloating might be over.

Republicans fall short in key state races

North Carolina Democrats owe Barack Obama. There's little doubt that Obama's well-oiled political machine brought out Democratic voters who helped put state candidates over the top. At this hour, North Carolina's electoral votes are undecided as Obama clings to a 12,000 vote lead out of 4.2 million votes cast. Fifty-thousand provisional ballots remain to be counted.

Regardless of whether Obama puts North Carolina into the Democratic tally for the first time since 1976, his campaign has had a profound influence on state elections. Democrat Bev Perdue won a fairly narrow victory in the governor's race after Republican Pat McCrory ran out of steam late in the race. Democrat Kay Hagan trounced Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Democrat Larry Kissell finally knocked off Congressman Robin Hayes. Down the ticket, Obama might have had an even greater influence in lower-profile races such as state auditor (Beth Wood knocked off incumbent Les Merritt) and commissioner of insurance (Democrat Wayne Goodwin won the vacant seat).

Besides Obama's influence, Republicans this year just couldn't shake off the albatross of George W. Bush. The unpopular president had poisoned the well for all Republicans. The GOP also failed to effectively make corruption, secretiveness, unresponsiveness and fiscal excesses under the Democrats' administration a campaign issue. Despite the imprisonment of at least four powerful Democrats on corruption-related charges, North Carolina voters chose another Democratic insider to be governor and increased the Democrats' majority in the legislature. There seems to be no political consequences to bribery and insider dealings. Having ousted the Republican state auditor, Democrats have even fewer impediments to their wheeling and dealing with state money.

Despite Bev Perdue's promises in her victory speech, don't expect any real reforms in the wasteful and politically motivated state Transportation Board, in the secretive way budgets are written or in the state job preferences given to insiders such as the governor's wife. Barack Obama's campaign theme was "change," but don't expect much change, if any, in the way state government goes about its business.

Attention Fred Smith: Republicans are being outspent

Back in the spring, as he was running for the Republican nomination for governor, Johnston County lawyer-turned-developer Fred Smith made a vow: The Republican nominee for governor would not be outspent by the Democrat, as had happened in all recent elections.

Hey, Fred! Guess what? The Republican nominee for governor is being outspent — by a country mile. According to today's News & Observer, Democrat Bev Perdue is outspending Republican Pat McCrory by a three-to-one margin. The newspaper reports today that Perdue has raised and spent about $15 million compared to McCrory's $5 million.

Fred Smith, where are you when your party needs you?

In fairness, Smith probably meant, when he made that remark in a pre-primary interview with The Wilson Daily Times, that he would not be outspent by a Democratic opponent. Smith, a self-made multi-millionaire who was a more formidable and impressive candidate than I had expected, had the wherewithal to make that vow. He could pour his own money into a gubernatorial race to even things up. Only problem was that he didn't win the Republican nomination. In a crowded field of strong candidates, Smith finished behind McCrory, the Charlotte mayor who was a late addition to the primary contest. Both Smith and Salisbury lawyer Bill Graham had the personal wealth to match the Democrats' campaign war chest.

Where are they now? Perdue, who dodged one-on-one debates with McCrory, and seemed over-programmed and plastic on the stump, has been pounding voters with endorsements and folksy campaign commercials. McCrory risks disappearing from voters' minds as Perdue pops up everywhere.

Smith was right about one thing: It's next to impossible to win a modern statewide political campaign without a lot of money. He vowed his party would not be outspent in 2008. Pat McCrory could use $10 million. Fast.

Coming soon: A very close election in N.C.

One week before the election, the candidates and the parties are in the home stretch, making their closing arguments and keeping their fingers crossed. And the conviction in Washington Monday of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens could have an impact on races nationwide. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, was convicted on seven counts relating to upgrades done on his vacation home in Alaska. If his reliable seat is lost, which now seems likely, Democrats will be that much closer to a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.

It is that prospect, of having one party in charge of the White House and the same party with enough votes to ram any legislation it sees fit through Congress, that has animated John McCain's recent campaign speeches. No party has controlled the White House and a filibuster-proof Senate since 1977-79. That scenario also has provided the most effective campaign advertising for Elizabeth Dole, who is trying to hang onto her Senate seat in North Carolina. Democrats need to pick up nine votes to gain unstoppable control of the Senate. Normally, that big a sweep is not possible, but 2008 is a unusual year; Republican candidates everywhere are dragged down by the unpopularity of George W. Bush. Dole has abandoned her ineffective and silly "Fibber Kay" ads in favor of a more realistic and, perhaps, scarier prospect of a filibuster-proof Senate. Hagan, whose campaign is being bolstered by millions in Democratic Senate Campaign Committee money, seems to retain the upper hand with her reminder that her husband, unlike her opponent's, can vote for her.

Not being a betting man, I've generally avoided making predictions about political races. But since I'm no longer working for a newspaper, let me offer some predictions, or at least unscientific intuitions about Nov. 4. In the presidential race, Barack Obama will come close, but John McCain will eke out a win in North Carolina, even as he loses the presidency by a fairly wide electoral vote margin. In the Senate race, Hagan looks like she'll send Dole back home to Kansas (or is it Florida?), although Dole still could pull out a win if she works hard and hammers on the filibuster-proof Senate scenario. In the governor's race, Republican Pat McCrory has won the endorsement of most of the state's major newspapers, including the reliably Democratic Old Reliable News & Observer, the Greensboro News & Record, the Charlotte Observer and others. Democrat Bev Perdue, who comes across as so plastic on the campaign trail that she might be better off not campaigning, will be relying on Democratic loyalty and Obama's expected turnout of new Democratic voters to put her over the top. She might pull it off, but it will be very close. McCrory will need every vote he can muster in the Charlotte, Asheville and Triad areas to compensate for Perdue's eastern N.C. votes. This might be the tightest race in the state; I'll give a slight, very slight, edge to McCrory.

That's my seat-of-the-pants prediction seven days before the election, subject to change as events unfold in this final week.