State, local candidates compete for attention

bniolet — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:34:38 -0400

In some ways, next week's North Carolina primary is like rock star Bruce Springsteen showing up at a high school battle of the bands.

In a very short time, the Democratic presidential duel between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken center stage. And the dozens of Tar Heel races — from the statehouse to the courthouse — have been reduced to a political sideshow struggling to draw voters' attention.

The presidential candidates are drawing the huge crowds, dominating the TV ads, vacuuming up the news coverage and driving the voter turnout.

State candidates, strategists and party leaders — some of whom have been carefully planning their campaigns for years — are scrambling to figure out how to maneuver in a changed political landscape.

Instead of the 700,000 to 800,000 Democratic primary voters that they once expected, strategists now think there will be 1.2 million to 1.5 million Democratic primary voters -- many of them new voters with few connections to the party. (N&O)

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State, local candidates compete for attention