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N.C. Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer accused high-ranking officials at the State Board of Elections of stifling a real investigation into the campaign of Gov. Bev Perdue.

Fetzer said he intends to ask Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby to launch an investigation into the actions of elections board Chairman Larry Leake, Executive Director Gary Bartlett and John Wallace, an attorney for Perdue's campaign.

Fetzer said the election's board report details several instances where Leake and Bartlett limited or delayed the scope of an investigation into gubernatorial campaigns, particularly Perdue's.

"Gary Bartlett, Chairman Leake and John Wallace colluded in an attempt to derail, distract and obstruct the investigation of the State Board of Elections staff into the financial irregularities and illegalities of the Perdue for Governor campaign," Fetzer told reporters Monday.

Marc Farinella, a consultant for Perdue's campaign said Fetzer's complaints are unfounded and a political stunt.

“We believe that most observers recognize that it’s time to move on. Not surprisingly, among the few who do not agree is Mr. Fetzer, who is now rumored to be preparing for his own gubernatorial campaign," Farinella said in a statement. "Unhappy with the SBOE report, Mr. Fetzer is now accusing the SBOE Executive Director and SBOE Chairman of engaging in activities ‘that may be categorized as obstruction of justice.’"

SENATE RACE IS ON: U.S. Senate candidates Elaine Marshall and Richard Burr agree Washington needs fixing. They disagree on who can fix it. (Charlotte Observer)

WE'RE READY: North Carolina has a plan to deal with any oil that washes on its shores. (N&O)

START ME UP: Nearly 20 years after it was created, Global TransPark has a big tennat. Critics wonder how much more money needs to go into the project. (N&O)

EMERGENCY APPEAL: Attorneys for imprisoned lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings want him freed immediately and his conviction thrown out in light of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down most of the law Geddings was convicted of breaking. (N&O)

CAMPAIGN REPORT: A friend of Gov. Bev Perdue repeatedly tried in vain to make sure her campaign properly handled and documented flights he provided. (N&O)

Gov. Bev Perdue says she couldn't have been more upfront about how she handled questions about her 2008 campaign finances.

"My reaction is that I have the first campaign in the history of the state who has been very, very persistent in reviewing it's campaign reports," Perdue said.

"I am not at all reluctant to say that the campaign made a mistake," Perdue said after a news conference at Rex Hospital on Wednesday, Rob Christensen reports. "I am very, very pleased with the level of credibility that we tried to offer."

Perdue has disclosed 31 previously unreported campaign flights provided by supporters. Last week, she returned $48,000 in contributions from her 2008 campaign when questions were raised about whether the contributors were reimbursed.

The questions about those contributions were first raised by the state Republican Party, which has been wailing on Perdue for months about her campaign finances.

"I heard some rumors that there might be something wrong with some of their donors," Perdue said. "I had some extra staff, which the campaign paid for, go back and review those donors."

"The law is pretty clear," she said. "The onus is on the donor, not on the candidate. It's fairly impossible to know what the circumstances are when somebody sends a check in an envelope. It is illegal in North Carolina to give money in the name of another. I'm not sure that happened. I don't know what the circumstances are. But we returned the money."

As for the flights, Perdue noted that her campaign disclosed the flights.

They came amid investigations into the unreported flights of her predecessor, former Gov. Mike Easley. a Democrat.

"I am the one who voluntarily had a team go through these flights," Perdue said. "I am the one who voluntarily put it out there for people to know about. I would say that people who live in glass houses should probably do the same."

She was apparently referring to Democratic allegations that Republican gubernatorial candidates had not reported all of their campaign flights.

Andrew Whalen, the executive director of the N.C. Democratic Party filed a complaint today with the State Board of Elections over what he said were undisclosed campaign flights taken by Republican candidates for governor.

Whalen's complaint and accompanying news conference is essentially a returned serve from last week's complaint and news conference about Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue by N.C. Republican Party chairman Tom Fetzer.

Perdue has disclosed 31 flights that did not originally appear on her campaign finance reports. Fetzer sought to tie that fact to former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, whose campaign was fined $100,000 for not disclosing flights.

Among other issues, Whalen asked the elections board, which is already investigating flights from all gubernatorial campaigns from 2004 and 2008, to take a close look at a helicopter flight taken by Pat McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor who ran as the Republican nominee in 2008. Whalen displayed photographs published in the Salisbury Post of McCrory giving a big thumbs up from the cockpit of a royal blue helicopter. Records of the flight were not in McCrory's campaign finance report.

"These facts leave serious doubts as to the honest and transparency of the McCrory campaign," Whalen said.

On Friday, McCrory amended his campaign finance reports to reflect payment for the flights, according to State Board of Election records. Two flights were mistakenly not paid for, said Jack Hawke, a Republican consultant who ran McCrory's campaign.

"We did make a mistake and we'll admit that we only caught the mistake because the Board of Elections sent us a letter and asked us to double check our records," Hawke said. "That's no comparison to 31 flights and a way of doing business. You don't make the same mistake over and over and over 31 times."

A few days after announcing a new job as Raleigh lobbyist for the city of Charlotte, Julie White has returned to her old post as lobbyist for all of the state’s largest cities.

White, a veteran communications strategist, had accepted the job of intergovernmental relations manager for Charlotte on Jan. 11, with a goal of improving relations between the state’s biggest city and state government, Bruce Siceloff reports. She had planned to work mostly from Raleigh — unlike her Charlotte-based predecessor Boyd Cauble, who retired in December.

She was supposed to start work Monday. Instead, after spending last week in Charlotte, she told Curt Walton, Charlotte city manager, that she had changed her mind. The job would require her to take too much time away from her husband and three children, she said.

"After spending the week in Charlotte it has become apparent to me that to succeed as the City's Intergovernmental Relations Manager, I would have to spend more time in Charlotte than I can personally commit because of family obligations," White said in an e-mail to Walton.

White was back at her old job in Raleigh this week as director of the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, which represents the state's biggest 26 cities.

White previously worked as a communications and policy adviser for then-Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker, then-House Majority Leader Phil Baddour and then-State Treasurer Richard Moore. She worked on Moore's campaign for governor in 2008.

In Charlotte, Walton has started looking again for a new lobbyist.

Zach Ambrose, Gov. Bev Perdue's chief of staff, is leaving her administration.

Ambrose has worked for Perdue since 2005 when she was lieutenant governor. He ran her gubernatorial campaign, was a key leader of her transition team and has run her office for the first year in which the state grappled with a deep recession.

Perdue spokesman Chrissy Pearson said that Ambrose informed senior staff today that he was planning to leave.

"He has chosen to take some time to spend with his family and refocus on other efforts and wanted us to know sooner rather than later as the year kicks off," Pearson said.

Ambrose plans to stay on until Perdue replaces him. He wasn't a very public figure, but Ambrose had a major role in the administration.

"He is unfailingly steady and handles the stresses of this job with extraordinary grace," Pearson said. "He is that pivot point between the staff and the governor and we will miss him terribly."

Perdue's first year in office was a difficult one. The recession sidelined many of her more ambitious campaign promises and her poll numbers were down for most of the year.

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has gone to work for Charlotte-based law firm Moore & Van Allen as a public policy consultant.

In that full-time position, he'll focus on helping clients on energy, the environment, transportation, governmental affairs and other issues and public policies, The Charlotte Observer reports.

McCrory, a Republican, has hinted that he is considering a re-match against Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, who narrowly defeated McCrory in a year in which President Barack Obama lifted Perdue and many other Democrats on the ballot.

McCrory is a busy guy — he's on two corporate boards (which pay him $86,000 a year) — and the firm isn't interested in curbing his activities, political or otherwise.

"Part of his value is being known for the things he's accomplished and what he may accomplish in the future," said Ernie Reigel, the firm's chairman. "We don't want to hold him back. We all understand that as he decides what he wants to do with his future, that's just part of the deal. We're not choosing sides on any particular thing. We're really saying, 'Here's a talented guy, he's been on a lot of sides of a lot of different issues and we think he's got some value to bring to the table.'"

A year after Pat McCrory ran a statewide campaign as the Republican candidate for governor, 45 percent of voters say they don't have an opinion of him, according to a new poll.

Public Policy Polling asked 593 likely North Carolina voters for their opinion of McCrory, who recently ended his run as Charlotte's mayor. The poll found that 32 percent had a favorable opinion of McCrory and 23 percent viewed him unfavorably. The "no opinion" response, 45 percent, suggests that McCrory fell fast from the public consciousness.

The good news, PPP's Tom Jensen notes, is that McCrory's 32 percent favorability rating is five points higher than the 27 percent favorability rating Gov. Bev Perdue recently got in a PPP survey.

McCrory has more than hinted that he's thinking about a rematch against Perdue in 2012.

The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

In a split decision issued Tuesday, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court acted appropriately in dismissing a lawsuit filed against former State Treasurer Richard Moore.

The State Employees Association of North Carolina sued in 2008 over a dispute about whether Moore's office had provided public records requested by the group regarding the handling of the state retirement system.

Moore's lawyer argued in Wake Superior Court in June 2008 that the association cannot point to a single specific public record that had been withheld, and Judge James E. Hardin dismissed the suit.

In Tuesday's decision, appeals court Judges Cheri Beasley and Wanda G. Bryant ruled that Hardin was right to dismiss the case, ruling that Moore had fulfilled his obligation under the state's public records law to search his files for documents covered under the request filed by SEANC.

Appeals Court Judge Rick Elmore dissented, writing in a separate opinion that the employees group had shown that Moore had likely withheld records he was legally obligated to provide.

UPDATE: Thomas A. Harris, the chief of staff and general counsel for SEANC, said he will recommend to the group's board that they appeal Tuesday's decision to the N.C. Supreme Court.

"The majority opinion misstates the facts of the case and, as the dissent points out, adds a equirement for maintaining a Public Records Act lawsuit that is not in the law itself," Harris said in an e-mail to Dome.

Moore said: "This news, combined with the other recent news that North Carolina's pension fund was the best performing in the country for this past fiscal year, are nice exclamation points to the end of my 8-year-tenure."

Gov. Mike Easley liked to call on his trusted campaign advisor Mac McCorkle.

That didn't sit too well with Easley's former campaign manager, Jay Reiff, who was trying to get Treasurer Richard Moore elected governor. 

See, McCorkle was a consultant for then-Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, who was in a heated rivalry with Moore for the Democratic nomination for governor. 

McCorkle, who was called to testify before the State Board of Elections on Tuesday, said that at some point, Reiff called foul. 

"I think they were strategically worried about my relationship to Gov. Easley and wanted to distance me from Gov. Easley," McCorkle testified. "That was in the midst of campaign war." 

McCorkle was it a tough spot because Easley apparently had him on speed dial.

"I think he initiated more of of the calls than I did," McCorkle said.