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How about the best two out of three?

That's the question former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory might be asking after seeing a new poll that suggests he would easily beat Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue if the election were held today.

Ever since losing to Perdue in 2008 by a 50-47 percent, McCrory has been anxious for a rematch in 2012.

A new poll taken for the Civitas Institute finds if there were a Perdue-McCrory rematch today, McCrory would win by a 46-37 margin.

 Like every other poll, the Civitas survey shows Perdue struggling with a low favorability rating after 18 months of a deep recession, budget cuts and a tax hike.

The poll found that 37 percent of North Carolinians viewed her favorably, 41 percent unfavorably, with 20 percent not having an opinion.

"Voters continue to have a bit of buyer's remorse when it comes to the governor's mansion,” said Chris Hayes, senior legislative analyst with the Civitas Institute. “Perdue has struggled to maintain her popularity since her first months in office and that trend continues.”

McCrory blamed much of his loss in 2008 on the huge grassroots efforts by the presidential campaign of Democrat Barack Obama.

Last week, McCrory learned that Obama may be bringing one of the two biggest biggest political shows in the country to his hometown of Charlotte in 2012 – the national Democratic convention -- so things may not be that much easier.

The survey of 600 likely voters was conducted by Tel Opinion Research of Alexandria Va. between June 15-18 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The public campaigns portion of the Senate's ethics bill set Pat McCrory to calling.

McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor and Republican nominee for governor in 2008, recorded a robocall for Americans for Prosperity, which has worked against publicly financed campaigns.

The Senate bill would expand the program from three to eight Council of State offices using new fees levied against new businesses or professionals regulated by the offices affected.

McCrory pointedly calls these fees "taxes."

"With double digit unemployment in North Carolina we should not be raising taxes to fund political campaigns," McCrory says in the call, which is going out to Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters in eight Senate districts.

The call asks voters to call lawmakers about the issue.

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has created the "New Leadership PAC," billed as delivering education and support on issues such as jobs and criminal justice.

The political action committee, though, likely will serve as a platform from which McCrory, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor in 2008, can remain involved in public debates as he steers toward a possible rematch against Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, in 2012, Mark Johnson reports.

The PAC was announced through a video message from McCrory that was posted on the organization's web site and sounds like a campaign speech, complete with a request for donations and his 2008 campaign theme: "The difference is leadership."

"It's time for new leadership in our state," he says after criticizing a list of Democrats, including Perdue.

McCrory promises the PAC will use contributions to identify new leaders and provide voter outreach. The video and web site describe the organization as focusing on creating private sector jobs, rooting out government waste and corruption, repairing the criminal justice system and investing in energy independence and transportation.

The website highlights a McCrory newspaper column calling for oil and gas drilling off the North Carolina coast and criticizing President Barack Obama and Perdue for not moving more quickly toward offshore exploration.

The column appeared in the Greensboro News & Record on April 18, two days before BP's Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded and the well it sat on began spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The political party wars continue to be fought at the complaint box at the State Board of Elections.

Democratic Party chairman Andrew Whalen filed a complaint Thursday that accuses Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory of coordinating with an independent committee of the Republican Governors Association, Ben Niolet reports. To make his case, Whalen called reporters to a news conference where he showed off a complex flow chart that attempts to lay out connections between donors to the committee and Richard Hudson, McCrory’s campaign manager.

The chart and the complaint includes no specific allegations that the McCrory campaign solicited or coordinated with the PAC, which would be a violation of state law.

"This is baseless and an absurd accusation," Hudson said, noting that the purported connections, many of which could be drawn between any political operative. "I can show you seven degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and me, but that doesn’t mean I starred in 'Footloose.'"

GUILTY, HE SAID: Ruffin Poole, the former aide to Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, pleaded guilty to a single count of income tax evasion, setting the stage for him to begin cooperating with an investigation into Easley's administration. The so-called "Little Governor" is now the big cooperating witness.

THEIR TURN: Gov. Bev Perdue released her budget proposal for the coming fiscal year and included deep cuts to education to mitigate a deficit that is already more than $700 million. The document is now about as useful as a tire chuck because the legislative Democrats who write the budget say they plan to re-write pretty much the whole thing.

CASH FLOW LOW: The Democrats running for U.S. Senate are finding it a little tough to raise a lot of money. Only Cal Cunningham has enough to go on TV. Elaine Marshall and Ken Lewis have raised some cash, but not enough to fight it out on the evening news commercial breaks. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Richard Burr has more than $5 million, meaning he's a formidable opponent for the candidate who emerges from the Democratic primary.

IN OTHER NEWS: Republican Pat McCrory endorsed two candidates in the same race. Perdue unveiled a plan for reducing the state's prison population. A state association of chiropractors is hoping to bump into President Barack Obama, who is vacationing this weekend at the same Asheville hotel where the chiropractors have scheduled a conference.

Pat McCrory was so enthusiastic about the campaign in the 7th congressional district that he endorsed, not one Republican, but two!

In January, McCrory, the 2008 Republican nominee for governor, endorsed Will Breazeale and did a campaign flyaround in the district, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, a Democrat.

But more recently, McCrory showed up to campaign for one of Breazeale's opponents in the Republican primary, Ilario Pantano.

"I'm supporting both Mr. Pantano and Mr. Breazeale because I want the strongest Republican candidate to win," McCrory told WWAY-TV in Wilmington, saying it was important to wrest control of the House of Representatives from Democrats.

Pantano was a sport about McCrory's, shall we say, flexibility.

"What's important isn't who he's endorsing," Pantano told the TV station. "What's important is that conservatives retake the House."

McCrory said Breazeale wasn't miffed: "Will understands that when I endosed him no other person was in the race."

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."

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones will have some major Tar Heel political figures help him celebrate his birthday next month – and raise money for his re-election.

Former U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth of Clinton, former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory and state Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer have agreed to attend a Jones event to celebrate his 67th birthday, reports Rob Christensen.

The event is scheduled for Feb. 18 at the Whitley House in Farmville, at a cost of $250 per couple. Sponsors pay $1,000.

Jones, a Republican, who represents the 3rd District, was first elected in 1994.

Former Charlotte Mayor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory said it's time for North Carolina to get out of the liquor business.

McCrory, in an editorial published today in The N&O said that he is troubled that Gov. Bev Perdue was not aware that local ABC boards were accepting illegal gifts or earning large salaries.

It's troubling that the governor, a former ABC board member herself and a 22-year veteran of state government, had no idea these problems existed. Even so, the governor has released statements saying that she would like to reform the ABC system by banning gifts to the 163 local ABC boards across the state, and she has installed a new alcohol chief at the state level. The governor's error is that she wants even more government influence to fix the state-run liquor business, when the government selling liquor is itself the problem.

Perdue and the state legislature should get North Carolina out of the liquor business entirely, by transferring the sale of liquor to the private sector.

McCrory said the state could use a $700 million windfall from privatizing the system to build roads. 

Anyone sense a campaign issue for 2012?

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.'"