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A straw poll recommended Rep. Dan Blue move to the Senate.

About 50 people at a forum sponsored by the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association Saturday cast an unofficial vote on who should fill former Sen. Vernon Malone's seat.

The candidates were Blue, Bernard Allen Jr., former educator Carol Dalenko Bennett, Pfizer lobbyist Marlowe Foster, Wake school board member Rosa Gill, media consultant J. Mills Holloway, former DMV director Alexander Killens and St. Augustine's College provost Kim Luckes.

RWCA president Dan Coleman said that Blue won the straw poll by a significant margin, followed by Holloway.

The group's political action committee will meet tonight to take a formal vote. The result will then be forwarded to the Wake County Democratic Party, which will make a final nomination for Gov. Beverly Perdue.

"The Wake County Democratic Party is not necessarily beholden to that endorsement," said Coleman.

Results of the straw poll after the jump.

Hundreds of mourners filled a Raleigh church to remember Sen. Vern Malone.

In a two-hour service, speakers praised the polite statesman, the fiery advocate who fought for a school merger and the teacher who worked with blind students.

Gov. Beverly Perdue noted that Malone died after mowing the lawn and reading a newspaper that he often criticized.

"The thing that makes me just guffaw," Perdue said, "St. Peter reached out and grabbed Vernon's hand, and the last thing he saw was The News & Observer."

Malone joined the Raleigh School Board in 1972 when whites were fleeing the suburbs. He helped merge with the Wake County school board during a period of racial divide, then spent 20 years as a county commissioner.

He spent four terms in the state Senate. (N&O)

Dana Cope pledged to be a fighter.

When taking his job as executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, Cope said he would fight for better pay and benefits for state workers. 

During his tenure, they got the two biggest back-to-back increases, sued Gov. Mike Easley and state Treasurer Richard Moore, affiliated with the SEIU, and had his contract renewed twice. Some legislators have refused to meet with him.

He's also gotten six tickets for driving 20 mph over the limit, led a battle with the Wake County school board over its economic diversity plan, and gotten into a scuffle with a neighbor on an unrelated matter.

Cope says his "shock jock" style is necessary to get noticed in a state that has not traditionally been labor-friendly. Critics say it's immature. (N&O)

Maria Spaulding, a new deputy secretary at the state Department of Health and Human Services, was hired at a salary of $145,000 a year.

Spaulding started work today, overseeing the programs and activities of the divisions of aging and adult services, child development, vocational rehabilitation, and other offices, Lynn Bonner reports.

She retired from local government in 2006 as Wake County's director of Health and Human Services.

Maria Spaulding, long a fixture in local health and social services administration, has been named a state Department of Health and Human Services deputy secretary.

Spaulding is the former director of Wake County Human Services. She retired in 2006.
On Monday, she becomes deputy secretary for long-term care and family services, replacing the retiring Jackie Sheppard, Lynn Bonner reports.

She will oversee the programs and activities of the divisions of aging and adult services, child development, vocational rehabilitation, and other offices.

"Maria is exactly the creative and innovative leader we need to carry the Department forward in the coming years in its mission to provide key services to some of state’s most vulnerable citizens," DHHS secretary Lanier Cansler said in a statement.

In her years as head of Wake human services, Spaulding was an outspoken critic of the state's mental health reform.

Wake County Democrats will decide on a new representative next week.

The District 39 Executive Committee will hold a meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22, at the N.C. Democratic Party headquarters on Hillsborough Street.

Their job is to recommend a replacement for Rep. Linda Coleman, an Eastern Wake Democrat who was appointed head of the Office of State Personnel by Gov. Beverly Perdue last week.

"Any person that is interested in taking her seat is welcome to come and speak," said county chair Doris Weaver. "The committee may also have recommendations that they bring up."

The committee will vote that night on its recommendation, which then heads to state party chairman Jerry Meek and then Perdue, who makes the appointment.

Weaver said she's heard informally from a few people who are interested in the position, but she declined to identify them.

Former Knightdale Mayor Jeanne Bonds, Wake County commissioner Lindy Brown, one-time commissioner candidate Don Mial, Zebulon lawyer Darren Jackson and Knightdale Town Council member James Roberson are rumored to be up for consideration.

The legislature convenes Jan. 28.

State Rep. Linda Coleman has been appointed head of state personnel.

Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue appointed the Knightdale Democrat, who has the strong backing of labor unions, as director of the Office of State Personnel.

Ann Cobb will serve as deputy director.

Coleman, a former Wake County commissioner, has been in the state House since 2005, serving as chair of the state personnel committee.

She previously worked as human resources management director at the state departments of Agriculture and Administration and as personnel director for the Department of Community Colleges.

She has a master's in public administration from the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and a bachelor's from N.C. A&T State University.

"It is an honor to be selected by Governor-elect Bev Perdue to head the Office of State Personnel," she said. "I will work hard everyday for North Carolina’s state employees."

Cobb has worked in human resources for a private firm and in the Office of State Personnel and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Mike Munger says the state is "dragging its feet" on Libertarian registrations.

The Libertarian gubernatorial nominee and Duke University political science professor tells Dome that the party had more than 13,000 registered voters in 2005.

When the Libertarians lost party status, those voters became unaffiliated, though they should be able to re-register now that it is a party again. But Munger says some of the state's largest boards of elections have not yet posted the forms online to allow it.

"How can we register people as Libertarian when they won't change the forms?" he writes in an e-mail. "The state is intentionally dragging its feet, in violation of the law, and the expressed will of more than 100,000 voters."

As of 8:45 a.m. today, the Wake County board of elections' online form did not include the Libertarian Party, listing only Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated. The Mecklenburg County form and the Guilford County form also lacked the Libertarian option.

The party was recognized in late May, but had only 29 registered members as of this morning.

Mary Fant Donnan is counting on the Triangle.

The candidate for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner said that Wake, Durham and Orange counties will be key in her upcoming runoff with former commissioner John C. Brooks.

Because there are no other statewide runoffs next Tuesday, Donnan said that turnout will be pretty low except in areas where a local runoff is also on the ballot.

In Durham County, a countywide school board runoff, and in Orange County, a county commissioner district-wide runoff will draw voters to the poll. And Donnan said past results show Wake County typically does well in runoff turnout because of a general interest in state government.

"There's a fair amount to do in the Triangle because all three counties have something that will bring voters out already," she told Dome.

She said that legislative runoffs in Wayne, Greene and Pitt counties could also draw voters.

Illegal immigrants arrested in North Carolina are being deported like never before, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole said at a press conference today.

"If they're thinking of coming to North Carolina to commit crimes, they darn well better not do it," Dole said. "Because we're going to catch them."

Dole held the press conference along with four county sheriffs just days after her Democratic opponent Kay Hagan held a meeting with sheriffs to discuss immigration, Kristin Collins reports. Dole says she has been the leader in calling for a crackdown on criminal illegal immigrants.

With Dole's support, sheriff's departments in North Carolina have teamed up with federal immigration officials to help deport illegal immigrants who come through county jails through a program called 287(g). Dole said about 500 people a month are now being deported with the help of North Carolina's local law enforcement.

Three sheriff's departments — in Wake, Henderson and Cumberland counties — are now training for a federal immigration program that will allow them to check the immigration status of their jail inmates and begin deportation proceedings.

Four sheriff's departments and the Durham Police Department already have the program. North Carolina is among the leading states in the nation for participation in the program.