A private investigator hired by the N.C. Democratic Party told the State Board of Elections that he believes three Republican candidates for governor took campaign flights that do not appear in their campaign finance reports.

Anthony Asbridge, a retired IRS investigator and a forensic accountant said he reviewed campaign finance reports and news accounts concerning Patrick Ballantine, Fred Smith and Bill Graham.

News reports mentioned flights related to their campaigns, but campaign finance reports for the candidates show no entries related to paying for them.

Board members had few questions for Asbridge who was apparently brought to testify that Republicans, like former Gov. Mike Easley, took unreported campaign flights. 

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's political action committee has received $848,615 in the last three years.

The Leadership Circle PAC is separate from Dole's campaign committee, so it can receive bigger contributions from donors. As a recent report and database from NPR's Marketplace shows, leadership PACs like it are booming.

Many of Dole's contributors are familiar faces.

Between December of 2004 and December of 2007, her leadership PAC received $20,000 from lieutenant governor candidate Robert Pittenger and his wife, Suzanne; $16,750 from former gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham and his wife, Shari; and $10,000 from SAS co-founder Jim Goodnight.

Other donations came from Raleigh lawyer Kieran Shanahan, CaptiveAire owner Bob Luddy, her husband Bob, Luther Hodges Jr., billionaire resort builder Kirk Kerkorian, Raleigh developer John Kane, and former Dole running mate Jack Kemp.

The Leadership Circle PAC also received money from other PACs, including the Progress Energy PAC, Wachovia Employees Good Government Fund, the N.C. Farm Bureau, and PACs for R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Co., Duke Energy and Federal Express.

John McCain is borrowing from Bill Graham.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee uses footage of a gas pump from an 2006 ad by Graham's N.C. Conservatives United, which campaigned to cap the state's gas tax.

Both ads blame Democrats for high gas prices. The McCain ad attacks presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama for his opposition to offshore drilling, while the Graham ad argues the state's Democratic leaders weren't doing enough on the gas tax.

McCain and Graham have both used Strategic Perception, a Hollywood-based ad production company.

It's not the first time that the two candidates have had similar thoughts.

The presidential nominee argued for limiting a federal gas tax over the summer to help with rising gas prices.

Hat Tip: David Ingram

A new ad by Republican presidential candidate John McCain borrows footage from an ad by N.C. Conservatives United, a group led by former gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham. See the ad on YouTube here.

Beverly Perdue received $9.9 million in donations by the end of June of 2008.

The Democratic gubernatorial nominee raised $2.3 million from donors in the second quarter of 2008, according to a report filed with the State Board of Elections.

Major donors included Belk stores president Tom Belk; Erskine Bowles' wife Crandall; her sons, Emmett and Garrett; Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand; Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers; retiree Wallace Hyde; attorney David Kirby; SAS executive John Sall; and Bill Graham's law partner, Mona Lisa Wallace.

She also raised $223,436 from political action committees, including the Association for Home & Hospice Care of N.C., Blue Cross and Blue Shield's Employee PAC, the Corning Inc. Employee PAC, the Democratic Governors Association of N.C., the Teamsters' DRIVE PAC, the International Paper PAC, the McGuire Woods PAC, the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers PAC and the N.C. Home Builders Association.

In addition, she loaned her campaign $130,000 on April 25. In addition to a first quarter loan of $500,000 and outstanding debt of $275,000 to her husband from a previous election, her campaign owes $905,000.

She had cash on hand of $1.4 million at the end of the second quarter.

Correction: An earlier version misstated the cash on hand.

Politics magazine named Dee Stewart one of its 2008 rising stars.

He helped U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry win his first campaign for Congress and worked for Bill Graham in his run for governor. Stewart runs a political consulting and public relations firm in Raleigh, Lynn Bonner reports.

At 25, he became one of the youngest executive directors of a state party in the country. Among his proudest professional achievements: getting some 40,000 people out to the 1999 Iowa Straw Poll, which set an attendance record for a political fundraiser and helped cement the straw poll's status as the kick-off to the GOP presidential primary season. At 27, Dee took a big risk by leaving Iowa to start his own firm in North Carolina. "I literally went from executive director of the Iowa GOP to the absolute bottom of the ladder," he says. 

The trade magazine for political consultants put 10 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and five others under 35 who have made a mark in consulting and campaigns on their stars list.

There has been a shakeup in the Senate campaign of GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

J. Sam Daniels, the campaign manager, has been shifted into the role of a top fund raiser, Rob Christensen reports. He will be replaced by Marty Ryall, who until recently ran the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Graham.

Daniels is a former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party and he had also worked in the 2000 gubernatorial campaign of Bill Cobey.

There was no immediate reason given for the shuffle. But recent polls have shown that Dole has a much closer race against Democrat Kay Hagan than many had anticipated.

No immediate word from the Dole campaign.

Why did Pat McCrory beat Fred Smith?

As with the Democratic gubernatorial race, it's dangerous to draw sweeping conclusions, but here are a few educated guesses about how the Charlotte mayor won the primary.

He had a strong base. As a seven-term mayor of the largest city in North Carolina, McCrory had a larger pool of supporters than Smith. Playing on his childhood in Jamestown, he made a strong play for the Triad, where no candidate had a base.

He raised money. Aided by his ties to the Charlotte business community, he quickly made up for lost time, raising $1.2 million in the first half of the year — more than any of his Republican competitors, all of whom had been running for a year.

His ads were effective. McCrory had four ads in heavy rotation on jobs, immigration, corruption and leadership. Smith had two ads; Bill Graham just one. McCrory's ads were distinctive, with a clean white background that stood out.

He learned quickly. After initial missteps in his "garage-band" phase, Smith shuffled his staff and brought in a star consultant. He picked up on concerns about illegal immigration and corruption in Raleigh, cutting into Smith's core message.

His competitors ran poor campaigns. Smith ran an old-school campaign based on barbecues and spent money on a book and a song. Graham ran his TV ads two years too soon then parted ways with his consultant in the home stretch. Bob Orr was underfunded.

The gas tax is the perfect foil for a candidate.

Gas is pretty much a necessity, especially in road-centric North Carolina. It's one of the few commodities whose prices you see in foot-high numbers when buying. And few voters seek a direct link between the gas tax and the roads and other things it pays for.

So it's not surprising that reducing gas taxes has been a political staple for decades. 

In 1982, U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms filibustered against a federal gas-tax hike backed by President Reagan. In his landmark 1984 race against Jim Hunt, Helms hammered the governor for having proposed raising the state gas tax.

But recent attempts to use the gas tax for political advantage have fallen flat.

Two years ago, Salisbury attorney Bill Graham spent $2.3 million of his own money to lead an advocacy group calling for capping the state's gas tax. The legislature capped the tax, but Graham was never able to parlay the crusade into a credible campaign for governor.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton (pace John McCain) hammered on the idea of a federal "gas-tax holiday" while campaigning in North Carolina and Indiana.

Her rival, Barack Obama, fought back, arguing the proposal was a "gimmick" and holding it up as an example of "typical of how Washington works."

Has the gas tax played out? Probably not. High gas prices remain a concern for consumers and no tax is ever really all that popular. But the recent elections indicate that it's not enough of a campaign issue to win an election on its own. 

Who won the ad wars?

One measure is which candidate won. But the political ads are an art into themselves — great ads have been made for lousy candidates, and vice versa.

Which is why Under the Dome wants to recognize the work that went into those ubiquitous political commercials on TV.

The first category for a Domey is Best Positive Ad. (We define that as an ad that does not directly attack one's opponent, although it may make negative statements about "lobbyists" or "special interests.")

The nominees are:

Hillary Clinton: "Mike Easley," "Maya Angelou," "David," "Tammie," "Jewel," "N.C. Ask Me"

Barack Obama: "Minute," "Return," "In America," "Billy," "Turn It Off," "Nothing's Changed," "Need," "Join," "Enough"

Pat McCrory: "Change is Coming," "Jobs," "Immigration," "Caravan"

Beverly Perdue: "Andy Griffith," "Safe Schools," "Positive," "Generations," "Love and Faith"

Richard Moore: "Bulldog," "Challenge," "Studies," "Results"

Fred Smith: "Kitchen Table," "Immigration"

Bill Graham: "Together"

Kay Hagan: "Energy," "Roots"

Hampton Dellinger: "Real Change," "Meet Hampton"

Walter Dalton: "Walter Dalton"

Robert Pittenger: "Pork"

Walter Jones: "Pantano," "Border Security," "Military"

Janet Cowell: "Burned"

David Young: "Families," "Experience"

Wayne Goodwin: "Competence"

Post your vote in the comment thread below.