Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue will hold an economic roundtable in Charlotte Tuesday.

The event will be chaired by Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, Bank of America executive Cathy Bessant and UNC-Charlotte Chancellor Dr. Phil Dubois. It will be moderated by UNC-Chapel Hill professor Ferrell Guillory.

It is the first in a series of roundtables Perdue has planned.

After an overview of current local, state and national economic conditions, the group will have a roundtable discussion with Perdue.

The roundtable will take place at 10 a.m. at UNC-Charlotte's Harris Alumni Center. 

Hillary Clinton told voters to look at the presidency as a job vacancy.

The Democratic presidential candidate said in Charlotte Monday that the campaign was essentially a hiring decision where experience matters.

"Think about it as if you're hiring a surgeon to perform an operation on a loved one," she told more than 4,000 supporters at Time Warner Cable Arena. "Hire somebody who is prepared on Day 1."

She was greeted by Bobcats owner Bob Johnson as she entered the arena. 

She also spoke on rising gas prices and the Iraq war in a 45-minute speech. Earlier in the day, she met with 300 supporters outside Troutman's Bar-B-Q in Concord. (Char-O)

A quick fact-check on Bob Johnson's remarks about Barack Obama.

The Democratic presidential candidate did not "start off with 90 percent" of the black vote. In fact, he was initially behind rival Hillary Clinton among that bloc.

From a Jan. 25, 2007, article in the Washington Post:

Complicating matters is that Obama appears certain to encounter fierce competition for the black vote from the other leading Democratic presidential contenders. Black Democrats prefer Clinton 3 to 1 over Obama, and four out of five of black Democrats view her favorably, much higher than the 54 percent who have a favorable view of Obama, according to combined findings from two Washington Post-ABC polls taken in December and January. Clinton also enjoys close ties to top black elected officials, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, remains extremely popular among African Americans.

After Obama won the Iowa caucus, however, black voters began to shift to him.

Bob Johnson says Geraldine Ferraro was right.

The owner of the Charlotte Bobcats and founder of Black Entertainment Television, told the Charlotte Observer Monday that Barack Obama would not be leading the presidential primary if he weren't black.

His comments echoed controversial ones made by former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, reports Jim Morrill:

"What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant (is) if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called 'Jerry Smith' and he says I'm going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote? And the answer is, probably not.

"Would he also start out with the excitement of starting out as something completely different? Probably not. He would just be a freshmen senator ...

"Geraldine Ferraro said it right. The problem is Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair trigger on anything racial. It is almost impossible for anybody to say anything."