Reaction to Attorney General Roy Cooper's decision not to run against Sen. Richard Burr:

Swing State Project: "This is a major bummer, no doubt. Most polls had Cooper running neck and neck with Burr, holding him well under 50% in all cases -- the best numbers any Democrat have yielded in a hypothetical head-to-head."

Politico: "Cooper is the second high-profile Democrat -- after Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) -- to decide not to run against Burr, and puts Democrats back to the drawing board to find a credible candidate against Burr."

The Hill: "Burr could still be vulnerable to the right kind of challenger. Democrats fell back on state Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in the 2008 race against Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) and still unseated the incumbent with relative ease."

The Fix: "A big recruiting setback for Senate Dems in NC."

N.C. GOP spokesman Brent Woodcox: "Wrote a press release, issues memo, sent out a news update, got Roy Cooper to not run for Senate. That's what I do before lunch."

N.C. Democratic Party staffer Jerimee Richir: "Roy Cooper out of NC Senate race. Let the brawl ensue."

Draft Coop: "What do we do now?????"

* U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry editorializes on 2010 Census in Washington Times, says Democrats "politicized our nation's largest peacetime mobilization."

* BlueNC finds President Obama's shoutout to Attorney General Roy Cooper in the official White House transcript.

* The Independent begins the speculation on who might fill soon-to-be-Sen. Dan Blue's old seat in the House by looking at his competitors.

* Spokesman for the N.C. Republican Party disappointed that N&O editorial didn't prominently mention Gov. Mike Easley's party. (It's Democrat.)

Sen. Kay Hagan is taking fire for her votes on bailout money.

During her Senate campaign, the Greensboro Democrat opposed a bailout for Wall Street — though she did not take a position until after Sen. Elizabeth Dole had already voted.

Now in office, Hagan voted to release the second half of the roughly $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program.

"Senator Hagan is going to have some explaining to do on her first trip home," Brent Woodcox, a spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, wrote on the party blog.

At the same time, Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, voted for the original bill but against releasing the second half of the money.

A spokesman said Burr wanted to know how the money had affected the market first. (GN-R)

John McCain had 36 offices in North Carolina.

The Republican presidential candidate had offices in the major cities, such as Greensboro, Asheville and Wilmington.

Though several offices were located around the Charlotte and Raleigh areas, there was only one office within the cities proper.

Unlike Barack Obama's mostly independent offices, pretty much all of the McCain campaign offices were located within a local Republican Party headquarters or in space shared with them.

In addition, another 30 local parties ran phone banks and canvassing operations on their own.

The shared offices were part of the shared financing of McCain's campaign.

"The Republican National Committee was raising a lot of money, while the DNC was not," said N.C. Republican Party spokesman Brent Woodcox. "Particularly after the public campaign financing kicked in, it made more sense for the state parties to set up these offices."

Correction: An office was missing from the list.

After the jump, a complete list.

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The state NAACP says a casket with an anti-Barack Obama sticker was found at an early voting place in Craven County.

In a statement, NAACP head Rev. William J. Barber said that casket was in place "for at least several hours, if not days" at a fire station.

"There is no telling how many voters it rightened away," he said. "It appeared to be an obvious threat to Sen. Obama — a warning to him to stay away from North Carolina."

A bumper sticker on the casket showed a picture of Obama next to the phrase "O' No!"

Barber called on state and national political leaders to condemn the threat as an "attempt at voter intimidation using images of death" and is asking state and federal law enforcement officials to investigate.

Update: "All decent, law-abiding citizens of North Carolina are outraged by this incident," said N.C. Republican Party spokesman Brent Woodcox.  

Matt Towery says Bob Barr could hurt John McCain in North Carolina.

In an interview with the Washington Times, the Atlanta-based pollster and one-time adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted a recent poll showing the Libertarian presidential nominee drawing 6 percent here.

"Barr does throw a monkey wrench in Republican plans in states people otherwise take for granted as Republican states," said Matt Towery, chief executive officer of InsiderAdvantage, an Atlanta-based polling and political analysis firm that conducted the Georgia poll, and one-time political adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Towery said North Carolina and Georgia have large black populations that Mr. Obama can tap to boost his turnout numbers, and both have conservative-leaning voters whose dissatisfaction with President Bush could lead them to a third-party candidate.

The paper also quotes N.C. Republican Party spokesman Brent Woodcox saying "it's too early to tell" whether Barr will be a spoiler like Ross Perot or more like previous Libertarian candidates, who didn't crack 1 percent here.

It's hard to fathom how big a number 21.5 billion really is.

Try counting it this way: $678 per second. That's the figure you get if you divide $21.5 billion by the number of seconds in a year. It's how the state Republican Party wants people to think about the $21.5 billion budget proposed by Gov. Mike Easley. The party has launched a site that ticks up the dollars by the second.

"When you see it in real numbers, I think that makes it come to life, just how much government has grown in North Carolina in the last five to 10 years," said Brent Woodcox, a spokesman for the state Republican party.

There are obvious problems with the math here. Not all of the state's revenue comes from tax dollars or from individual taxpayers. And not every North Carolinian pays the same amount. Nor does all the money come in at equal amounts over the course of a year.

Brent Woodcox doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

Woodcox, communications director for the N.C. Republican Party, said today that he doesn't understand why at least one local TV station has refused to air the "Extreme" ad when it is released next week, reports Emily Stephenson.

The ad, which links Democratic gubernatorial candidates Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has been widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans.

"I'm kind of uncertain why they would not run that ad," he said.

Woodcox also said the state Democratic party was wrong to complain that the ad is racially motivated.

"I just find that characterization to be despicable and wrong," he said.

Woodcox acknowledged that the ad has been criticized by the Republican National Committee and presumptive presidential nominee John McCain. But he said state GOP officials think the ad addresses an issue that concerns voters.

Woodcox said the party has received a lot of support, much of it financial, for the ad from people in North Carolina and across the country.

"We have certainly seen an increase in fundraising," he said. "They're rolling in so fast we can't possibly keep up with them."

Democrats have been debating recently whether North Carolina will be in play.

Everyone from James Carville to Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle has argued that this could be a battleground state in the presidential race this year.

Republicans disagree, citing the state's 28-year-streak of supporting the GOP candidate.

Brent Woodcox, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, added his two cents in a recent conversation with Dome.

He pointed to the crosstabs (page 5 here) for a recent poll of likely general election voters by the conservative Civitas Institute. 

In a hypothetical matchup, John McCain led Barack Obama 48-39, with 13 percent of voters undecided.

Among unaffiliated voters, McCain led 45-39, with 16 percent undecided. Only 12 percent of Republicans backed Obama, while 27 percent of Democrats backed McCain. 

Brent Woodcox with the N.C. Republican Party is not too keen on the make-up of Gov. Mike Easley's e-mail panel.

Woodcox called Dome to say that none of the members of Easley's panel, announced this morning, are registered Republicans. Easley is a Democrat. Woodcox said three members of the panel are registered as independents.

Woodcox, a spokesman for the party, said Easley should "get voices from all sides of the aisle" if he wants the panel's recommendations to have credibility.

He said Easley could also have considered asking an independent commission to look at the question of how and when government e-mail messages should be retained under the state's public records law.

"I don't feel that this commission is going to accomplish that," Woodcox said.