* Worth noting: Former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as U.S. Circuit judge in 1998; former Sen. Lauch Faircloth against.

* Brian Nick, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, was named a "rising star" by Politics magazine for consultants and advocates under 35.

* N.C. Republican Party chair candidates Chad Adams and Marcus Kindley answer questionnaires on policy from Carolina Politics Online.

* N.C. Democratic Party chair David Young says on Asheville talk radio that his "gut" tells him U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler is thinking of a Senate run.

Brian Nick, who was chief of staff to former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, will open the Washington office for Hollywood-based Republican political consultant Fred Davis.

Davis was the media consultant for both Dole, a Republican, and GOP presidential candidate John McCain last year. He has a reputation for non-traditional television ads. Nick will be opening a new office for his firm, Strategic Perception, in the nation's capital.

"Fred is the most creative mind in the business," Nick said, acknowledging that Republicans likely face another difficult election year in 2010. "He offers the kind of out-of-the-box approach that's needed in this kind of environment."

Nick, an Indiana native, came to North Carolina in 2001 to gear up Dole's successful Senate run, leading a team of young aides who quickly gained a reputation for their uniform navy blazers. He served as Dole's communications director in both her Senate office and, in 2005 and 2006, when she was chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which coordinates Senate campaigns across the country. He was her chief of staff until her defeat in last year's election.

Davis has collected a healthy list of successful candidates, but he may be best known in North Carolina for a puzzling ad for Patrick Ballantine, the 2004 Republican candidate for governor, that resembled a scene from the movie "Firestarter."

Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole was criticized Tuesday for attempting to loosen banking regulations earlier this year at time a time when the financial crisis was growing.

Democrat Kay Hagan noted that Dole had introduced legislation that would have made voluntary, rather than mandatory certfication by CEOs and outside auditors of the internal accounting controls of banks, Rob Christensen reports.

Hagan said quoted an industry publication as saying such legislation was “supremely naive” after all all the corporate scandals.

She also said that Dole received a campaign contribution of $2,500 from Bear Stearns’ PAC six days after she introduced the legislation. The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc., a New York-based investment bank, collapsed last month as part of the subprime mortgage crisis.

"Once again she is a rubber stamp for President Bush," Hagan said in a teleconference with reporters.

The Dole campaign dismissed the allegations. The loosening of standards of the Sarbanes-Oxley law had been requested by First Citizens Bank of Raleigh and supported by the state Bankers Association as a way to relieve the regulatory burdens on smaller banks, said Brian Nick, Dole’s chief of staff.

"To say that Bear Stearns some how benefited from this is absolutely preposterous," Nick said. "It shows a total lack of understanding that Kay Hagan has."

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How much time has U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole spent here?

Hitting the campaign trail heavily this year, the Salisbury Republican has spent more than three months on the road in North Carolina.

But a survey by Media General News Service of Senate records, news accounts and press releases show that's a marked increase from the days spent here in previous years:

2003: 55
2004: 34
2005: 20
2006: 13
2007: 50
2008: 97 (as of Sept. 26)

Dole and her supporters note that she has visited every North Carolina county while in office and a number of small towns. They also said that they could not find documentation for many of those visits, arguing the news service was undercounting her time here.

"Unfortunately, we're guilty until proven innocent in terms of how many days we spent there, because we can't document every single trip with an airline receipt," said chief of staff Brian Nick.

Critics of Dole cite her time here as proof that she is an "absentee" senator.

Update: Nick said she visited the state "multiple times" to visit her family and do official business, paying for those trips out of her own pocket. For that reason, the trips do not show up in any Senate records.

"The limited criteria used by Media General only reflect when taxpayers paid for Senator Dole's trips or when news accounts reflected public events," he wrote Dome in an e-mail. "Such narrow criteria leave out countless trips home that Senator Dole took either for official, political or personal reasons. For instance, she would pay for her own travel expenses, rather than bill the taxpayers, when she would visit her recently deceased brother in Charlotte, or when she would go home to see her late mother in Salisbury."

National Democrats, already spending nearly $1 million on an ad against Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, apparently plan to spend an additional $7 million after Labor Day.

"I don't think anybody's been targeted that much," Dole aide Brian Nick said during a Charlotte appearance with the senator today, Jim Morrill reports.

Nick said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has reserved $7.3 million of airtime in North Carolina after Labor Day. The DSCC already has spent about $800,000 on an ad that calls Dole ineffective. DSCC spokesman Matt Miller would not confirm the amounts.

The money would help Dole's Democratic opponent, state Sen. Kay Hagan. Hagan reported having raised around $3 million through June to Dole's $8.4 million.

Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the Washington-based Cook Political Report, said the $7 million figure may be inflated. But it still suggests Democrats plan to make an impact in the race.

"If I'm Senator Dole I'd be worried about the money the DSCC is going to spend, whether it's $3 million or $7 million," she said.

Dole spoke to the Charlotte Chamber this morning and later toured Johnson C. Smith University.

Long-time Republican spokesman Brian Nick is returning to Washington, sort of.

Nick, 31, will take the helm of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's Senate operation as her chief of staff beginning May 21. He’ll be based in Dole’s Raleigh office but will travel to Washington several days a week.

As chief of staff, Nick will become one of Dole's top employees, managing her office staff, her legislative agenda and her constituent service.

He has worked for Dole since 2001, starting as her deputy campaign manager, then moving into roles as press secretary and communications director after her election in 2002.

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