An anti-union group is spending big money attacking Kay Hagan. 

The Employee Freedom Action Committee is spending $1 million on online ads and mailings that criticize Hagan, according to spokesman Tim Miller. It also ran a full-page ad in the N&O on Sept. 30.

The group is attacking her support for legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize. It's also spending $2 million for a TV ad featuring former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern criticizing the legislation, Jim Morrill reports.

The ad is running in North Carolina and a half-dozen other states.

The committee is affiliated with The Center for Union Facts. It opposes the legislation, which would allow workers to unionize by signing cards instead of through a secret-ballot election.

"Kay supports it as a way to level the playing field for working families," said Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan. "This bill simply allows the workers, not the employers, to decide which method to use, and stiffens penalties for intimidation."

The GOP's secret plan for ending 16-years of Democratic governors can be summed up in two words:

Hillary Clinton.

That's according to a fund raising letter recently distributed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham of Salisbury, Rob Christensen reports.

"Mark my words," Graham writes, "Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president. And she's going to be a bigger drag on the Democratic ticket than George McGovern in '72, Walter Mondale in '84 or Michael Dukakis in '88. And those are, not coincidentally, the same years, and the only years, that we have elected a Republican governor."

"Historically, we can expect Hillary Clinton to garner somewhere around 40 percent-45 percent of the vote in North Carolina," Graham writes. "And when the Republican candidate for president gets 55 percent-60 percent of the vote in North Carolina, we wreak havoc on the Democrats."

Political observers are mourning the passing of T.G. Joyner.

The longtime yellow-dog Democrat, nicknamed "Sonny Boy," was a key advisor and staffer for Govs. Terry Sanford and Bob Scott and a longtime party activist.

On his Talking About Politics blog, Democratic strategist Gary Pearce writes that Joyner helped put Northampton County in George McGovern's camp in the 1972 election, making it one of only two North Carolina counties not to vote for Richard Nixon.

"Like his name suggested, he was a country boy," he writes. "All smiles and laughter. Pumping everybody for political gossip. Pounding on people in Raleigh to get things done for his neighbors."

On This Old State, Charlotte Observer columnist Jack Betts laments the decline of the political nickname, noting U.S. Rep. Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, state Sen. J.J. "Monk" Harrington and gubernatorial candidate Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles, among others.