Bob Dole will speak in High Point and Raleigh today.

The former Senate majority leader and husband of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole will appear with Sen. Richard Burr and N.C. Republican Party chairwoman Linda Daves.

The occasion is the opening of two headquarters for the John McCain presidential campaign. 

The High Point event will be held at 12:30 p.m. at 3800 Tinsley Road. The Raleigh event will be held at 3 p.m. at 1506 Hillsborough St. in the state Republican Party headquarters.

The McCain campaign is also opening an office in Winston-Salem today. Democratic rival Barack Obama, meantime, has 14 offices open already. 

Dole, who ran for president himself in 1996, is increasingly visible in North Carolina lately, appearing at a Raleigh anti-tax rally in late June.

Being a budget writer has its perks.

As a first-time Senate Appropriations co-chair, Sen. Kay Hagan got a few provisions in the 2003 budget to help out her home district and other pet projects.

Here's a quick look:

Millennium Campus: Hagan canceled the proposed sale of a former school for deaf children, then gave the land to N.C. A&T and UNC-Greensboro for a research campus (Section 6.20).

Tuition Promise: Hagan promoted a provision that gave free tuition to state universities to all graduates of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (Section 9.4).

Furniture Market: At Hagan's request, the budget included $900,000 for a free shuttle service for the twice-yearly High Point Furniture Market (Section 29.17).

Civil Rights Museum: Hagan sought $1 million for a long-planned International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, but it was cut by the House.

Hagan also added a provision calling testing the backlog of rape kits a "priority" for the N.C. Department of Justice (Section 14.7) and funding five pilot programs to teach financial literacy to high school students (Section 7.35).

She also limited a Republican proposal to require reports on spending by nonprofits that receive state money to those with grants of more than $300,000 (Section 6.21).

State Sen. Kay Hagan was not very bipartisan in her second term.

With the Democratic Senate nominee touting her bipartisanship in the legislature, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Republicans who signed on to her bills.

In the 2001-02 session, the Greensboro Democrat was the primary sponsor of 29 bills. Of them, 14 had no cosponsors, five had only Democratic cosponsors and 10 had Republican cosponsors.

Again, a few of the bills had more than one Republican cosponsor. Overall, her 74 cosponsors included 61 Democrats and 13 Republicans, or about a four-to-one ratio.

The most frequent Republican cosponsor was Sen. Robert G. Shaw, also of Greensboro. He signed on to four Hagan bills on local issues: UNC-Greensboro's parking authority, helping the High Point furniture market, giving the city of Greensboro more roads jurisdiction, and funds for a business court.

Other bills that attracted GOP support: suspending driver's licenses for stealing gas, teaching financial literacy in school, making changes to financial oversight of local housing authorities, limiting secrecy orders in civil cases, amending domestic violence laws, and revising laws on electronic transactions.

Previously: Cosponsors in 2003-04, 2005-06 and 2007-08.

Michael Easley Jr. made a rare political appearance Monday today, joining his father, Gov. Mike Easley, and Hillary Clinton in High Point.

The younger Easley, a law student at UNC-Chapel Hill, stood on stage with the two elected officials and spoke briefly to the crowd of about 200. Introducing his father, he praised Clinton for her efforts to improve early education and keep college affordable.

Speaking next, the governor said he appreciated the introduction.

“There’s nothing like getting somebody dependent on you to introduce you,” he said.

HIGH POINT — Hillary Clinton told supporters in this furniture hub Monday that as president she would be aggressive in promoting American trade interests.

Clinton, at her second stop of the day in North Carolina before her match-up Tuesday with Barack Obama in the state's primary, called for renegotiating trade agreements, David Ingram reports.

She singled out China, accusing the country of manipulating its currency, unfairly subsidizing its domestic companies and overlooking counterfeiting.

"I will get tough on China because what they are doing is not right," Clinton said.

Many of the thousands of N.C. furniture jobs lost in the last decade have gone to China and other Asian countries, where labor costs are also lower.

More after the jump.

   Comments (2)

Bill Clinton will have a whirlwind tour on Friday.

The former president will campaign on behalf of his wife in Greensboro, High Point, Salisbury, Kannapolis, Gastonia, Hickory and Asheville.

The day begins with a stop at the Bryan Family YMCA in Greensboro.

He'll also stop at a student center at High Point University, the historic Salisbury train station, A.L. Brown High School in Kannapolis, the Highland School of Technology, St. Stephens High School and Asheville High School.

His campaigning will last from 7:45 a.m. to 8:15 p.m., although given the number of stops it's not likely he'll remain on schedule for most of the stops.