The state's payroll has added nine people since Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue began picking people to run her transition to power.

One of the first of what Dome promises will be many, many public records requests to the Perdue administration was for a list of transition team members who are paid by the state and how much they are making.

For comparison's sake, the monthly salary figure is followed by an annual rate in parenthesis.

Christy Agner: transition aide, $4,650 ($55,800)

Meghan Brown: transition aide, $2,650 ($31,800)

Tim Crowley: Communications Director, Inauguration, $6,125 ($73,500)

Justin Guillory: transition aide, $2,900 ($34,800)

David Kochman: Communications Director, $9,600 ($115,200)

Jackie Kohler: human resources, $4,000 ($48,000)

Kennetha Smith: transition aide, $2,650 ($31,800)

Bradford Sneeden: transition aide, $2,500 ($30,000)

Maggie Stewart: transition aide, $2,500 ($30,000)

Public Policy Polling gives the Democratic gubernatorial candidates a head's up.

Since January of 2007, the Democratic polling firm has given the campaigns of Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore the reults of polling in their race at least an hour before they're publicly released.

Pollster Tom Jensen said that is a custom started by his predecessor, Justin Guillory, who now works for Perdue's campaign.

"It's mostly just a courtesy," he said. "If the Republican candidates wanted me to give them our numbers as soon as I have them, I'd do that too."

He said that Perdue and Moore are the most "aggressively concerned" about the results, sometimes calling at 11 a.m. on Mondays if they haven't gotten the results yet.

Last week, Perdue's released the results of their own internal poll showing her ahead — a day before Public Policy Polling's weekly tracking poll showed her in a dead heat for the first time with Moore.

Jensen said they may have had an idea how the poll would turn out after seeing a post on early results he wrote on his blog that Saturday. 

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue is making changes to her political staff.

Justin Guillory of Democratic firm Public Policy Polling will be joining the gubernatorial campaign's communications and research staff.

He announced on his (now former) blog that he would "try to stay connected" with the blogging community and the polling firm. N.C. Sierra Club employee Tom Jensen is taking over his old job.

Meantime, Perdue's finance director, Peter Reichard, will be scaling back his duties to deal with his daughter's illness, said spokesman David Kochman.

"We're hoping to still have him as active as he can be," Kochman said.

In addition, Perdue pledged to make unspecified staff changes in response to a recent article about omissions from her campaign finance reports.

The Daily Tar Heel wonders why more young voters aren't polled.

An article in the UNC-Chapel Hill student paper notes that a recent survey by Public Policy Polling was "dominated by voters older than 45 years old."

A few unexplored reasons: Young people only have cell phones, they're less likely to have voted in the last two Congressional elections and they move around more.

Meantime, not everyone is troubled by the lack of young voices.

Brent Woodcox, communications director for the state Republican Party, told the Tar Heel that young people are exercising their constitutional right to, um, goof off.

"Maybe they want that to be their voice in the election — to not vote," he said. "That's what freedom allows in our country. You can choose who you want to vote for or if you want to vote at all."

(Note to Louis: Next time you quote someone defending his son's polling results, you might want to note the relationship. Just sayin'.)

A Democratic pollster says they tested Jerry Meek because they were out of ideas.

Justin Guillory, who works for Public Policy Polling, said the firm ran the state Democratic Party chairman's name against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole because there weren't any other people left.

"We tried all the candidates who have been mentioned," he said.

Still, Guillory said that people at the firm had heard Meek's name floated as a possible candidate for higher office some day.

Over on his blog, Guillory says he hopes to try some real names soon:

Hopefully some Democrat will step up to the plate soon and we can end this exercise. Otherwise, we may have to resort, as one person suggested, to testing Clay Aiken against Elizabeth Dole.

Maybe that's not a good idea. After all, Aiken came in second in a nationwide race, remember?