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Former state Sen. Cal Cunningham of Lexington, who recently returned from duty in Iraq, is considering challenging Republican Sen. Richard Burr next year.

Cunningham, a 35-year old attorney, has been traveling around the state during the past two months speaking to Democratic groups, Rob Christensen reports.

"I'm having conversations with friends and fellow Democrats," Cunningham said. "North Carolina has a lot of needs right now. We have rising unemployment and a couple of wars. We need someone in Washington who is energetic and who offers compelling leadership."

The favorite of party leaders was Attorney General Roy Cooper, who announced Friday that he would not run.

Cunningham, a captain in the Army reserves and a paratrooper, returned from Baghdad in December after spending a year proscuting contractor abuse in Iraq. In 2005, he also served a year at Fort Bragg.

At age 27, he was elected to serve one term in the state Senate in 2000. But he did not seek re-election after he was thrown into a heavily Republican district.

His wife, Elizabeth, was deputy campaign manager for D.G. Martin's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in 1998.   

Cunningham was president of the UNC student body and later earned an advanced degree from the London School of Economics. He is a litigator with Kilpatrick Stockton in Winston-Salem.

Lance McCord helped start BlueNC, but he's no longer active.

As a second-year law student at UNC-Chapel Hill, McCord was inspired to start a political blog by reading Crooked Timber, a blog run by a group of academics.

He asked his friends who might be a good partner, and James Protzman's name came up. Along with fellow law student John Livingston, the three started BlueNC in March of 2006 after a single face-to-face meeting at a coffee shop in Research Triangle Park.

McCord, who blogged as Lance, was originally interested in national politics, but he said his interest shifted because of BlueNC's relentless focus on state politics.

"I had a realization that the politics that mattered in most peoples lives were local," he said.

After graduating in 2007, McCord took a job as a corporate attorney with Kilpatrick Stockton in Atlanta. After the birth of his daughter last year, he stopped blogging entirely.

"New job, new town, new baby," he said. "Something had to go, and BlueNC was it."