N.C. Republicans for Obama launched Thursday.

More than 200 registered Republicans from across the state signed onto a petition supporting Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the presidential race this November. 

In a conference call with reporters, former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he decided to support Obama in the Rhode Island primary and head up a national Republicans for Obama group out of disappointment with President Bush's foreign and economic policies.

He also said that Obama ran the best campaign.

"His campaign was the best run, best organized, and he was the CEO of that," he said. "All the other campaigns had cost overruns and management shakeups. Not the Obama campaign. And that translates into administration."

Pamella Cash-Roper, an unemployed nurse and lifelong Republican from Pittsboro who appeared at an Obama rally in June, said she supports Obama because of his approach to the economy and health care.

"Voters in North Carolina cannot afford four more years of the same failed Bush economic policies," she said.

The complete list of Republicans for Obama is online here. 

Steve Laffey says U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole sabotaged his campaign.

In his new book, "Primary Mistake," the former candidate in the Rhode Island Senate Republican primary argues that Dole undercut his challenge to Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

He says Dole, then chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the group's executive director, Mark Stephens, a Raleigh political consultant, tried to talk him out of running.

In a meeting in Washington, D.C., in 2005, he says they tried to convince him to run for lieutenant governor instead, but he thought the position has no responsibilities.

What about "I don't want to ride around on a bicycle waiting for the governor to die" did they not understand the first time around?

Laffey lost his challenge to Chafee, who lost the general election.

A short excerpt after the jump.

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