U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is voting with the Democrats more lately.

The Salisbury Republican has broken with her party more this year than she did in 2007, according to an analysis of her voting record by The Hill, a Washington-based political paper.

Leaving out missed votes and bills that both parties favored, Dole voted against a majority of her party 25.5 percent of the time this year, versus 6.6 percent in 2007, 6.4 percent in the 2005-06 session and 4.3 percent in the 2003-04 session.

Dole was one of seven Republicans who voted for a climate-change bill, among other things:

Some of Dole’s most significant breaks with the GOP include backing a Democratic economic stimulus measure, supporting Medicare legislation that Bush vetoed, endorsing an amendment to expand children's healthcare coverage to pregnant women and voting for an expansive amendment to lengthen dwell-time for troops before they return to Iraq.

In an interview with the paper, Dole said that she is voting for what's "best for the people of my state," saying she was not moving to the middle because of the upcoming election.

Democratic opponent Kay Hagan's campaign e-mailed a link to the story to reporters.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole was fairly bipartisan in the 2003-04 session.

With the candidates for Senate touting their records of bipartisanship, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Democrats who signed on to legislation Dole sponsored.

In the 2003-04 session, the Salisbury Republican was the primary sponsor of 16 bills. Of them, eight had no cosponsors and eight had Democratic cosponsors.

A bill to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair had 48 Republican cosponsors and 30 Democrats, including Sens. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer.

Overall, that boosted her Democratic cosponsors to 48, compared to 66 Republican cosponsors, or about a three-to-two ratio.

Her most frequent Democratic cosponsor was fellow North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who signed on to the Blair honors, a bill to recognize the Lumbee tribe, an amendment on a Medicare bill and another amendment.

Previously: Dole's cosponsors in 2005-06 and 2007-08.

A state workers' group may get involved in federal races.

In the past seven years, the State Employees Association of North Carolina's political action committee has stuck to local and state races in its endorsements and independent expenditures.

But after SEANC voted in May to affiliate with the national Service Employees International Union — which has one of the country's top PACs in federal races — it is reconsidering.

SEANC Executive Director Dana Cope told Dome that decisions in Washington on issues such as Medicare funding often affect North Carolina and the group's state political goals. At the same time, it does not want to spread itself too thin.

"We want to get the most bang for the buck," he said.

The group is now coordinating its efforts more with SEIU, which sent flyers in a 2005 Raleigh City Council race and has given to U.S. Reps. Brad Miller and David Price, former U.S. Senate candidate Erskine Bowles and state Sen. Janet Cowell.

Cope said SEIU got permission from his group before giving $5,000 in late March to U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan, who was not endorsed by SEANC in the primary and may not be in the general election.

If SEANC decides to get involved in Congressional races, it will have to register as a federal PAC. 

Mort Kondracke thinks there is a political opening in the Washington, D.C., right now.

Speaking at a North Carolina Chamber luncheon today, the longtime political reporter and editor of the Roll Call newspaper said that "poisonous partisanship" has rendered the federal government incapable of solving problems with Social Security and Medicare entitlements and the education system.

He said that there is a chance if the nominees are John McCain and Barack Obama — and to a lesser degree Hillary Clinton — to have a "high-level policy debate from the left and the right" in the election.

But he warned that there is a lot of "institutional resistance" to this happening.

"One group that's institutionally opposed to that is the whole industry of politics and political consultants and pollsters and ad people who exist to demonize the opposition," he said. "Negative ads are their stock in trade."

He also said there will be resistance from the media, which he said profits "as much from peddling conflict and scandal as it does just reporting the news."

The N.C. Association of Educators and the National Education Association have sent a mailer attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Moore, Ben Niolet reports.

What the mailer says: "Important message for NCAE retirees. Just the facts: Has Richard Moore really managed our pension fund responsibly? Here are the facts. Fact: Hardworking teachers and state employees regularly contribute money to the pension fund creating a large surplus that Richard Moore inherited when he became State Treasurer. However, in the last four years, Moore has lagged behind his peers in pension management performance. Fact: Richard Moore has not provided the General Assembly with state-mandated reports detailing the performance of the money managers he hires. When asked for the reports, Moore said they were unavailable. Fact: Richard Moore supported cuts to federal entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and military retirement."

The background: Teachers and other state and local employees contribute 6 percent of their paychecks to the state pension fund, a $77 billion fund that Moore oversees. In 2006, employee contributions were $745 million, according to the Treasurer's Office.

The pension fund earned $5.7 billion that year on its investments and had to pay $2.7 billion in benefits. So the employees' contributions would not have even covered the amount the fund owed retirees that year.

The claim that Moore has lagged behind in pension management is based on information compiled by Wilshire Associates, an investment firm. The state's pension fund has not always done as well as others. For example, in 2007, the fund had an 8.3 percent return rate, which was lower than the median rate of 8.7 percent for funds of similar size. Moore has said his goal as treasurer is steady income and not home-run investments.

The fund is required by law to invest 37 percent of its assets in fixed-income investments, which offer slow but steady growth, a Moore spokeswoman said. The chart included on the mailer shows that in one of the four years, the state pension fund performed the same as other state pension systems.

The claim that Moore has not provided reports to the legislature was based on a line from a March article in Forbes magazine that was harshly critical of Moore. According to Moore's office and the legislature's Fiscal Research Division, Moore's office has been in compliance with its reporting requirements. The division was able to provide copies of some of those reports Wednesday. A year's worth of those reports are available on the treasurer's Web site.

The claim about Moore supporting cuts to entitlement programs is based on a response by Moore to a News & Observer questionnaire when Moore ran for Congress in 1994. The newspaper asked, "The 10 largest entitlement programs are Social Security, Medicare, deposit insurance, Medicaid, federal civilian retirement, unemployment compensation, federal military retirement, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Which, if any, of those programs, would you support cutting to help reduce the federal budget deficit?"

He answered: "I think that I would support on a case by case basis cuts in any and all of those programs. If the way those programs were implemented does not make common sense and are not achieving the goals that they were specifically set up for, they should be changed. As an example, food stamps do not seem to be achieving — at least to a certain percentage of our population — the goals they were set up for. As a former federal prosecutor, I know there is a tremendous amount of fraud. In today's computerization, the concept of a coupon or a stamp may be obsolete and could result in tremendous cost savings."

Is the ad accurate? Not entirely. Employee contributions are a relatively small fraction of what the pension fund earns and did not create a surplus in the fund. In three of the past four years, the pension fund has not performed as well as other similarly sized funds. The claim that Moore has not provided state-mandated reports is false. And in 1994, he did say he supported cuts to entitlement programs if those programs were not working.

U.S. Rep. David Price says earmarks have gotten a bad rap.

In a speech before the Cary Chamber of Commerce this morning, the Chapel Hill Democrat said the recent debate over Congressional earmarks has blown them out of proportion.

Price said the total amount of money spent on earmarked projects is about 1 percent of the federal budget. The bigger problems with spending are the Iraq war, Medicare and Social Security, he said.

A professor of political science, Price argued that the U.S. Constitution clearly gives Congress "the power of the purse," including the right to direct spending. He cited several local projects, including a town water reclamation facility, that were needed.

The issue with earmarks is not spending, since most of the money would be appropriated anyway, he said. Instead, he said, it has been a lack of transparency and "road to nowhere" projects that were not worthy.

Still, he said, there is "a fair amount of exaggeration" about earmarks.

"This earmark process has become kind of a bugaboo and it's going to figure in some of the campaigns," he said. "Everybody should take a deep breath."

Bob Orr says North Carolina needs more nurses.

Orr, a Republican candidate for governor, said this morning in reaction to news out of Haywood County that the federal government is suspending Medicare and Medicaid funding for Haywood Regional Medical Center because of health care failures at the hospital.

Orr said the situation points to the need for North Carolina to address healthcare personnel shortages, particularly in rural areas, by increasing educational opportunities in the field.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist campaigned across the 3rd Congressional district Monday, saying that Republican Congressman Walter Jones had broken his anti-tax pledge.

Norquist said Jones had violated an anti-tax pledge by voting last year for major farm and energy bills, Rob Christensen reports.

Norquist said he had known Jones for years, and had sent letters and talked to him by telephone urging him to avoid voting for a tax hike.

"There were flares up in the sky that were tax increases," Norquist said.

Glen Downs, Jones' chief of staff, said in both cases the farm bill and the energy bill were major pieces of legislation, and only a small portion involved increasing revenues — involving renegotiating oil company leases in the energy bill.

"There has never been a straight up tax increase that Walter has voted for," Downs said.

More after the jump.

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Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue each took a quick jab.

At the UNC-TV debate tonight, Moore argued that the Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission has a spotty record, especially on teen smoking.

"It's been a hit and miss on a lot of different small programs," he said. "It's kind of hard to say that we really have made any substantive improvement."

That echoes Moore's recent attacks on government commissions, which he says are wasteful. 

Perdue serves on the commission and chaired a task force on health run in part by it.

Later, Perdue turned the tables, noting that Moore said during his unsuccessful 1994 Congressional run that he would consider cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid funding to balance the budget.

"If you do that, then the seniors who are moving into this state, certainly have many more challenges than they would otherwise have," she said.

After the jump, what Moore said in 1994.

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John Edwards wants to help older Americans.

Edwards this morning released his "Declaration of Independence" for older Americans, promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, make prescription drugs more affordable, protect seniors from predatory lending and offer more choices in long-term care.

Americans are living longer than ever before - but our social policies haven’t changed to reflect this shift. Our housing policies too often force seniors to choose between isolation or institutionalization and our health care system is set up to treat the worst problems instead of promoting health and quality of life. We must fix the broken system in Washington that has not done more to address these issues.

The full text of Edwards's "Declaration of Independence" after the jump.

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