The Republican National Committee is arguing that voter registration fraud is "rampant" in North Carolina.

During a conference call with reporters this morning, RNC chief counsel Sean Cairncross and spokesman Danny Diaz argued that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is submitting fraudulent registration forms here.

The State Board of Elections has found 135 bogus forms out of the nearly 28,000 submitted by the group in North Carolina this year, or about half of one percent.

Overall, more than 467,000 new voters have registered in North Carolina since the beginning of the year.

Diaz argued that the fraudulent forms are a burden to elections directors and risks leading to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voter registrations. He also argued that a percentage of the false forms may end up leading to voter fraud.

"It's hard to catch, but we do know in point of fact that these names get on the rolls," he said.

He pointed to a recent New York Post story that an Ohio man registered to vote multiple times and cast a ballot with a fake address.

North Carolina's Senate race has been getting a lot of press in New York.

First, there was the New York Post, which inaccurately promoted Jesse Helms to the next world. Now, there's the Village Voice, which skims over the whole primary issue to declare Jim Neal the Democratic candidate against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole. (Sorry, Kay.)

The interview with gay columnist Michael Musto has drawn attention for this exchange on Dole:

"She's not as polarizing in terms of her stance on social issues," said Neal. "Jesse Helms will be remembered as being a very polarizing, mean person. An old-line party activist in North Carolina named Betty McCain said, 'Helms is so mean that when he was a boy, his mother had to tie a pork chop around his neck so the dogs would come play with him.' " "I thought that was to keep away the Jews," I remarked, saucily. "There aren't any!" replied Neal, laughing.

As Mark Binker points out, there are more than a few Jews in North Carolina, and Neal's characterization of his sexual orientation as essentially uncovered by the news media rings a bit hollow. 

And then there's this line, the sort of gay slang that goes well in Greenwich Village but doesn't play quite the same in the Piedmont:

"Yes, I was a breeder," he says, using the slightly derisive '90s era term for heterosexuals. "When I did meet someone and fell in love with him, call it an epiphany or whatever, but I couldn't live with myself any other way than who I am!"

The New York Post's Page Six gossip column wrote today about Senate candidate Jim Neal, who used to live in New York, in its edition today: 

JESSE Helms will be spinning in his grave if Jim Neal beats Sen. Elizabeth Dole for the US Senate seat Helms held for five terms in North Carolina. "I am gay and the most viable gay person to ever challenge an incumbent US senator in what many consider a 'red state' - it's anything but," Neal told Page Six. Neal, who's 10 points behind Dole in a recent poll, is coming to New York for a huge fund-raiser being thrown Jan. 31 by painter Ross Bleckner in his studio. "I am going to win this damned race and shatter another glass ceiling," Neal vows. 

Memo to Page Six: Jesse's still alive. 

John Edwards has been in a dust up with Fox News.

The former North Carolina senator called last week for Democrats to oppose the merger of the News Corporation, owned by British media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and the Dow Jones Company which owns the Wall Street Journal, Rob Christensen reports.

Edwards said media consolidation was a bad trend. And he also asked Democratic presidential candidates to not accept money from News Corp. executives, a slap at one of his rivals, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton who has received $20,000.

"The time has come for Democrats to stop pretending to be friends with the very people who demonize the Democratic Party," Edwards said in a statement.

More after the jump.

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