Robin Hudson will head a women's group.

The state Supreme Court justice will serve as president of the Women's Forum of North Carolina, a nonpartisan group founded in 1976 during the push for the Equal Rights Amendment.

The group now works to elect more women to public office through a center on women in politics that is a partnership with Peace College, a young adult mentoring program and a women's advocacy day at the legislature.

Hudson replaces state government lobbyist Debra Derr.

Other officers were named at the April 18 meeting in Cary: Lobbyist Paula Wolf, vice president; political consultant Linda Suggs, secretary; and small businesswoman Valerie Fields, treasurer.

David McLennan says there aren't enough women in the pipeline.

A professor of political science at Peace College in Raleigh, McLennan has studied women running for office in North Carolina for years.

He says women have done well in races for school board, local and legislative races in urban areas, judicial positions and statewide executive offices. They haven't done well in law enforcement positions and local and legislative races in rural areas.

The problems end up dragging down overall balance, however. While 54 percent of registered voters are women, only 16 percent of the candidates on the November ballot were women, he said. 

A lack of women in lower level races also means a smaller pool for more important posts. With fewer women on rural town councils, there are fewer candidates for rural legislative seats; and fewer female district attorneys and sheriffs may be one reason no woman has run for attorney general.

Even in statewide executive races, McLennan said women's successes have been due to their support in the growing metropolitan areas.

"People in urban areas are more used to seeing women in positions of power," he said. "As the power in the state shifts to the metropolitan areas, we're going to see more women do well as a result."

Still, the lag in rural areas means it may take longer to see a gender balance in the legislature.  

Remember that set piece that Chelsea Clinton told last week?

During her visits to the Young Democrats convention, N.C. State and Peace College, the former first daughter told a moving story of a pregnant Ohio woman who died because the hospital would not admit her.

As it turns out, Hillary Clinton has told the same story on the campaign trail. And the hospital in question — O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio — has told the New York Times it is not accurate.

"We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," hospital CEO Rick Castrop told the paper. He said the woman was not denied care.

The Times' recounting of Hillary's version of the anecdote sounds almost word-for-word the same as Chelsea's.

Earlier: Chelsea woos voters with hospital story. 

Is Journey the new Fleetwood Mac?

Before Chelsea Clinton took the stage at Peace College today, the PA system played "Don't Stop Believin'," which, to Dome's amazement got the crowd of college students really amped up.

Although Hillary Clinton (in)famously selected a Celine Dion song for her campaign theme, Dome thinks that the Journey song would be a good counterpart to "Don't Stop (Thinkin' About Tomorrow)," Bill Clinton's campaign theme from 1992.

Think of the parallels: Both songs begin with "Don't Stop" and use slangy apostrophes. Both are oldies, but not too old. ("Thinkin''" was 17 years old in '92; "Believin'" is now 27 years old.) Both are album-oriented rock of the type favored by political campaigns.

And both are kind of secretly inappropriate. Fleetwood Mac's song was actually about recovering from divorce; while Journey's is about two "streetlight people" sharing the night.

How does Chelsea Clinton woo younger voters?

Based on her appearances in North Carolina so far, the former first daughter favors a casual, even wonky, approach. A few patterns Dome has seen:

1. Be casual. She dresses stylishly, but not formally. At rallies on college campuses today Clinton wore dark blue jeans and a smart gray jacket. She uses a handheld mic and no podium and answers questions rather than give a speech. Her language is more personal than political. Case in point: At N.C. State this morning, she called herself a "sort of a numbers dork" at one point. She frequently says "Oh gosh" at the number of questions.

2. She's young, too. She makes references to being young, although at a Young Democrats event Saturday and today at Peace College, Clinton self-deprecatingly noted that at 28, she feels old. At N.C. State, she mentioned that a friend recently returned from fighting in Iraq. On Saturday, she pointed out that her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, was in the back row of the room. At Peace, she noted that she has a boyfriend and a dog and made a reference to her mother wanting her to have kids soon. "I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up," she said jokingly.

3. Hit the youth issues... She talks about her mother's proposals to get rid of the much-hated FAFSA student aid form and expand loans for graduate school. She notes a proposed border fence would cut through the University of Texas at Brownsville campus, points out that college students often don't have health insurance during the summer, and talks about ending school fees around the world.

4. Don't talk down. She's not afraid to be wonky. Clinton occasionally uses words like "data points" and gets into the policy thicket explaining problems with how No Child Left Behind rates student success or international treaties that the Bush administration has not participated in. At times, she sounds like she could be leading a class discussion or late-night dorm argument.

Overall, Clinton's approach is low key, with none of the grandiloquent rhetoric of an Obama rally (or even Obama surrogate Cory Booker's speech on Saturday). Her one set piece is a quiet retelling of the story of a young Ohio woman without health insurance who died after being turned away from the hospital.

Based on the crowd response so far, the piece seems pretty effective, but Clinton does not milk it for emotion the way her father would.

Chelsea Clinton will be at N.C. State at 10:30 a.m. Monday.

She'll hold an event in the bookstore plaza at 2125 Dunn Ave., or, if it's raining, in the Talley Student Center lobby.

At 12:45 p.m., Clinton will be at the Belk Courtyard at Peace College. If it's raining, she'll be in the Belk Dining Hall instead.

At 3 p.m., Clinton will be at The Pit at UNC-Chapel Hill, or, if raining, at the West Lounge in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union. 

Chelsea Clinton must have enjoyed her visit to North Carolina yesterday. She's coming back Monday.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign just announced that Chelsea will visit Monday with students at N.C. State University, Peace College and UNC-Chapel Hill.

No more details - such as time and precise locations - are available yet.

Sen. Fred Smith missed more than 300 votes this session.

The Clayton Republican, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, was listed in a survey by the Greensboro News & Record as having missed about a quarter of the votes, or 318 out of 1,238.

Some were minor, such this bill to honor Independence High's football team, or this one to honor the founder of Peace College. Others were procedural moves on bills that he eventually voted on.

A few were high profile decisions, however. Smith missed votes to change billboard setbacks, divest state money from Sudan, allow judges to carry handguns and create a pilot program for publicly financed campaigns.

Two bills tie into his gubernatorial campaign theme of stopping illegal immigration. Smith missed votes on a bill that would help jailers determine the legal status of prisoners, and another that would require fingerprinting of drunk drivers who don't have valid ID.

He also missed a vote that ties to his theme of Democratic corruption. That bill will limit legal defense funds like the one created for disgraced former House Speaker Jim Black.

A complete list of his votes is online here. Missed votes are listed as "excused absence." The News & Record's spreadsheets: Senate and House.