Julie Brill, an assistant attorney general from Vermont, is replacing newly-elected state Sen. Josh Stein as the state's top consumer watchdog.

Attorney General Roy Cooper has hired Brill to be the head of his Consumer Protection Division. She has been working in the Vermont Attorney General's Consumer Protection and Antitrust divisions since October 1991, Dan Kane reports.

Jennifer Canada, a spokeswoman for Cooper, said that Brill was instrumental in launching the Vermont office's litigation, legislative and regulatory strategies in a wide variety of consumer and business matters. They include privacy, credit reporting, financial services, tobacco, food, drugs and other health-related industries.

"Consumers are facing new threats from fraud and bad deals in the struggling economy, and we are pleased to bring one of the best consumer protection attorneys in the country to North Carolina," Cooper said in a statement.

Brill graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and received her law degree from New York University. She starts at the end of the month. Her salary has not yet been set.

Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, was the consumer protection chief under Cooper since February 2001.

Mac McCorkle, veteran Democratic campaign consultant, is heading to an offshoot of Princeton Theological Seminary for a semester.

He will be violating both tenets of the adage against discussing religion or politics.

And McCorkle, who was one of the conultants on Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue's successful campaign, is slowly extricating himself from politics.

McCorkle will serve as a development fellow starting in December at the Center of Theological Inquiry. He won't move to the New Jersey campus until March and will stay through June, which fits nicely with being able to see his son, Chip, graduate from Princeton University.

McCorkle, a Princeton and Duke law alum, said he'll be organizing programs that bring theologians together with policy makers and politicians to talk about weighty current issues. He'll be back at his Durham office in the summer and will continue to help Perdue, but he's trying to shift away from politics.

"I would like to do this kind of organizational, institutional consulting," McCorkle said, "and less campaign work."