Sen. Elizabeth Dole gave her farewell address on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

The North Carolina Republican used her final floor speech to pay tribute to many mentors, beginning with several family members such as her grandmother, whom she called Mom Cathey, her parents, siblings and nephews, Lisa Zagaroli reports.

Dole thanked several presidents as well: Richard Nixon for her years on the Federal Trade Commission, Ronald Reagan for her appointment as secretary of transportation, and George H.W. Bush for her job as secretary of labor.

"We've worked hard," she said in thanking her Senate staff. "We had some fun along the way too. And we made a positive difference for North Carolina and America."

Of her husband, Bob, the former senator from Kansas, she said he was a constant example that "a leader should have not only a strong backbone, but also a funny bone."

"I could never have dreamed of the people I've been privileged to meet, the jobs I've been privileged to hold or the issues I've been privileged to influence," said Dole, who lost her re-election bid to Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat.

Quoting Theodore Roosevelt about working hard at "work worth doing," Dole said, "While I don't know what awaits me in life's journey, what will come next, I pray that I'll find a way to continue to work hard at work worth doing."

There have been five presidential spoilers in N.C. in the last century.

Since 1908, third-party candidates in the presidential race have earned enough votes to affect the race between the Republican and the Democrat on the ballot in 1912, 1968, 1980, 1992 and 1996.

In the first two cases, the third-party candidate came in second.

George Wallace was the most successful, earning 31.3 percent of the state vote in the 1968 race as the nominee of the segregationist American Independent Party. The winner, Republican Richard Nixon, won 39.5 percent, while Democrat Hubert Humphrey came in third with 29.2 percent.

The next most successful was former president Teddy Roosevelt, who ran on the Progressive or "Bull Moose" Party in 1912, earning 28.4 percent. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the state with 59.2 percent, while Republican incumbent William Howard Taft came in third with 12 percent.

In the other races, the third-party candidates came in third, but got more votes than the margin of difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates.

In 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot earned 13.7 percent of the vote, far more than the 0.79 percent margin that incumbent George H.W. Bush beat Bill Clinton by in North Carolina, despite losing the national race.

Four years later, Perot was roughly half as popular — picking up just 6.7 percent — but he still drew more votes than the 4.7 percent difference between winner Bob Dole and Clinton.

And in 1980, Independent candidate John Anderson won 2.9 percent, slightly more than the 2.1 percent difference between winner Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

Over the past century, North Carolina has rarely been a battleground.

Since 1908, the average margin of victory in the presidential race here has been 18 percentage points, and the median has been 12.4 points.

The closest race out of those 25 elections was Bill Clinton's challenge to incumbent President George H.W. Bush in 1992. As a Southern governor running on the economy, Clinton campaigned heavily in the state, but he was helped by a strong third-party showing by Ross Perot.

Bush only won by 0.79 percentage points, beating Clinton 43.4 to 42.7 percent. (Perot got 13.9 percent of the vote, the third-best showing for a third-party candidate in North Carolina after George Wallace in 1968 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.)

The next closest race was 1956, when Democrat Adlai Stevenson edged Dwight Eisenhower by 1.32 percentage points despite losing the national election.

In third place was Ronald Reagan's 2.12 point win over Jimmy Carter in 1980. In fourth place, John Kennedy's 4.22 point win over Richard Nixon in 1960. And in fifth place, Bob Dole's 4.69 point win over Clinton in 1996 despite losing the national election.

Otherwise, North Carolina was reliably Democratic from 1908 to 1964, and reliably Republican from 1968 to 2004 (with the exception of Carter's post-Watergate win in 1976.)

Will Democratic in-fighting hand the Governor's Mansion to the GOP?

Some Democrats are concerned about the precedent set by the only two Republican governors elected in the 20th century in North Carolina: Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin.

Both won elections after brutal Democratic primaries. (Holshouser in 1972 over Skipper Bowles, who fought Pat Taylor in a tough primary; Martin in 1984 over Rufus Edmisten, who fought Eddie Knox in a crowded Democratic primary.)

With Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore already getting down and dirty, some Democrats fear and some Republicans hope that history will repeat itself.

Not so fast, says Ferrell Guillory, a former political reporter who now heads the program on public life at UNC-Chapel Hill.

More after the jump.

   Comments (0)

Political observers are mourning the passing of T.G. Joyner.

The longtime yellow-dog Democrat, nicknamed "Sonny Boy," was a key advisor and staffer for Govs. Terry Sanford and Bob Scott and a longtime party activist.

On his Talking About Politics blog, Democratic strategist Gary Pearce writes that Joyner helped put Northampton County in George McGovern's camp in the 1972 election, making it one of only two North Carolina counties not to vote for Richard Nixon.

"Like his name suggested, he was a country boy," he writes. "All smiles and laughter. Pumping everybody for political gossip. Pounding on people in Raleigh to get things done for his neighbors."

On This Old State, Charlotte Observer columnist Jack Betts laments the decline of the political nickname, noting U.S. Rep. Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, state Sen. J.J. "Monk" Harrington and gubernatorial candidate Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles, among others.

North Carolina hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1976.

Even then, the vote for Jimmy Carter was an anomaly caused in part by Watergate. The state pretty much switched to voting for Republican presidents in 1968 with the triumph of Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy."

Before then, the state was fairly consistently Democratic in its national choice. From 1876 to 1968, only one Republican — Herbert Hoover in 1928 — won North Carolina.

The record is of interest because the General Assembly may change how the state's Electoral College votes are distributed.

The shift to awarding electors by Congressional District wouldn't be under discussion at all if North Carolina didn't have a split political personality — putting Democrats in the legislature and the Governor's Mansion while voting for Republicans for president.

After the jump, a quick list of the state's presidential choices.

   Comments (1)

North Carolina split its Electoral College vote once before.

But it wasn't set up that way by lawmakers.

In the 1968 election between Republican Richard Nixon, Democrat Hubert Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace, the race was close in North Carolina.

In the final count, Nixon got 39.5 percent of the vote; Humphrey, 31.3; and Wallace, 29.2.

When the Electoral College met, a Nixon elector, a John Birch Society member named Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey, instead cast his ballot for Wallace, saying he was unhappy with some of the president's appointments.

"Nixon has already clearly shown to us that we are going to have more of the same," he said.

Bailey argued that his vote was justified, since Wallace was the winner in his district. Nixon won anyway, and the Rocky Mount opthalmologist later admitted he wouldn't have voted for Wallace if it had changed the outcome.

Veteran political columnist Robert Novak said that this is most wide open presidential race since 1952, and it may be the Democrats to lose.

But Novak cautioned today that public opinion polls six months before the first primaries and caucuses should not be given a lot of credence, Rob Christensen reports.

"Don't pay any attention to the polls," Novak told a luncheon of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh. "It’s way too much in advance."

"Wasn't Howard Dean a great president?" Novak quipped, referring to the former Vermont governor who was an early leader in the Democratic primary in the 2004 race before quickly fading.

Novak's thoughts on the major contenders, after the jump.

   Comments (0)