U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan has launched both a YouTube channel and a Twitter account to chronicle her work in the U.S. Senate.

For now, her last Tweet is from "the office of Sen. Kay Hagan," with updates posted by staff. Example: "welcoming a great group of North Carolinians for this week's Carolina Coffee," Barb Barrett reports.

Hagan had a campaign Twitter account last year, posting about her platform, her daily travels and occasional jabs at the competition ("This is what a Republican-run, special interest-based economy looks like," she tweeted a year ago.)

Her YouTube channel has a pair of videos so far. One welcomes viewers; the other features her biography.

"Tools like YouTube and Twitter will allow me and my office to share information about the most pressing issues facing North Carolina and our country and keep constituents updated about the latest news in the Senate," Hagan said in a statement. "North Carolinians can use these tools to keep up with me while I am in Washington and traveling across the state."

Also on Twitter:

Sen. Richard Burr's campaign

Rep. Virginia Foxx

Rep. Sue Myrick

Rep. Patrick McHenry

Rep. Walter Jones 

Update: Post includees Rep. Walter Jones' Twitter feed, which was inadvertently left off the list.  

Former Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has asked supporters to help former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole retire more than $350,000 in campaign debt.

Dole, a Republican, ran up the debt in her unsuccessful attempt to fend off a challenge from Kay Hagan, a Democrat, in a bitterly fought campaign, reports the Atlantic's Politics blog. 

Huckabee's message may be a move to win support of Bob and Elizabeth Dole for a future presidential run. In his plea for help, Huckabee describes the Democratic effort within North Carolina during last year's election.

The Democratic Party spent $12 million to defeat her in North Carolina and special interest groups spent millions more.

The Obama campaign opened 50 field offices with 400 paid staff and 21,000 volunteers, all geared to three weeks of early voting. North Carolina had the biggest increase in voter turnout of any state in the nation, a reflection of the huge amounts of money poured into the state.

I hope you will join me in assisting her with a generous contribution today to retire her debt of $356,043. I believe it would be a travesty if she were left with a debt after all her hard work as a public servant.

APPLE BITES: This week it was all about Jobs — with a lower-case and upper-case J. The same day that Gov. Beverly Perdue signed into law changes to the state's corporate taxes designed to lure Apple, the company founded by Steve Jobs announced it would build a $1 billion data center. Opponents of corporate incentives, meantime, felt more like the biblical Job, suffering yet again.

BURR'S CRUSADE: U.S. Sen. Richard Burr stood up for tobacco in the Senate. The Winston-Salem Republican spent more than four hours on the floor arguing against a bill to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. He said it would stifle innovation in nicotine delivery systems and hurt the "gold standard" of food and drug oversight. He and Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan proposed an alternate bill.

EMPTYING HOUSE? Another state representative is leaving. Rep. Bonner Stiller, a Brunswick County Republican, will step down this month to spend more time with his family. He joins four other legislators this term who've stepped down to accept a gubernatorial appointment (Rep. Linda Coleman) or move to the state Senate (now Sen. Dan Blue) or because they died (Sen. Vernon Malone) or were under investigation (Rep. Cary Allred).

IN OTHER NEWS: An East Carolina University professor will discuss his studies of the vice presidency with Joe Biden. ... Elizabeth Edwards is not interested in running for U.S. Senate, but she will open a furniture store in Chapel Hill. ... Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole will make her first political appearance since losing in November when she introduces one-time GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in Charlotte next week. ... Hagan ran into Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the ladies' room at the Capitol.

Charles Meeker is not in the running.

The longtime Raleigh mayor told Dome this morning that he's not considering a run for the Democratic nomination to face U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.

"I'm not looking at running for Senate," he said. 

Meeker considered a campaign against Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2008, but he's not looked at leaving the mayor's seat soon.

"This is the highest office in my view," he said. 

Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole remembered Jack Kemp Sunday.

Speaking with her husband Bob at a lecture at the University of Kansas, Dole told a crowd of between 500 and 1,000 students that the former Congressman was full of energy and enthusiasm when he helped her campaign in North Carolina.

"Jack believed in what he was doing with all his heart," she said, according to the Topeka Capital Journal. "He will be truly missed."

Kemp, a former Congressman who was Bob Dole's vice presidential pick, died of cancer Saturday. In October, he campaigned on a bus tour for Elizabeth Dole's re-election with Sen. Richard Burr in five mountain counties.

She also said she was disappointed with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to switch parties and with the recent tone in Washington.

"In recent years, it's become much more raucous," she said, according to KTKA TV. "You feel like it's almost combat now. I do think we have to work hard at getting that civility back."

Dole added that she and her husband also plan to go on the NutriSystem diet plan.

Since 1990, the most competitive Senate races in the country have been in North Carolina.

An analysis by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota found that the last seven races here were decided by an average of six percentage points — the lowest in the nation.

The next closest states were Minnesota (6.4), New Jersey (7.5) and Missouri (8.4). Every other state had more than a 10 percent average margin.

The national average of the 344 Senate races was 22.8 percentage points. Nationally, less than a third were decided by less than 10 points, while all of North Carolina's races were below that cutoff. 

The least competitive state was North Dakota, which had no competitive races during that period of time. 

The closest win in North Carolina was Lauch Faircloth's in 1992, which was decided by four points. The biggest win was Elizabeth Dole's in 2002, when the margin was 8.6 points.

(That was closely followed by Kay Hagan's 8.5 point defeat of her in 2008.)

As a Dome tipster points out, the races prior to 1990 were not much less competitive, either.

Longtime Dome readers know how we love neologisms.

It struck us this morning that there is no good off-the-shelf word for the kind of non-campaign that Reps. Heath Shuler and Brad Miller have run.

The definition is simple: "A brief period in which potential candidates for higher office announce that they are considering a run, garnering a lot of attention from the public and the media before saying they won't run after all."

So, what should we call this? A non-campaign? A float race? A mirage campaign?

Submit your ideas to dome@newsobserver.com or post them in the comments below.

Update: That was quick. Reader Englewood suggests "sham-paigns." The word has been used online at least since 2007 with various meanings, but it neatly conveys the message and adds an air of cork-popping self-congratulation to boot. 

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler's non-campaign lasted 118 days.

The Waynesville Democrat kicked off his non-run for the seat held by Republican Sen. Richard Burr in an interview with the Hendersonville Times-News on Nov. 13 and ended it with a brief statement yesterday.

At no point did he ever say he was actually in the race, but Shuler got some good coverage nonetheless.

A few highlights: Shuler was praised in an editorial, held a fundraiser with Bill Clinton that raised six figures, attended Gov. Beverly Perdue's inaugural ball, was polled twice against Burr, drew attention (and the ire of Democratic leaders) for criticizing the stimulus package, became a whip for the Blue Dog Coalition and became a target for liberals on BlueNC.

All in all, that's pretty good coverage for the second-newest member of the state's Congressional delegation. It beats the attention paid to Democratic Rep. Brad Miller during his 63-day non-campaign against Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2007.

Previously: Why the "Sophomore Strivers" usually don't run. 

Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's "Godless Americans" ad was nothing more than a last-minute Hail Mary pass for a losing campaign.

That's according to Dole's campaign manager, Marty Ryall, in an article he wrote for the March edition of Politics magazine.

Dole, the GOP incumbent, ran the ad just before the Nov. 6 election against Democratic challenger Kay Hagan. It pointed out that Hagan attended a Boston fundraiser at the home of a well-known, politically active atheist. The ad ended with Hagan's photograph and a woman's voiceover saying "There is no God."

That voice belonged not to Hagan but to the executive director of the Godless Americans political action committee, speaking during a television appearance.

Looking back, Ryall said, he shouldn't have used the voiceover.

"It gave (Hagan) another avenue to counter-attack (the ad)," Ryall wrote.

He continues later: "In the end, the "Godless" ad had little impact on the election."

More after the jump.

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National Democrats are already targeting U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.

The Winston-Salem Republican is not up for re-election until 2010, but Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Bob Menendez has already said it will be one of nine overall targets next year.

Support from the DSCC last year helped Sen. Kay Hagan significantly, even after more high-profile Democrats passed on the race. Advance notice of similar support could spur others to seriously consider the race this time.

Without naming names, Menendez told the D.C.-based Hotline that he believed the party "will have a great candidate in to challenge him."

Dome's two cents: Predicting which Senate races will be competitive two years ahead of time is kind of like predicting whether it will be raining at 10:37 a.m. next Tuesday.

Hat Tip: Senate Guru