A professor of Southern studies says North Carolina did not change overnight.

Ted Ownby of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi says that Tar Heels have long been more liberal than other Southerners.

"Despite Jesse Helms' popularity, there's always been a pretty strong range of liberal and progressive elements in North Carolina politics," he said, citing Terry Sanford, among others. "Since the 1930s, North Carolina's liberal politicians have tended to be to the left of other liberal politicians in the South, though sometimes they have to moderate their liberal tendencies."

Ownby said that tradition belies recent attempts to credit Barack Obama's win here and in Virginia mainly to an influx of liberal Northeasterners.

He argued that while that was a factor, so was the state's existing political climate, dissatisfaction with President Bush's policies, a significant black population and intensive courting by the Obama campaign and local Democrats.

"It would be shortchanging those efforts to talk about the win entirely in terms of newcomers," he said.

Norris Tolson is an insider's insider.

One of three leaders of Governor-elect Beverly Perdue's transition team, Tolson is a former state secretary of Commerce, Transportation and Revenue and the current head of the N.C. Biotechnology Center.

He has worked for Govs. Jim Hunt and Mike Easley, served in the state House and briefly ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination himself in 1999.

As N&O columnist Rob Christensen wrote during that campaign, Tolson is also a member of the "N.C. State University mafia" — a group of powerful state politicians who cut their teeth on 4-H and Future Farmers of America organizing in college.

"The NCSU mafia has so dominated the Democratic Party that there has not been a governor with an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since Sanford was elected nearly 40 years ago," he wrote.

(That is no longer true. Easley graduated from UNC in 1972.) 

Tolson's appointment is partly an indication of his status as one of Raleigh's "wise men." But it could also be a sign that Perdue is taking advice from Tolson's old friend, Hunt. 

The full column after the jump.

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Negative nicknames aren't new in North Carolina.

During the 1960 Democratic primary for governor, Terry Sanford was tarred with three nicknames by his political opponents: Terrible Tax Terry, High Tax Terry and Tall Talking Terry, according to Rob Christensen's recent book "The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics."

He won the primary and the governorship anyway.

But when he was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1992, Sanford was given yet another nickname for the fact that he voted three different ways on a federal highway bill in 1987: Turnaround Terry.

He lost that election to Republican Lauch Faircloth.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue is airing a new ad touting her record in office.

What it says: The ad shows images of Perdue from her early life and her political career. A narrator says, "Bev Perdue. Neither of her parents finished high school, yet she became a teacher and earned a Ph.D. She's spent a lifetime fighting for the middle class — Smart Start for our kids, cutting the sales tax on food, saving our military bases from closure. In these tough times, she'll lead the way — a higher minimum wage, property tax relief for seniors, creating the jobs of the future. Bev Perdue, a governor for us."

The background: Perdue taught in public schools in Georgia and Florida from 1970 to 1974. She received a doctorate in education administration in March 1976 from the University of Florida.

Gov. Jim Hunt and the legislature created Smart Start, a statewide pre-school program, in 1993 when Perdue was in her second term in the state Senate. That year, Hunt appointed her as one of 16 initial members of a board to oversee Smart Start.

Then-Gov. Terry Sanford helped establish a statewide sales tax on food in 1961 to pay higher teacher salaries. It was supposed to be temporary, but it lasted almost four decades. Lawmakers cut it from 4 percent to 3 percent in 1996 and eliminated it two years later.

Perdue was co-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee when lawmakers eliminated the tax. She voted in favor of doing so, but was not a champion of the cause. An unusual coalition of liberal lawmakers and anti-tax Republicans pushed for eliminating the tax, while the Senate’s leadership was less enthusiastic.

"I have long believed it is the wrong item to tax and there should be a total elimination," Perdue told The Charlotte Observer in August 1997. But, she added, "You have to look at fiscal responsibility. The priority, I believe, in addition to cutting the food tax, is to provide adequate funding for teachers and to clean up the environment."

Gov. Mike Easley appointed Perdue, as lieutenant governor, to lead the state's efforts to protect North Carolina’s military bases from closure by the U.S. Department of Defense. The multi-year process is designed to be insulated from political pressure, and it involved work from a large number of people, including the state's congressional delegation.

Perdue has called for increasing the minimum wage in North Carolina by one dollar to $8.25, from the minimum of $7.25 an hour set to take effect in July 2009.

She also says she favors expanding the state’s homestead exemption and freezing the property tax revaluations for seniors who make less than $50,000 and have lived in their homes for at least 20 years.

Is the ad accurate? Yes, though there is no way to quantify how much Perdue helped the state's military bases.

— David Ingram

NEW BERN – The old Democratic war horse, Jim Hunt, had them on their feet cheering tonight.

"This year in North Carolina, if we work hard, we are going to carry the state for Beverly Perdue and carry the state for Barack Obama,” shouted Hunt, a former four-term Democratic governor.

The Sanford-Hunt Dinner finished off the state Democratic Convention Saturday. Some 1,300 Democrats attended the convention, the most in recent memory, reports Rob Christensen.

The large turnout was driven by the excitement surrounding the possibility of electing North Carolina's first woman governor and the first African-American president.

Besides adopting a platform, passing resolutions and electing delegates to the national convention in Denver in August, the Democrats heard from Perdue and from Kay Hagan, their Senate nominee.

At the dinner, former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus gave a pep talk as an Obama surrogate.

The Democrats watched a video in which party leaders gave a tribute to Hunt and Terry Sanford, a former governor and senator. But the subtext of the video was that the Democratic Party needs to pull together after a hard-fought primary.

Hunt told the crowd that both he and his wife, Carolyn, were out knocking on doors in their Wilson County neighborhood, encouraging people to register.

“If we can do it,” Hunt said, “you can do it.”

The N.C. Democratic Party is planning its third Sanford-Hunt Dinner.

The annual fundraiser, which honors former Govs. Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford, will be held Saturday, June 21 at the Riverfront Convention Center in New Bern.

Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek said he has high hopes for the event, hoping to sell out the 800-seat venue, in part because of the timing of the state convention, which will bring 1,500 delegates to New Bern the same day.

"Hopefully, a lot of those people still stay around and go to the dinner," he said.

Tickets are $30 a person.

Note: A print version of this story gave the wrong day.

The first boos of the night came for Mike Easley.

As Hillary Clinton was going through her list of thank-yous at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, she mentioned former party chairwoman Barbara Allen, party chairman Jerry Meek and the state's Congressional and legislative Democrats.

But when she named Easley — and specifically his endorsement of her — some in the crowd began to boo.

It was not clear exactly why they were booing, but based on calls to the governor's office, some were upset that he took a stand in the contentious race.

Clinton then praised Easley's wife, Mary, and former governors Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt.

By then, the crowd settled down.

Later, she praised John Edwards and his focus on ending poverty, promising to appoint a Cabinet-level officer to work on the issue.

Edwards has not endorsed in the presidential race, but his wife, Elizabeth, has praised Clinton's health care proposal.

She also name-checked former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, a native North Carolinian who has endorsed her. 

Hillary Clinton's campaign released the names of its North Carolina steering committee, ranging from poet Maya Angelou to Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The list was announced at a teleconference held by Tom Hendrickson, a former state Democratic chariman; former Ambassador Jeanette Hyde, and the Rev. Brenda Stevenson of Charlotte.

"I know Hillary has the diplomatic skills," said Hyde, who was appointed ambassador to Barbados by President Clinton. "She has the knowledge. She has traveled around the world. I beleive she can help mend some of the problems we have in the world."

The endorsements include many people long associated with the moderate, pro-business wing of the state Democratic Party and with Govs. Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford.

Clarification: Hunt is not on the steering committee, but some of his associates are.

More names after the jump.

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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.

Sen. Fred Smith shouldn't expect money from Bob Timberlake.

Although the famed North Carolina painter once rented Smith's ancestral home along the Yadkin River, he has not given any money to gubernatorial candidates in the past 15 years.

Except for a $500 donation to Tom Gilmore, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for agriculture commissioner in 2004, Timberlake has only given in federal races, according to campaign finance records.

The artist and furniture designer gave to both Republicans — U.S. House candidate Jay Helvey, Sen. Elizabeth Dole and her husband Bob's presidential bids — and Democrats — U.S. House candidate Martin Lancaster, Senate candidate Terry Sanford and Senate candidate Erskine Bowles' 2004 campaign.

By far, he's given the most to Dole, a total of $5,000 to her presidential and Senate campaigns and her Leadership Circle PAC. In all, he's given $1,500 to other Republicans, $1,000 to the Republican National Committee in 1996 and $1,950 to Democrats.