Paul Kirk, who was named Thursday as the late Ted Kennedy's replacement in the U.S. Senate, once defeated North Carolina's Terry Sanford in the race for Democratic National Committee chairman.

Kirk, a former Kennedy aide, was the frontrunner to become party chairman in 1985, when Sanford entered the race, reports Rob Christensen.

At the time, Sanford was nearing the end of his tenure as president of Duke University. But he was political veteran, having served as North Carolina governor (1961-65) and having run for president in 1972 and 1976.

Sanford tried to put together a coalition of Southern and western Democratic party chairs.

"A great many people in the South feel it is time for the Southern Democratic Party to exert greater national leadership," Sanford said. "The Democratic party cannot do without a strong base in the South."

More after the jump.

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Ed Turlington, a Raleigh lawyer long plugged into state and national Democratic politics, has been elected to the Democratic National Committee.

He was one of 75 at-large delegates nominated by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the party chairman, and elected by the DNC at its meeting last weekend in Austin, Rob Christensen reports.

Also elected from North Carolina was Joyce Brayboy, the former chief of staff to Congressman Mel Watt of Charlotte.

Turlington was in some pretty good company having been chosen along with such major party figures as Elaine Kamarck, Maria Echaveste, Alexis Herman, Dennis Archer, Harold Ickes, Gerald McEntee, Anna Burger, John Sweeney, and Don Fowler.

Turlington was general chairman of John Edwards 2004 presidential campaign and was a top aide to Sen. Bill Bradley's 2000 campaign, as well being closely associated with such Tar Heel figures as former Gov. Jim Hunt and Sen. Terry Sanford.

He was apppointed to the DNC's Resolutions Committee. Appointed co-chair of the DNC's Credentials Committee was Everett Ward of Raleigh, a former executive director of the Democratic Party.

The N.C. Democratic Party is adding former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye to its pantheon of political heroes.

The party is renaming its newest fundraising dinner, the Sanford-Hunt Dinner, the Sanford-Hunt-Frye Dinner, reports Rob Christensen.

The dinner, named after former govenrors Terry Sanford (1961-65) and Jim Hunt (1977-85, 1993-2001), was started several years ago and is held in conjunction with party meetings.

Frye, of Greensboro, was the first African-American state legislator elected in North Carolina in the 20th century and the state's first black chief justice.

The Democrats will hold its first Sanford-Hunt-Frye Dinner on Aug. 29 in at the Hilton Charlotte University Place in connection with a meeting of the state Democratic Executive Committee meeting.

The decision to add Frye’s name comes a year after there was some controversy concerning the party’s traditional Vance-Aycock fundraising dinner in Asheville.

Some Democrats thought it was inappropriate to continue to honor former Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock (1901-1905) because of his role in the white supremacist campaigns at the turn of the last century.

North Carolina voters say that Jesse Helms is their favorite Senator. John Edwards, whose reputation has been better, was the least popular, according to a poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.

PPP asked more than 750 state residents to rate the state's last seven U.S. Senators. When asked for their favorite, 35 percent named Helms, the only Senator to be re-elected in more than 40 years. Edwards was picked by 19 percent and Terry Sanford by 16 percent.

But when the poll asked for which Senator voters had the least favorable opinion of, 41 percent named Edwards, a Democrat. Helms, a Republican, was named by 29 percent. Predictably, Helms was less popular with voters who identified as liberal or Democrats. 

Sanford, a Democrat, had the lowest negative rating.

"You could make an argument from the overall numbers that Sanford is actually the most positively remembered of this group," said PPP's Tom Jensen.

Current Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan were near the bottom of both questions. Burr was the favorite of 4 percent and the least favorite of 3 percent. Hagan was the favorite of 9 percent and the least favorite of 7 percent. 

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. 

Phillip Fisher says the Order of the Long Leaf Pine has changed.

The executive director of the N.C. Real Estate Commission, who has compiled an exhaustive list of some 13,618 awards, told Dome that it originally was given to visitors, not North Carolinians.

"It seemed to be the award was commonly given to people who were visiting the state for some reason," he said. "It might be a celebrity. It might be people who were coming to attend a convention here. It was given to promote goodwill."

Since recipients were up to the discretion of the governor, it shifted. Later governors began giving it more to Tar Heels who had achieved some special accomplishment. In recent years, it has also been given to state workers with more than 30 years of service.

The first award Fisher could find was George Ringgold on June 15, 1965, under the administration of Gov. Dan Moore. But he said early records are spotty, so he could not rule out earlier awards.

Raleigh resident John Hagler says he received the award from Gov. Terry Sanford on Feb. 27, 1964.

John Hagler believes he was the first American to receive the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

The 77-year-old Raleigh resident says he received the award from then-Gov. Terry Sanford in February of 1964 in the old Senate chambers of the Capitol.

But he says he was not the first to be inducted. He believes that honor goes to several Laotian and Vietnamese officers who were undergoing specialized training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.

He contacted Dome after learning that former Gov. Mike Easley gave out more than 4,000 awards, including one to his in-laws. 

"I'm certain that the award was then not what it later was supposed to signify and become," he wrote in an e-mail to Dome. "And I'm terribly sorry that during the administration of Governor Easley it obviously became something like a prize out of a Cracker Jack box which significantly lowered it's value and meaning."

Hagler, who later worked at the N.C. Office of Archives and History, said he never could find definitive information about how and when the award was created.

D.G. Martin has a few reasons why Roy Cooper may not run.

The retired university administrator, who ran in the Democratic Senate primary in 1998, outlined a few of the obvious reasons the attorney general would run for Senate in a column today: A strong profile, a fighting chance and ambition.

But he also gave a few reasons Cooper might decide against it:

Cooper likes his current work as Attorney General. He is in charge of his office and its considerable resources. He knows that U.S. Senators, for all their prestige and influence, have a hard time getting big things done. Terry Sanford, for instance, found his Senate service to be a frustrating experience for a "man of action."

He also noted that Cooper would have to spend a lot of time fundraising and would have to spent time away from his three daughters.

"The prospect of leaving them for substantial times while he goes back and forth to Washington could clinch a decision not to run," he writes.

Martin's son, Grier, was recruited to run for U.S. Senate in 2007, but decided against it becaues of family issues.

Former Gov. Bob Scott, who will be buried Tuesday, once told the story of the last funeral of a past North Carolina governor — that of Terry Sanford at Duke University in 1998.

Scott (1969-73) said that another member of the ex governor's club, Jim Martin (1985-93) turned to Scott and said: "You're next."

Martin was apparently trying to be funny, but it was also a recognition that after Sanford passed away, Scott was the oldest ex-governor, Rob Christensen reports.

But Scott seemed to think the comment was more cheeky than funny.

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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