North Carolina voters apparently would have difficulty picking their two senators in Washington out of a line-up.

That's the conclusion of the folks over at Public Policy Polling, who say that their polling in 14 different states indicates that North Carolina voters are less familiar with their senators than voters in other states.

Their basis for that is approval polling they have done of the U.S. senators in 14 states. In North Carolina, an average of 33 percent said they had "no opinion" when asked what they thought of how Sens. Richard Burr, a Winton-Salem Republican, and Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, were doing.

That figure was higher than in any of the other states where PPP has polled. Delaware was a close second, with 29 percent, followed by Colorado at 27 percent and New Jersey at 25 percent.

At the other end of the spectrum were West Virginia, where only 10 percent of voters said they had no opinion on their senators, and Virginia, at 12 percent.

Tom Jensen of PPP speculates that could be due to a number of factors, including that North Carolina doesn't keep its senators around for long and that North Carolina has become such a big state that it's hard for the senators to cover so much ground.

North Carolina has the sixth-lowest cigarette tax.

According to research by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an anti-smoking advocacy group, only five states have lower cigarette taxes: Florida, Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina.

North Carolina's 35-cents per-pack tax is far below the $1.15 median rate of Arkansas and Delaware. The lowest is 7-cents in South Carolina; the highest, $2.75 in New York.

Gov. Beverly Perdue has proposed raising the tax by $1 per pack. The new rate of $1.35 would tie Pennsylvania for 20th highest rate. 

It would also be the highest among neighboring states of Georgia (37 cents), Virginia (30 cents), South Carolina and Tennessee (62 cents).

The tax rates are as of April 1 of this year. The federal cigarette tax will increase to $1.01 on April 31. In addition, a few cities and counties charge local cigarette taxes.

Gov. Beverly Perdue pushed for a quick, broad stimulus package.

In a speech before the House Democratic caucus in Virginia today, Perdue argued for an economic stimulus bill to be passed with "as few restrictions as possible" and "without delay."

The meeting at Kingsmill Resort was not open to the press, but a copy of Perdue's prepared remarks was given to the media after the event. 

"None of us governors are expecting Washington to send us a magic bullet and end this," she said, according to the remarks. "But we are extremely hopeful for a new strong partnership between Congress and the states."

Perdue also noted that the N.C. Department of Transportation has identified $5 billion in "shovel-ready" projects, and another $1.5 billion in wastewater and clean-water projects are also ready to go.

In addition, she asked for additional federal help for Medicaid, saying it would free up state money for other parts of the budget. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue is making her case for the stimulus.

Perdue flew to Williamsburg, Va., this morning on a state plane to participate in a panel of governors urging Congress to pass an economic stimulus package.

She has said that spending on infrastructure and other economic development projects will help reduce North Carolina's high unemployment rate.

Also attending are New York Gov. David Paterson, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, along with members of the U.S. House Democratic caucus.

The meeting at the Kingsmill Resort is closed to the press, although Perdue and others will speak afterward. 

A Florida professor has weighed in on the definition of the South.

In a piece in the St. Petersburg Times Sunday, English professor Diane Roberts quotes Chris Kromm, director of the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, on the litany of reasons people give for removing North Carolina from the South:

"Every time a Southern state starts voting for Democrats, people say, 'Oh, that's not the real South,' " says Kromm. When Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, some "wanted to magically declare them somehow un-Southern."

The "Southern" parts of the South seem to be shrinking, at least to those who define "Southern" as white right-wingers who say "y'all." ...

North Carolina isn't Southern because it's attracting Midwestern retirees, Latinos and tech types. Plus, there's the Research Triangle, the constellation of great universities, labs and libraries so despised by Sen. Jesse Helms. Real Southerners don't cotton to book learning.

Roberts argues that North Carolina, Virginia and Florida are not aberrations, but the beginning of the "New South we've been promising ourselves since 1865."

Previously: Whistling Past North Carolina, parts 1, 2 and 3

The federal government made its first move Thursday toward drilling off Virginia.

The U.S. Department of the Interior issued a call for public comments as it begins considering the environmental effects of offshore drilling.

That would be the first step toward opening 2.9 million acres of waters to leasing in 2011.

The move will be closely followed in North Carolina, where the Outer Banks is just southwest of the area being considered.

"In some ways, North Carolina is the next place after Virginia that ... the federal government would like to go," said Michael Gravitz of Environment America, a coalition of state environmental organizations. "Virginia is the first chink in the Atlantic Coast armor."

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr supports offshore drilling, and Sen.-elect Kay Hagan has backed a compromise bill that would have allowed for some drilling. Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue has said she will appoint a panel of experts to look into the issue. (N&O)

Ferrel Guillory says the "Seaboard South" is different.

The head of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill says that Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida have moved away from the rest of the South in recent years.

He said the increased focus on high-tech jobs in Research Triangle Park and banking in Charlotte as well as the strengthening of the state's university system has led to a demographic shift that made the state more open to Democrat Barack Obama.

"Economically and demographically, the South has split in two," he said. "The 'Seaboard South' states — with the exception of South Carolina — have been growing robustly. They have moved more speedily into the newer economy and their metropolitan areas are burgeoning."

He said Obama found a pool of "persuadable voters" in the metro suburbs of North Carolina.

"Obama campaigned on a theme of change, but it was the change that was already here that put him over the top," he said.

Guillory made a similar argument in the biannual "State of the South" report in 2007.

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.

Has North Carolina seceded from the Confederacy?

The aftermath of last week's historic presidential election has led many national commentators to speculate that North Carolina and Virginia are no longer part of "the South."

The latest example comes from the New York Times today, which not-so subtly credits all those former New Yorkers moving to places like Cary for Barack Obama's wins here.

Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the "suburban South," notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee. 

A similar urge to separate Tar Heels from their Confederate brethren has long been at work in the move to redefine the South Atlantic states (give or take a few neighbors) as "the Southeast."

Dome has always thought of the region as "the Shallow South" — the opposite end of the pool from the Deep South.

Barack Obama moved some of his Georgia staff to North Carolina.

According to an article in Politico today, this state still remains among the second tier where the Democratic presidential candidate hopes to remain competitive, although he has given up on Georgia.

Earlier in the summer, the Obama campaign named 18 battleground states as prime advertising targets.

Obama recently stopped running ads in Georgia, a state the campaign originally identified as a potential battleground. Some Georgia field staff was moved into North Carolina, said Plouffe. 

The campaign is still more focused on nearby Virginia than North Carolina.