Kenneth Lewis has $184,000 through the end of September.

According to federal election records through the third quarter, Lewis has raised $264,816 in his bid to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate and challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr.

Notable contributors include several lawyers at Womble Carlyle, the firm where Lewis works. Other contributions came from Chapel Hill consultant Leonard Buck ($2,400), Durham investment advisor Isaac Green ($2,400) and Christopher Quinn ($2,400), president of Imprint Learning Solutions, a Durham marketing firm.

Dome will be writing posts about the campaign fundraising results for the third quarter as they become available. Burr's report for the quarter is not yet online.

A defense attorney who specializes in death penalty cases is taking the helm at the nonprofit that helps inmates challenge their convictions and looks into complaints of poor prison conditions.

The board of directors for N.C. Prisoner Legal Services hired Mary Pollard to lead the 28-year-old nonprofit. It is based in Raleigh and has a staff of 37, including 16 lawyers, Dan Kane reports.

Pollard may be best known for representing Alan Gell, a death row inmate, who was wrongfully convicted in 1998 of killing a retired truck driver in Bertie County.

She used a new law requiring access to prosecutorial files to find evidence proving that Gell could not have committed the murder. He was acquitted in a second trial.

A Wake Forest University law school graduate, Pollard worked nearly 10 years for the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm before joining the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation in 2002 as a staff lawyer.

Correction: An earlier version of this post included an inaccurate headline. 

One of North Carolina's most influential lobbying groups gave $23,250 to Sen. Kay Hagan's election campaign, according to new data out from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a law firm based in Winston-Salem, was the No. 4 donor to her campaign, behind the ideological organizations of Act Blue, EMILY's List and MoveOn.org, Barb Barrett reports.

Womble Carlyle has been slowly building its Washington presence in the past few years and has snagged lobbyists from the likes of Jesse Helms' and Brad Miller's offices. Last year, the law firm began representing Blackwater, the private security contractor based in Moyock.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Womble Carlyle's political action committee donated $1,000 to Hagan's campaign. Individuals affiliated with the law firm gave the rest.

Among Womble Carlyle's other clients are the Iredell Memorial Hospital, Friends of the North Carolina Museum, the N.C. Military Foundation, SAS Institute, the Specialty Tobacco Council and Wake and Mecklenburg counties.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan was sworn in Tuesday.

The Greensboro Democrat, one of the election season's unlikeliest candidates, became the second woman and the first Democrat since John Edwards to represent North Carolina.

Shortly before the ceremony, she joined fellow senators on the floor in her seat, next to freshman Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

With office assignments not yet made, she remains in a cramped space in the basement of the Dirksen building, where she held a reception for visitors.

Stopping by the office reception were North Carolina residents and lobbyists, including representatives from the Farm Bureau, the Sierra Club and Womble Carlyle, a Winston-Salem law firm.

Hagan has requested spots on the armed services and banking committees. (N&O) 

A former lobbyist's name has surfaced for Environment Secretary.

Alexander "Sandy" Sands III is reportedly under consideration by Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue for the Cabinet post heading the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

A lobbyist with Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, Sands has been ranked one of the top in the state by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research.

Others in the running include fellow Womble Carlyle lawyer John Garrou, state Sen. Dan Clodfelter, current secretary Bill Ross, corporate consultant Freda Porter, transportation board member Nina Szlosberg, Creedmoor Mayor Darryl Moss, parks director Lewis Ledford and former secretary Bill Holman.

Update: Greenbridge developer Tim Toben has also been mentioned.

The N.C. Military Foundation spent $49,000 on lobbying in 2007.

According to state and federal lobbying disclosure forms, the nonprofit started by Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue to promote defense spending in North Carolina spent about a quarter of its consulting budget on lobbyists in its first full year.

With a tight budget, the group relies heavily on outside consultants, including two lobbyists, Jimmy Broughton and Mark Harkins. Executive Director Will Austin also does some lobbying of state government, and lobbyist John Mashburn also did some work in 2007.

The lobbyists are a bipartisan group.

Broughton is a former chief of staff to Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, Mashburn was general counsel to Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, Harkins was chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, and Austin was an assistant to Democratic Sen. John Edwards.

Broughton, Harkins and Mashburn work for Raleigh firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

In 2007, the foundation reported spending $9,340 for Broughton and Austin to lobby the state government, and $40,000 for Broughton, Harkins and Mashburn to lobby the federal government.

That year, it spent about $212,000 on outside consultants.

Who is consulting for the N.C. Military Foundation?

The nonprofit started by Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue in 2006 to promote defense spending in North Carolina runs on a tight budget, relying on outside consultants.

Here's a quick sketch of their major consultants:

Retired Major Gen. Mike Davidson: Former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Gen. Hugh Shelton.

Hon. Mike Walker: Former acting Secretary of the Army in 1998 and Undersecretary of Defense.

Meg Ryan O'Donnell: President of Winning Strategies, a Raleigh communications firm.

Jimmy Broughton: Former chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and federal lobbyist with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

Mark Harkins: Former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Brad Miller and lobbyist with Womble Carlyle.

As lobbyists on military issues, Broughton and Harkins also work for Blackwater Worldwide, a controversial security contractor based in Moyock.

Executive Director Will Austin says he met with Blackwater in the past, but the foundation does not typically promote specific military contractors, instead focusing on the state's overall military friendliness.

"We don't have a relationship with them," he said.

North Carolina spent $1.5 million defending its military bases.

Starting in 2003, the legislature began appropriating money to lobby the federal Base Realignment and Closure commission that was looking at closing and streamlining military bases.

In the 2003-04 budget, the legislature set aside $2 million. It set aside the same amount in the 2004-05 budget, and another $1 million in 2005-06. All of the money came from the state's emergency and contingency fund and was approved by the Council of State.

In the end, however, only $1,535,800 was spent from 2003 to 2006.

Much of the money went to outside sources: $200,000 for the law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice for lobbying, $120,000 to International Capital Partners to develop a strategy and $170,000 to hire Leigh Harvey McNairy as a consultant.

In addition, $150,000 each to Craven, Onslow and Wayne counties for local efforts.

Blackwater has hired North Carolina's biggest and most powerful law firm as its new lobbyist in Washington.

Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice has signed up five lobbyists to work for the private security contractor, including Jimmy Broughton, former chief of staff for archconservative Sen. Jesse Helms; Mark Harkins, former chief of staff for Rep. Brad Miller, a liberal Democrat; and John Mashburn, former general counsel for Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

The lobbyists will have plenty of work: Blackwater relies on the U.S. government for more than 90 percent of its revenue. Blackwater is under investigation for the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilian dead. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been digging into Blackwater's finances and conduct in Iraq and elsewhere.

Womble's mascot is Winston the Bulldog. Hopefully Winston will get along better with Blackwater than the New York Times dog.

Crossposted from Joe Neff's Blackwater Current blog.

The UNC system has a new top lawyer: Laura Bernstein Luger, who has been an attorney with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice of Durham.

Luger was announced today as vice president for legal affairs and general counsel of the University of North Carolina system. She starts the job Feb. 1 at an annual salary of $225,000, Jane Stancill reports.

Luger succeeds Leslie Winner, who resigned from the post last month to become executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

UNC President Erskine Bowles made the announcement at a meeting of the UNC Board of Governors in Winston-Salem. He described Luger as a seasoned negotiator, mediator, and litigator.