Clinton campaign ended in N.C.

Very interesting commentary. It contains the following portion of a sentence:

"... extraordinarily high turnout brought on by the excitement of the historic presidential race ..."

Wait a minute? Which came first, the endorsement of Obama by Moore and Perdue, or the excitement of an "historic presidential race?"

The answer to that question is important to your conclusion.

I think you've got it backwards. I don't think Obama was helped by endorsements from two people most voters, let's be frank, didn't know that much about. Those voters HAD heard of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

Those endorsements were efforts by gubernatorial candidates to gather some of the light shining on the presidential candidate, not the other way around. Perdue and Moore were trying to help themselves; they knew which way the wind was blowing.

The greatest proof of this is in the vote totals -- 1,494,998 voted in the Democratic gubernatorial primary; 1,580,726 voted in the Democratic presidential preference primary.

It's clear the presidential race was driving turnout. Moore and Perdue did not deliver for Obama; it was the other way around.

Yes, the state has not gone Republican for president since the last time bell-bottoms on women and long hair on men were popular. But also true, is that North Carolina is not the same as it was then. Millions more people, younger, more urban, more educated.

These trends, as you correctly point out, have generally made Republicans more competitive, breaking the Democratic Party's long dominance. A strong argument could be made that that is a good thing.

But, as you also point out, there is tremendous attention in N.C. on an "historic presidential race." That attention raises at least the serious possibility that the outcome is not as predictable as a recitation of recent history would make it seem.

Read your prospectus -- past performance is no guarantee that events in the future will come out the same.

You know, this hyping of North Carolina's role in the 2008 presidential campaign has to be one of the bigger slices of political journalism baloney to be offered to readers and viewers throughout this entire campaign. Add a pickle on the side and folks will buy it especially now that Mount Olive has won a national baseball title. And it's yet another case in which the national press just does not understand the peculiarities of certain regional and state political trends.

What's the biggest force in statewide Democratic Party primary campaigns at any given time in the state of North Carolina? Is it:

A. The next primary for President?

B. The next U.S. Senate primary?

C. The current political organization of an incumbent Democratic governor not seeking re-election?

D. None of the above?

That's right, class, the answer is none of the above. This is because the strongest force in statewide Democratic Party politics at any given time is the next Democratic primary for the office of governor.

The governor's race is the only one of the "big three" that the Democratic Party has been able to win in general elections consistently since 1972 and in fact, the only Republicans to win that race since Daniel Russell at the end of the 19th Century have been Jim Holshouser (1972) and Jim Martin (1984, 1988). Those wide-grinning Davidson alumni, Holshouser and Martin, are the only two Republicans who have won governor's races in the entire 20th Century in North Carolina and thus far into the 21st.

Meanwhile, after the Republicans won the presidential race in 1968 and again in 1972, also electing the state's first 20th Century Republican to the U.S. Senate that same year, the Democratic Party has won the presidential contest in the Old North State only in 1976 with Jimmy Carter's first campaign and in U.S. Senate races, only in 1974 (Robert Morgan), 1986 (Terry Sanford) and 1998 (John Edwards).

This means that Republicans won nine Senate races (1972, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1990, 1992, 1996, 2002 and 2004) while the Democrats were able to win only a third as many--three--during the same period.

And in presidential contests in North Carolina since 1968, the Republicans have won nine elections out of ten!

The Democrats' strength in gubernatorial campaigns as compared to races for President and U.S. senator in the last third of a century is so obvious, even the Charlotte Observer in the Queen City has figured out that Raleigh is still the kingmaker as far as statewide N.C. politics is concerned.

So what did this mean in terms of a given North Carolina Democratic primary such as the one we just had in May? It meant that the greatest concentration of Democratic Party hierarchy energy, effort and activity in this primary as in just about every other party primary through the years was in the race for governor.

In the 2008 Democratic primary for governor, both Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and N.C. Treasurer Richard Moore were running statewide as supporters of the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama. The Perdue campaign boldly proclaimed in effect that while the country may not be ready for a woman president, North Carolina would do just fine with a woman governor. The Obama endorsements by both Perdue and Moore thus translated into an overwhelming advantage for the Obama campaign in the N.C. presidential primary especially in the six major urban counties comprising the Triangle, Triad and Charlotte areas: Wake, Durham, Orange, Guilford, Forsyth and Mecklenburg.

You can add up the vote margins in those six counties and come very close to the 220,000-plus vote advantage which emerged as the statewide margin of victory for Sen. Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton. The other 94 counties in the state broke just about even for the two presidential hopefuls, with Sen. Clinton, helped considerably by the small town campaigning of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, carrying a majority of those counties, 55 to 39, which is definitely a competitive showing in those other regions of the state.

But in the Triangle, the Triad and Charlotte, with both Democratic gubernatorial campaign teams running under the Obama banner and an extraordinarily high turnout brought on by the excitement of the historic presidential race, the full organizational prowess of the Perdue and Moore campaigns for governor brought in substantial vote margins for Obama in those half a dozen major urban counties.

The national press just looks at North Carolina and says, well, they're going to vote for President, U.S. Senate and governor, but what really counts as far as the N.C. Democratic Party is concerned is who is going to win that primary for governor because that person's statewide organization will be in the pole position for the general election campaign in the Tar Heel State.

In the 1984 campaign for governor, it was difficult for the eventual party gubernatorial nominee, Rufus Edmisten, to enjoy this advantage because the strong statewide organization of outgoing Gov. Hunt that year was still in "prime running condition" by virtue of the candidacy of Jim Hunt for the U.S. Senate in an all-out effort to unseat Sen. Jesse Helms, so that year, the governor's campaign had to follow a couple of laps behind the Senate campaign of the outgoing governor, whereas normally, as in this recent 2008 Democratic primary, the outgoing governor's organization (Mike Easley) could not match the velocity of the combined gubernatorial campaigns of Perdue and Moore. People know that Gov. Easley can drive a race car, but he needed more than an extra set of spark plugs to boost Sen. Clinton past that convergence of pro-Obama challengers out on the gubernatorial track.

Again, all this is due to the fact that it is the quest for the governorship which takes priority among the Democratic Party's best organizers in North Carolina every four years because that is the one office they hope and expect to control as the party's natural "home field" in statewide politics.

So to blame Hillary Clinton's campaign for a loss in North Carolina under the unusual circumstances of both Democratic campaigns for governor running in favor of Obama and against Clinton is like blaming fisherman on the coast for the changing high and low tides of the ocean.

And as for Indiana, which voted the same day as North Carolina, the national press was again off the mark in suggesting that Sen. Clinton had to have a "decisive victory" in the Hoosier state in order to be considered the true victor when in fact a win of any margin whatsoever in the Indiana primary was a considerable accomplishment for a campaign competing against Sen. Obama, whose home state of Illinois is right next door.

So it is wrong to conclude that North Carolina and Indiana were the defining factors in the 2008 Democratic campaign for President when in fact, the Obama campaign won its national delegate victory in the rare occurrence of the South and the Northwest prevailing over the traditional national party geographic bases of the Northeast and the Southwest. And you have to give a lot of the credit for Obama's great showing in many of the Western states to Sen. Ted Kennedy, who helped "win the West" for Sen. John F. Kennedy's successful primary and general election campaigns in 1960.

In football, the Lions may be in Detroit, but in 2008 it was that Democratic lion from Boston who probably made the difference in the ultimate outcome of this nomination race because Hillary Clinton had a fantastic run through the major industrials states of the Northeast, the pivotal state of Ohio, the Republican stronghold of Texas, and in vote-rich California. So you can't put all that on North Carolina or even North Carolina and Indiana together. Tar Heels and Hoosiers may decide a lot of national basketball championships, but in the 2008 presidential campaign, they were just voting their preferences in a highly competitive political race.

You would think that with all their staffing resources, the national press, both newspapers and television networks, could figure out "a few simple rules" for understanding the defining characteristics of statewide Democratic politics in North Carolina. But given the chance, they'll try to put North Carolina into the "expectations game" the way it is played in New Jersey or Minnesota. Add to that the perennial squeamishness of supposedly liberal North Carolina newspaper editorial pages at the thought of running columns extolling the accomplishments of women in national politics, and for Clinton supporters, the chances of winning a primary in this region of the country were better in states like Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, where hardly anyone gives a second thought to the question of the viability of women as national leaders in politics and business.

Katie Couric of CBS, being from Virginia, knows a little about her neighbors from "Down Home in North Carolina," but between now and the fall campaign, the other Notables in the Washington and New York news media should get some further schooling or at least tune into WRAL's "Tar Heel Traveler" every now and then for some back roads tips on life in "The Vale of Humility Between Two Mountains of Conceit."

David McKnight