Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory today became the second gubernatorial candidate to prove he needs a spell-checker. Ryan at Dome posted a campaign masthead touting “McCrory for Governer.”   In case you've forgotten, Lt Gov Bev Perdue’s campaign made the same slip back in November. (All of which raises the question: shouldn’t you have to be able to spell the office to win it? But I digress.)

Anyway, returning to the McCrory campaign, the only thing worse than misspelling what you’re running for is insisting – twice! - that someone hacked into your system and misspelled it for you.  Seriously.

McCrory campaign chief Victoria Smith made that claim today, dismissing another staffer’s more credible mea culpa as a sign of inexperience.  (Or did she? Maybe someone hacked into the phone system, too.)  Ryan Beckwith and Ben Niolet have the whole saga here.  Hey, at least McCrory's not running on an education platform. 

New Numbers

By the way, Public Policy Polling has some new NC numbers from Survey USA tonight.  Obama and Huckabee are in the lead, and McCain gets big mo’, but Edwards looks to be bottoming out. In the Governor’s race, the new data narrows the margin between the Dems, but shows a widening rift in the GOP.  More here.

Ad wars

Perdue and Moore’s ads have been all over the airways for the last couple of days, just long for some of the “iffy” parts to start catching attention.  [I’d love to link you to the versions in rotation right now, but can’t locate either online…but if you watch network TV for a couple of hours, you’ll probably catch one.]

Moore: “Raising the minimum wage”

From the 30-second spot: 

"...Our respected state Treasurer.  Raising the minimum wage, protecting our retirement, and making college more affordable.”

The retirement claim, okay - he runs the pension fund.  But last I heard, the Treasurer had no power over either the minimum wage or the price of college.  Nor does the Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety, which was the post Moore held before becoming Treasurer.  And in his one term in the state House, he didn’t sponsor a successful bill on either of those issues.  

Now, it IS true that Moore announced his support for “raising the minimum wage…and making college more affordable.”  But so did a lot of other people – like the NAACP, the NC Justice Center, NC Policy Watch, etc – and none of them are taking credit for making it happen.  In fact, according to the Perdue campaign,

"As a candidate for Congress in 1994, Richard Moore opposed increasing the minimum wage which was then $4.25."  

As to the college question, Moore spokesman Jay Reiff says, "Because of the changes Moore made to the state’s unclaimed property program, it earns more money which is sent to the State Education Assistance Authority and helps 50,000 North Carolinians afford college each year."  Which is good, but not quite the same thing as "making college more affordable" for everyone.

Perdue: “Leading the fight for Smart Start”

That claim is near the beginning of Perdue's latest spot. But most folks who've been here for awhile would say that credit belongs to former Governor Jim Hunt. Not surprisingly, that's what Moore’s campaign said, too:  

“In 1995, Perdue’s hometown newspaper reported, “Jones County’s Smart Start program could be in jeopardy. Perdue said she has never been a strong supporter of the early childhood health and education program that Hunt championed in his first year in office. Smart Start cost $20 million to install 23 pilot programs in its first year, and is expected to grow to $500 million by 2000, she said. ‘I don’t think North Carolina can support that bureaucracy,’ she said.” [New Bern Sun Journal, 1-24-95]

Greensboro's Mark Binker has a more in-depth Perdue fact-check here.

And there’s plenty more...

...to talk about, albeit off the airwaves, in the Lt Gov race.  Like Republican State Senator Robert Pittenger’s claim to have been instrumental in enacting the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee - a committee created by a bill Pittenger didn’t even co-sponsor. 

Or Democratic State Senator Walter Dalton taking credit for the MySpace deal reached yesterday. From his press release:

 “For the past year, I’ve pushed these social networking sites to better protect our children from sexual predators who lurk anonymously online.  They brought out the special interests to try to fight us, but we weren’t deterred. "

As it turns out, a spokeswoman confirms, Dalton wasn’t actually involved in the year-long negotiations that led to the agreement. He did, however, run legislation related to it in the Senate last year.

Now for the real news that mattered today:  PPP’s tongue-in-cheek survey of the presidential field’s relative sexiness to likely SC voters.   Guess who won?  Edwards at 16%, which is about what he’s polling right now.  Mitt Romney tied with Hillary Clinton at 11% (who, let’s be fair, had a built-in handicap with straight male voters as the only woman in the race.)   Technically, though, the winner was no one – 41% of voters said none of them are sexy. 

Comments? Drop me a line.