Democrats in North Carolina have long controlled state politics, holding power in Raleigh with leaders whose social values matched those of the conservative South. But they struggled at the same time to win federal races, often weighed down by presidential candidates too liberal for the state’s voters.

But this past year’s sweep across the top of the ticket marked a striking shift in the types of candidates able to compete in North Carolina – if the circumstances are right.

Just six years after the departure of arch conservative GOP Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina voters – hundreds of thousands casting ballots for the first time – embraced Barack Obama. It turns out one of the party’s most liberal candidates ever managed to do what more than three decades of Democratic presidential hopefuls couldn’t: win the Old North State.

And in 2009, the state’s progressive Democrats plan to keep hard at work building the political coalition that moved North Carolina out of the GOP’s solid South.

“It really is a new era,” said Pete MacDowell, a Chapel Hill activist who served as president of the Progressive Democrats of North Carolina in the 2008 election cycle. “Increasingly, a progressive candidate can win in North Carolina.”

That new political trajectory faces its first test in 2009, when Democrats select a new party chairman and begin the process of picking a candidate to challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr the following year. State Treasurer Richard Moore, Attorney General Roy Cooper and Rep. Heath Shuler have all been mentioned as possible challengers, although they’re all keeping mum for now about a possible run.

“I don’t have any definite plans,” Moore said in a recent interview. “I’m not worried about my ability to make a living going forward, and I’ll deal with that when I’m not the treasurer anymore.”

Republicans, meanwhile, believe things can’t get any worse.

However, one of the party’s most reliable leaders, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, has said he will not seek an eighth term leading the state’s largest city. His decision came a month after he narrowly lost the race for governor this year.

Ferrell Blount, an adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign and a former chairman of the state Republican Party, said the nation’s financial collapse and Republican departure from the party’s core values doomed GOP candidates in 2008. Democrats also successfully tied the party’s candidates to the unpopular President George W. Bush, he said, something they won’t have the luxury of doing now that Democrats are fully in charge in Washington.

“This year was absolutely an anomaly,” Blount said. “I was somewhat amazed the election was as close as it was. We were swimming against a 10 or 12 knot current.” Blount argues voters galvanized only by Obama’s candidacy aren’t certain to become a reliable Democrats, and it’s something party activists are worried about.

Morgan Jackson, a Democratic consultant in Raleigh, points to Georgia. Democratic Jim Martin forced a runoff in his race for the U.S. Senate with a strong showing on Election Day, but GOP incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss won handily in the second round. It raised questions about the reliability of newly courted Democrats that backed Obama – most notably, the black voters who rushed to the polls in record numbers.

“The key will be to cement the people Obama has brought to the table as Democrats – not just Democrats in name but as in activists,” Jackson said. “It means keeping them engaged with the candidates, the platform and the ideals of the party,” he said. “That’s the key challenge of the next years, to harness all of this momentum and energy.”

Democrats trying to pull their party to the left weren’t thrilled with the candidacy of Sen.-elect Kay Hagan or Gov.-elect Bev Perdue; MacDowell, for example, considered both to be pro-business moderates. But he said their wins provide a transition toward a new political era – Hagan is a pro-abortion former state senator and Perdue as the state’s first female chief executive.

When both appear on the ballot next, they’ll have a voting record to defend. Hagan was often shy about her views during her Senate campaign, and she’ll be voting in Washington under the leadership of Democrats more liberal than she. Perdue served for eight years in the comfortable but generally uncontroversial job of lieutenant governor, and she has already acknowledged she’ll take some hits as she prepares a budget with large cuts amid a dour economy.

And new North Carolina Rep. Larry Kissell, who for two election cycles criticized former Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, will have to do more than just talk about change now that he’s in office. Jackson said much of the party’s future success will depend on how Obama governs.

“If Obama governs from the middle and if Obama governs as pragmatic and as deliberative as he campaigned, that’s a guy that could absolutely be in a position to come here and push Democratic candidates over the line,” Jackson said. “Obama is a guy who could come down here and be extremely popular – 2010 could buck the history and it could be a Democratic year again.”