Beverly Perdue has taken the oath of office and is North Carolina’s first female governor.
     
Perdue was the last of 10 Council of State members to be sworn in at Saturday’s inauguration ceremony in front of the Archives and History Building in Raleigh.
     
The New Bern Democrat has served the last eight years as lieutenant governor and takes the reins of state government from Mike Easley. Perdue rose up the political ranks in the Legislature, where she served as a top budget writer.
    
Perdue, the daughter of a coal-miner who rose through the good ol’-boy political ranks to serve as a powerful state Senate budget-writer and two-term lieutenant governor, was sworn in Saturday as North Carolina’s first female governor.
     
Perdue recited the oath of office administered by another trailblazer – Chief Justice Sarah Parker – the first woman to serve in her post – before thousands at the inauguration ceremony in downtown Raleigh.
     
As the successor to outgoing two-term Gov. Mike Easley, who also watched on from in front of the state Archives and History Building, Perdue referred only indirectly in her speech to her historic achievement and focused on North Carolina’s current fiscal crisis.
     
“Today a new administration begins, one that is different from any other. My presence before you represents a departure from our past,” Perdue said in her prepared remarks. “It is a new beginning.”
     
Perdue, the 100th person to become North Carolina’s chief executive going back to Colonial times, was the last of 10 Council of State members to be sworn in Saturday.
     
Four on the Council are newcomers to the exclusive panel of statewide elected officials. Two of them are women – giving females a majority on the Council for the first time.
     
The traditional inaugural parade – the first down historic Fayetteville Street since it was reopened to traffic – and open house at the Executive Mansion were to follow the ceremony.
     
Perdue pledged not to back off the state’s commitment to education despite the state’s anemic revenues, pledging to create more high-tech jobs and a green economy.
     
North Carolina’s current budget shortfall has grown to a half-billion dollars since Perdue edged Republican nominee Pat McCrory in November’s election. The gap between current revenues and expected expenditures could reached $3 billion in the coming fiscal year.
     
“Now it is time for us in the Old North state to confront new challenges,” she said. “We are in the midst of a global economic crisis. People are worried about losing their jobs, paying their mortgage, and planning for their future.”
     
In keeping with her campaign platform, Perdue said she would create a more transparent, leaner state government “that works for them, not against them.”
     
“Now is not the time for us to hunker down. We cannot ‘just’ cut back. And, we will not lower expectations,” she said.
     
Perdue, who turns 62 next week, was born in Grundy, Va. Her father began as a coal-miner but ended up becoming a wealthy mine owner.
     
She worked as a public school teacher in other states before moving to North Carolina in the 1970s and worked in the health care field after receiving a doctorate.
     
“This is the place where the daughter of parents who didn’t graduate from high school can take the oath of office as governor of the greatest state of the greatest nation in the world,” Perdue
said.
     
As the story from the campaign trail goes, Perdue got elected to the House in 1986 after the male Craven County political bosses sat her down and said a woman couldn’t get elected in the rural district.
     
She switched five years later to the Senate, where she learned under two political giants. Senate leader Marc Basnight gave her a coveted spot leading the Senate Appropriations Committee, while then-Gov. Jim Hunt made her a key part of his Smart Start early childhood initiative.
     
Elected the first female lieutenant governor in 2000, she expanded her political resume by leading the state’s efforts to protect military installations in the most recent round of federal base closings. She also was praised for leading a trust fund that spent money on reducing teenage smoking.