One week ago, Joe Wurzelbacher was just another working man living in a modest ranch house in Toledo, Ohio, thinking about how to expand his plumbing business.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Democrats had every reason to believe they would extend their 16-year hold on the state’s Executive Mansion – and make history in the process by electing Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue as North Carolina’s first female governor.

Then Pat McCrory, the Republican mayor of Charlotte, made a late entry into the race and tapped into voters’ frustration with state government while presenting a fiscal message that was attractive to centrist newcomers in what is now the 10th most populous state.

As early voting began Thursday, polls showed the race as a toss-up.

“(McCrory) threw a monkey wrench into the governor’s race,” said longtime state Democratic operative Brad Crone. “There was a general assumption that Perdue had the upper hand … (but) it is truly up for grabs.”

Current Democratic Gov. Mike Easley is barred by term limits from seeking re-election, and Perdue has spent two decades building the political backing and slate of accomplishments needed for a run at the governor’s office. Excitement about Barack Obama’s bid to win the state’s electoral votes gave Democrats confidence in her candidacy.
 
After serving as chief budget writer in the state Senate and as a top aide to former Gov. Jim Hunt, the former geriatric consultant was elected the state’s first female lieutenant governor in 2000.

In a job with few inherent powers, the 61-year-old Perdue carved out her own place by running a trust fund that reduced teenage smoking and leading efforts to protect the state’s military installations during the latest round of base closings.
 
“You can have a lieutenant governor who just sits and waits, or quits, or you can have somebody who really wants to work and make a difference,” Perdue said.

Twenty-two states have had female governors, including eight currently in office, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Even in a state known for backing Republicans in presidential elections and sending conservatives like the late Sen. Jesse Helms to Congress, GOP governors are nearly as rare as female chief executives. The party has only occupied the governor’s office for 12 of the past 100 years.

As mayor of Charlotte, the state’s largest city and financial capital, McCrory fits the mold of the business-oriented Republicans who ran successful gubernatorial campaigns here in the 1970s and ’80s.
 
“We need to change the culture of state government to make it more responsive to the public, to the taxpayers and constituents as its customers,” he said in a debate Wednesday night in Charlotte.
 
McCrory has been popular with Democrats during 13 years as mayor, largely overlooking the hot-button issues of social conservatives, such as abortion and gay marriage, even as he took a hard line on immigration.

“You don’t get elected seven times by the margins he’s been elected if you aren’t very satisfied for the job that he’s done,” said Jack Hawke, McCrory’s chief campaign consultant.

McCrory, who turns 52 on Friday, is a former basketball referee and utility company middle-manager whose successful elections date back to his run for high school student body president on a campaign of opposing the school’s “pseudo-elite.”

These days, he talks about a “power elite” – Easley and Perdue included – who lead a “culture of inaccessibility” through secret budget meetings and the outgoing governor’s reclusive nature.

During the campaign, Perdue has distanced herself from Easley. Although the incumbent was popular for most of his two terms, he has been criticized recently for his handing of health care reform, and for expensive overseas travel billed as economic development.
 
The Republican Governors Association has labeled Perdue “Status Quo Bev” as part of a $3 million campaign blaming her for the state’s economic troubles.

Perdue also faced bad publicity after two Board of Transportation members who raised money for her campaign resigned from the panel – one over conflict-of-interest allegations and the other for seeking political donations from developers who got funding from the board.

The race may come down to which candidate can peel off the most votes from the other’s home base – the Charlotte metro area for McCrory and eastern North Carolina for Perdue.

Perdue may also benefit from heavy turnout for Obama, Crone said, particularly among black voters. That’s an unusual twist in North Carolina, where Democrats have traditionally distanced themselves from national tickets viewed as too liberal.
 
“It’s contrary to the political thought we’ve had over the last three decades,” he said.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Generation Engage, the largest group in the country working with youth on civic engagement, and Rock the Vote will co-host a U.S. Senate Candidate Forum featuring Senator Elizabeth Dole at Wake Technical Community College on Thursday.

Students, faculty, staff and local citizens will have a chance to hear from the Republican incumbent on the economy, college loans, health care, the war and more as Dole takes questions both from the moderator and audience members. The event is free and open to the public. 

The event is from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at the Student Services Lounge at Wake Technical Community College, 9101 Fayetteville St.

Generation Engage is a nonpartisan youth-civic-engagement initiative that connects young Americans to political leaders, to other civic organizations, and to meaningful debate about the future they will inherit.

The Wake County Republican party invites residents to cheer on Senator John McCain as he debates Barack Obama in the third and final Presidential debate. 

Join them at Raleighwood Cinema at 8:45 p.m. on Wednesday.  Go to www.WakeGOP.org  to order tickets.

Several other Republican watch parties will begin at 8:30 p.m. in the area:

Fayetteville
Fayetteville Victory Office
201 S. McPherson Church Road
Suite 204
Fayetteville, NC 28303
Contact: David Fernandes at 910-864-6584

Raleigh
Raleighwood Theatre
6609 Falls of Neuse Road
Raleigh, NC 27615

According to Barack Obama’s Web site, there are several area Democratic watch parties for tonight’s debate, including in Garner, Durham, Carrboro and Raleigh. See Full List

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Voters have their first and only chance to hear all the candidates for North Carolina governor talk about the issues together on television.

Democrat Beverly Perdue, Republican Pat McCrory and Libertarian Mike Munger are scheduled to participate in a debate Wednesday night in Charlotte. The debate is expected to air in other media markets.

Only two of the candidates have been on stage at any one time since the May primaries. Perdue and McCrory have participated together in four televised debates. McCrory and Munger met twice in forums at UNC-TV.

McCrory and Perdue have received the lion’s share of attention in the race. Munger is looking to get more than 2 percent of the vote so the Libertarians can remain on the ballot for four more years.

TOLEDO, Ohio – Republican John McCain is looking to turnaround his fortunes in the final presidential debate with Democrat Barack Obama, a forum focused on pocketbook issues and domestic policy Wednesday night.

Both candidates released proposals this week designed to boost the economy as financial institutions wobble and voters feel the pinch of a faltering economy. The debate is at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., with the candidates seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS.
 
With the economic crisis fueling public unease, Obama has built leads nationally and in key states as the turmoil has returned the nation’s focus to the policies of the unpopular President Bush. The burden now is on McCain to try to reverse his slide.
 
To that end, the Arizona senator took a new approach this week, positioning himself as a fighter for the American middle class and easing off his most direct attacks on Obama, an Illinois senator. McCain also took pains to separate himself from Bush.

“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change. … As president I intend to act, quickly and decisively,” McCain said Tuesday in battleground Pennsylvania.

He announced a $52.5 billion economic plan Tuesday that calls for halving the tax rate on capital gains and reducing the tax on withdrawals from retirement accounts, among other measures. A day earlier, Obama unveiled a $60 billion proposal that includes an extension of unemployment benefits, a 90-day freeze on home foreclosures, penalty-free withdrawals from retirement funds and a $3,000 tax credit for each new job.

Both candidates call for doing away with the tax on unemployment benefits.

McCain has suggested that he is likely to bring up Obama’s links to William Ayers, a radical during the Vietnam War era. Ayers was a member of the violent Weather Underground group but later became a university professor in Chicago and an expert on education. He and Obama both worked with some of the same charity foundations in Chicago, and Ayers hosted a reception for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois state Senate.
 
“We’re always prepared for him to be hyperaggressive in his attacks,” Obama campaign aide Robert Gibbs said of McCain. “I just think that doesn’t work in an environment where so many people are concerned about the issues in front of them, not scare tactics they don’t see as helping to pay the bills.”

He said Obama will try to project an aura of calm leadership during the debate, which Gibbs said he achieved in two previous debates with McCain.

Obama’s campaign also has taken some shots at McCain, increasingly labeling him “erratic” and “lurching” for solutions to the economic crisis. The words suggest unsteadiness by the four-term senator, who is 72.
 
Polls conducted after the earlier debates found that more people thought Obama had won both.

Meanwhile, McCain has had trouble finding support among swing voters. A recent Associated Press-GfK Poll showed independents about evenly divided between the two candidates, which is problematic for McCain because registered Democrats decisively outnumber registered Republicans this year.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Two candidates for governor disagreed on more issues in their second statewide televised debate Wednesday night but still were unified in chastising Democrat Beverly Perdue for declining again to participate.

“This was her one chance to show up and talk to the people of North Carolina,” Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the GOP nominee, said during the hour-long debate at the University of North Carolina Television studios. “Now is the time that we need to have a leader who shows up.”

McCrory and Libertarian Party nominee Mike Munger met two weeks ago at UNC-TV for a similar debate – in which they agreed on several issues – that Perdue also didn’t attend.

She has said she already agreed to five debates and has participated in four. But the UNC debates were the only ones guaranteed to be seen by a statewide audience.
 
Munger and McCrory gave contrasting views on how the state should respond to illegal immigrants and to the prolonged drought. Questions on same-sex marriage and economic development also revealed some differences.

Munger, a political science professor at Duke University and former Reagan administration official, poked verbally at McCrory for his efforts at using public tax dollars and incentives to get built “bright shiny objects” like an NBA arena, NASCAR Hall of Fame and light rail system.

NEW YORK – Late in their debate, Sarah Palin looked over at Joe Biden and channeled the memory of Ronald Reagan’s famed putdown of Jimmy Carter in 1980. “There you go again,” she said.

Well, governor, we knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. And, governor, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

Debate moments destined to linger in memory beyond the current campaign, like that last paragraph’s playful co-opting of Lloyd Bentsen’s withering 1988 insult of Dan Quayle, have been missing this year with three down and one to go. The power of the Internet in the YouTube era has gone largely untested.

“The Web has amplified a few moments in the debates, but not many, because there are very few moments worth being amplified so far,” said Phil Noble, founder of Politicsonline.com, a company that follows how the Internet is being used in politics. “There really haven’t been any defining moments in the debates.”

Reagan was a master at capturing a debate moment that everyone will remember. His “there you go again” line defused his opponent’s attack. Four years later, when people wondered whether Reagan was getting too old for his job, he said he wouldn’t make an issue of opponent Walter Mondale’s youth and inexperience.

Even Mondale had to smile at that one, and the issue essentially disappeared.

Bentsen’s attack cemented Quayle’s public image as a lightweight (even if he – not Bentsen – was elected vice president). President Gerald Ford was hurt in 1976 when he falsely declared that Poland was not under the domination of the Soviet Union, and Michael Dukakis damaged in 1988 by his clinical answer to a question on how he’d respond to an attack on his wife.

Even barely perceptible events have stuck: The first President Bush spotted looking at his watch while debating Bill Clinton, and Al Gore’s audible sighing at remarks by George W. Bush.

A serious mistake, like Howard Dean’s odd whoop in the 2004 primary season, can be replayed endlessly in the cable TV and Internet echo chamber, and do serious damage.
 
Even the late-night comics are disappointed. “Did you watch the vice presidential debate last night?” Jay Leno said at the open of his “Tonight” show monologue last Friday. “There was nothing embarrassing from either candidate. Damn!”

There have been attempts, particularly from the McCain-Palin campaign, which is running behind in the polls and needs to capture news cycles and the public’s imagination. Palin followed her “there you go again” quip with “say it ain’t so, Joe,” a reference to a 90-year-old baseball scandal.

Palin had asked Biden, as they shook hands before their debate, if she could call him Joe. In the “Saturday Night Live” debate version two nights later, Palin impersonator Tina Fey said it was because she had practiced some attack lines using “Joe.”

McCain tried Tuesday night by suggesting that settling on an Obama tax policy was like nailing gelatin to a wall.

“It gets harder and harder with every election cycle to manufacture something that is so obviously a line,” said Alan Schroeder, author of “The Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV.” “At this point, we’ve been conditioned as an audience to listen for these things, and they come off as kind of bogus.”

Neither Republican McCain nor Democrat Barack Obama rely heavily on rehearsed zingers, said John Reiss, executive producer of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
 
“I don’t know if it’s just not in the personalities of these men,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

An odd McCain moment Tuesday night, when he referred to Obama as “that one” while standing next to him, was replayed on the “Today” show and “Good Morning America” on Wednesday. But the economy, not the debate, was the lead story on the morning shows and debate clips were scarce on the cable news shows during the daytime.

One Palin mashup has shown up on the Internet following her debate. It strings together several of her phrases in mocking fashion – including six separate mispronunciations of `nuclear’ – and was viewed more than 359,000 times on YouTube in six days. Another Palin collection contains lowlights from her interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson.

An “Obama-Biden Gaffes” video on YouTube, with Biden clumsily introducing “Barack America” at a rally, had less than 4,000 views.

With none of the existing mashups reaching a half-million views, it’s evidence that “not much is happening,” Noble said.

One moment, one line – either planned or inadvertent – can change all that in the final debate next Wednesday.

With all the media outlets waiting to see one, there are real incentives for the debaters to avoid them, said Mitchell McKinney, author of “Presidential Debates in Focus.”

“It may very well lead to more scripted and rehearsed and less real politicians,” McKinney said, “if that’s possible.”

Check out this Truth-o-Meter from PolitiFact to find out which of Senator McCain’s and Senator Obama’s statements were true in the debate.