Pat McCrory and Beverly Perdue will try to rally the faithful and persuade remaining undecided voters in the final full day of campaigning for North Carolina governor.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue speaks passionately about clean government and her ideas to reduce money’s influence on politics, like a private endowment for gubernatorial candidates who agree to fundraising restrictions.
     
“I want to be known as the champion of ethics reform and of transparency around the country. I want North Carolina to become the poster child for how we do things right in state government and elective office,” the Democratic nominee for governor told several dozen advocates at a forum on ethics and lobbying reform earlier this month.
     
But the reformer label has been clenched by Republican nominee Pat McCrory during the general election campaign. And it may be hard for Perdue to take it back. Charlotte’s mayor argues Perdue is part of the reason people don’t trust their government to efficiently build roads and provide other services.
     
“People are fed up with the culture of state government, a culture of inaccessibility, a culture of the leaders being invisible, (a) culture of secrecy, and sadly a culture of corruption,” McCrory recently said at a campaign event in Brunswick County.
     
Perdue didn’t help dispel that notion last week, when a Board of Transportation member who had been a major fundraiser for Perdue resigned under an ethical cloud. The board is historically the place where big campaign contributors are rewarded and use their political pull to build projects back home.
     
Barring direct evidence of ethical wrongdoing by a candidate, it’s unclear whether ethics or government reform will make much difference in voters’ choices.
     
Perdue hasn’t been accused of illegality. But as a 20-year veteran of a state government that has seen several fellow Democrats go to prison on corruption charges this decade, Perdue has the most to lose should voters take a look.
     
“If the ethical issue does draw attention, she’s probably going to likely be more victimized by it,” said Hunter Bacot, director of the Elon University Poll, but “those ethical issues are so nebulous that people don’t really understand them.”
     
Perdue could play the reformer role better in her bruising primary race for governor with State Treasurer Richard Moore. Both were state government veterans, so neither had an advantage when lobbing accusations of ethical failings.
     
Board of Transportation member Thomas Betts resigned in January after he raised campaign money for Perdue from people connected to Carolina Crossroads, a commercial project in Roanoke Rapids whose cornerstone was a theater once managed by Randy Parton, the brother of Dolly Parton.
     
But Perdue won easily after harping on Moore for taking donations from people connected to Wall Street financiers who managed some of the state’s investments.
     
“That was an easy target” given today’s sour economy, said Joe Sinsheimer, a former Democratic consultant based in Raleigh.
     
During the general election, McCrory has been relentless in associating Perdue with what he calls the “power elite” in state government.
     
It’s a difficult accusation for Perdue to counter. She’s served as a top budget-writer or lieutenant governor since 1995. Meanwhile, McCrory has led North Carolina’s largest city without scandal.
     
Perdue stumbled again last week after Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett referred board member Louis Sewell to the State Ethics Commission for allegations he helped steer thousands in taxpayer dollars to road improvement projects near properties that he or his son co-owned.
     
Sewell resigned the same day he was supposed to host a fundraiser for Perdue in Jacksonville. Perdue said she supported the ethics probe but told a reporter earlier in the week she still hoped to attend the fundraiser.
     
It was ultimately canceled, but McCrory seized the chance to call on her to return contributions from Sewell and his family members.
     
Perdue’s campaign tried instead to link McCrory to disgraced ex-House Speaker Jim Black, even rolling out the mayor’s public access show when Black was a guest. McCrory called him a “personal friend,” but the show was in 1999, years before the Black was investigated.
     
McCrory said Perdue was just trying to avoid the fact that she worked with Black in the Legislature.
     
On transportation, McCrory says he wants to prohibit fundraising by members of the board, which has been criticized for its political influence in approving billions of dollars in road projects.
     
Perdue previously “outlined significant DOT reforms that include removing board members from deciding on individual projects and letting the professionals do it,” Perdue spokesman Tim Crowley said Friday.
     
While Perdue helped pass a law 10 years ago in the Senate to expand disclosures by board members, the latest misstep by a board member connected to her may raise questions about her dedication to reform.
     
“You want to see the actions match the words,” said Bob Phillips of Common Cause North Carolina, a nonprofit that promotes government transparency. “I hope we can get more teeth into the law in 2009 no matter who the governor is.”

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Two candidates will stand on the stage in the latest debate for North Carolina governor. But one won’t be Beverly Perdue for a change.
     
The Democratic nominee declined to participate in Wednesday night’s forum at the University of North Carolina Television studios. Instead, Libertarian candidate Mike Munger will be alongside Republican nominee Pat McCrory in the statewide debate.
     
Munger is a Duke University professor who has been routinely excluded from previous debates and forums.
     
Perdue campaign spokesman Tim Crowley said Perdue is not participating because she agreed earlier to five televised debates during the general election campaign. Four of those already have been held.
     
All three candidates are scheduled to participate in an Oct. 15 debate in Charlotte.

RALEIGH, N.C. — The two top candidates for governor tried Monday to paint each other with political corruption, with Pat McCrory questioning Beverly Perdue’s ties to a Board of Transportation member and Perdue linking McCrory to disgraced ex-House Speaker Jim Black.

McCrory’s campaign called on Perdue, a Democrat, to return what his campaign identified as $37,500 in donations given by Board of Transportation member Louis Sewell and family members. That came after a weekend newspaper report questioning Sewell’s voting on projects near land he and a son owned. 

Perdue’s campaign later Monday released a portion of an August 1999 public access television show featuring McCrory, the Republican mayor of Charlotte, as the host and calling the guest, Democrat and then first-term speaker Black, his “personal friend” and optometrist.

“You’ve been a wonderful teammate,” McCrory is seen telling Black on video, referring to working together on local issues – since Black is from the Charlotte suburb of Matthews.

The interview took place years before allegations came out against Black, a Democrat who is serving a five-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to taking illegal cash payments from chiropractors.

Perdue’s campaign also said that Stan Campbell, a former consultant for McCrory’s primary campaign and a spokesman, helped create a legal defense fund on Black’s behalf.

McCrory talks about ridding “the ‘culture of corruption’ in Raleigh, yet he hires its biggest defender as a top consultant and spokesperson for his campaign,” Perdue spokesman David Kochman said in a news release.

An angry McCrory said late Monday that Perdue’s campaign was grasping at straws. Black was just one member of the Charlotte-area’s delegation to the General Assembly. There’s been no hint of corruption in Charlotte city government, which McCrory has led for 13 years, he said.

“It’s typical arrogance of state government and of Beverly Perdue to transfer state corruption to officials who had nothing to do with it,” the mayor said in a phone interview. “It’s an act of true desperation.”

Perdue’s decision to inject Black, now serving a federal prison term for taking thousands of dollars from chiropractors, into the campaign is seen by some as risky.

The lieutenant governor and Black served together in the Legislature going back to the 1980s, with Perdue one of the Senate’s chief budget-writers for two years and lieutenant governor for six more while Black was speaker.

“She served with him. She never spoke up about anything that was going on that was wrong,” said Jack Hawke, McCrory’s chief political strategist, calling her attempts to link the mayor to Black “audacious.”

Campbell, a Republican and former Charlotte city council member, was a trustee for Black’s legal fund because he’s been a bankruptcy trustee, Hawke said. McCrory’s campaign paid Campbell $3,500 a month through the end of the May as a consultant, according to campaign finance report data.

McCrory’s campaign focused on Sewell, a campaign fundraiser for Perdue and outgoing Gov. Mike Easley. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Sunday that Sewell steered roughly $375,000 in public money to road improvements in Jacksonville near properties that he or a son co-owned at the time.

Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett has asked the State Ethics Commission to investigate the transactions.

Minutes of board meetings don’t show Sewell mentioning his financial interests near the improvement areas. Twice, he voted for some of the funding for the road improvements.

During Perdue’s Democratic primary campaign, another board member resigned last month after he attempted to raise money for Perdue from people connected to a high-profile entertainment development in Roanoke Rapids.

Perdue “has a long history of fundraising impropriety,” McCrory Campaign Manager Richard Hudson said in a news release, adding that “she has an ethical cloud hanging over her head.”

Sewell told The News & Observer that all the road projects he has recommended or voted to approve have been in the public interest.

Perdue’s campaign didn’t respond directly to McCrory’s call to return money connected to Sewell, with spokesman Tim Crowley saying “we’re not going to take our advice from Pat McCrory, who hired” Campbell.

CARY, N.C. — Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue worked to cement her differences with Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory on public education in a televised gubernatorial debate Friday, with the Democrat ticking off her positions on vouchers, community college tuition and catch-phrase initiatives of the past 15 years.
     
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