The Consul General of France in Atlanta, Pascal Le Deunff, will visit North Carolina in December, his first visit to the Tar Heel State since his September appointment.

While here Dec. 1 through 3, Le Denuff will bestow the Legion of Honor upon three American WWII Veterans from North Carolina; meet with elected officials, university officials, and representatives of economic development authorities to find grounds of cooperation with France; and to meet with the French community of both Raleigh and Charlotte.

On Dec. 1, at the House of Representatives of the former State Capitol, Le Deunff will bestow the Legion of Honor upon veterans Woodrow D. Casey, Robert W. Pyle and Earl W. Norwood.

The National Order of the Legion of Honor is the highest honor in France and recipients of this honor are designated by the President of the Republic. They will receive this award in recognition for their courage. Among their many heroic deeds, they participated in the Normandy landings, which were decisive in the liberation of France.

The Consul General of France will also meet with the Mayor of Raleigh, Charles Meeker, the Mayor of Charlotte, Pat McCrory, the President of Duke University, Richard H. Brodhead and representatives of economic development authorities.

Pascal Le Deunff is convinced that, despite the unfavorable economic environment, this region offers grounds for cooperation with France. Both France and North Carolina share a common strong commitment for scientific and economic innovation.

Finally, the Consul General will meet with the French Community, especially from the economic arena. He will visit the French company Biomérieux and be the guest speaker of the French-American Chamber of Commerce of North Carolina’s Winter Diner.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Pat McCrory is leaving office as Mayor of Charlotte with a pretty high level of popularity, but it doesn’t mean voters in the city are yearning for him to run for Governor again.

59% approve of the job McCrory is doing with 26% disapproving. He gets good reviews
from 81% of Republicans, 62% of independents, and 39% of Democrats. His approval
with Democrats in Charlotte is actually better than Bev Perdue’s with Democrats
statewide in our most recent polling.

Despite that only 51% of Charlotte voters want McCrory to make a second run for
Governor, with 40% opposed to the idea and 9% unsure.

The drop off from people who like the job McCrory is doing as Mayor to those who want
him to run for Governor again speaks to the issues he had with Charlotte voters in his
statewide run last year.

79% of Republicans are on board, but his 62% approval with
independents drops to 46% who want him to seek the Governor’s office and his 39%
support from Democrats decline to 27% who want to again see him take on Bev Perdue.

“Pat McCrory is very popular with Charlotte voters but they just don’t seem all that
invested in him taking his leadership statewide,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public
Policy Polling. “They didn’t vote for him last fall and even with Bev Perdue’s early
troubles there isn’t a groundswell of support for him to try it again.”

PPP surveyed 791 likely Charlotte voters from October 31st to November 2nd. The
survey’s margin of error is +/-3.5%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and
weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Voters have narrowly elected a Democrat to lead Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city.

With most of the votes counted, Anthony Foxx was leading challenger John Lassiter, a Republican, by nearly 3,000 votes out of 105,000 cast. But Lassiter conceded defeat before the final, unofficial results were released by the Mecklenburg Board of Elections.

Foxx will replace Pat McCrory, a Republican, who is stepping down after 14 years.

Foxx and Lassiter, both lawyers and city council members, promised voters they would focus on turning around the city’s economy.

With the nation’s banking meltdown, Charlotte has lost thousands of financial services jobs. Bank of America, one of the nation’s largest banks, is headquartered in Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.  – The candidates began their campaigns months ago, and now it’s up to the voters in North Carolina’s
largest city to decide which of them will be the new mayor.

Polls in Charlotte will open at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday and will close at 7:30 p.m. Democrat Anthony Foxx and Republican John Lassiter are competing to replace Pat McCrory, who is stepping down after 14 years. Foxx and Lassiter, both lawyers and city council members, say their priority as a leader will be turning around the faltering local economy.

With the nation’s banking meltdown, Charlotte has lost thousands of good-paying financial services jobs. Bank of America, one of the nation’s largest banks, is headquartered in Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Gov. Beverly Perdue’s rival in last fall’s election was by her side as she fulfilled a campaign promise.

Perdue officially opened the Governor’s Piedmont Office inside the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, a few floors down from Mayor Pat McCrory’s office. McCrory and Mecklenburg County commission chairwoman Jennifer Roberts both attended the opening Friday.

Perdue is a Democrat who narrowly defeated the Republican McCrory in the November election.
 
She had pledged during the campaign to open an office in Charlotte. She has other satellite offices in New Bern and Asheville.

The office will be staffed full-time by a regional director and another employee two days a week.

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.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Pat McCrory said he will serve out his term as Charlotte mayor after losing the North Carolina governor’s race.

During his concession speech at the Hilton in downtown Charlotte, he congratulated Beverly Perdue on her win and congratulated all of the candidates who ran for governor. He called his loss “bittersweet” because he was proud of the way he ran his campaign, but wanted to lead North Carolina.

“This campaign has always been about public service and I’m proud to be a public servant,” McCrory said.

McCrory said nation politics could have been a factor in an already close race.

“There’s no doubt that the presidential campaign had a tremendous impact on our race and having a third party candidate party probably influenced it too but look I knew what I was getting into no excuses,” McCrory said.

Some McCrory supporters at the event election night were visibly upset. McCrory’s sister, Linda Sebastian, said it’s a loss for North Carolina and the decision to concede wasn’t easy for her brother.

“It wasn’t easy but he knows he did his best he knows he did it honestly and with integrity and he stayed positive and issue oriented,” Sebastian said.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Returns largely from early voting have Democratic Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue leading Republican Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory in the race to become North Carolina’s next governor.

Unofficial results Tuesday night show Perdue with 55 percent of the votes reported, compared to 42 percent for McCrory. Libertarian Mike Munger had about 3 percent.

About 8 percent of the nearly 3,000 precincts statewide had returns, but ballots from the massive early voting period boosted the total number of votes counted to more than 1.1 million.

More than 2.5 million people cast ballots in the 2 1/2 weeks leading up to Election Day. A disproportionate number those casting early ballots were registered Democrats.

RALEIGH, N.C. – No matter the result in Tuesday’s election, the race for governor in North Carolina is sure to make history.

Democratic nominee Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue would become the state’s first female governor. Republican candidate and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory would be the first person from the state’s largest city to win the gubernatorial race since 1920. He also would be only the third Republican governor since 1901.

Polls in the campaign’s final weeks show the race too close to call.
 
The 61-year-old Perdue is a longtime legislator from New Bern who was elected to the state’s No. 2 executive post in 2001. McCrory has been elected mayor seven times thanks to support from Democrats in Charlotte.
 
Gov. Mike Easley is barred by term limits from seeking a third consecutive term.