Governor Sarah Palin’s final campaign push brought her to North Carolina on Saturday, drawing more than 10,000 supporters that were allowed in the venue — several thousand were not able to get in.

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Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech in Asheville on Sunday night will kick off a wild week of campaigning across North Carolina that will put all four major candidates on the trail in the state.
     
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that Republican rival John McCain is “getting a little loose” at a time when the nation needs a steady hand.

 Campaigning in NASCAR country, Biden employed car racing terminology for bumping to describe the contentious final days of the campaign. He told supporters in Charlotte that he’s worried about how the Republicans have been acting as the two campaigns have been “trading a little paint” recently.

 ”What worries me most is the McCain campaign seems to have gotten a little loose,” Biden said. “John’s getting a little loose. He doesn’t have much of a steady hand these days. Now’s the time we most need a steady hand.”

 The Delaware senator told the crowd the nation needs to unite to address the challenges ahead. He called Republican robo calls “scurrilous” and said ads portraying Obama as an extremist divide voters based on geography, religion and background.

 ”It is corrosive to American society,” Biden said. “It’s awfully hard to build anything with that kind of corrosion.”

 He continued the theme at an event in Winston-Salem. Biden said he was particularly excited about the prospects of winning North Carolina – a Southern state with wide racial diversity that hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976. He said it could help in uniting the country around Obama.

 ”It will send a very important message to the nation: that we are no longer just divided blue and red, we are no longer North and South, and we once again have a president who has been able to reach out in a general election and unite the country,” he told students at Wake Forest University.

 Although warning of the dangers of political divisions, Biden took aim at McCain. Deriding McCain’s effort to dissociate himself from President Bush, Biden accused the Arizona senator of “quacking like George W. Bush.”

 And after botching McCain’s name, Biden joked he no longer knew his longtime Senate colleague.

 ”John McClain. John McClain. Excuse me, John McCain. John McCain – I don’t recognize him anymore,” Biden said to laughter from several hundred supporters in attendance.

 Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said Biden was being loose with his rhetorical flourishes and offered a different NASCAR analogy: “If Obama wins, he will raise taxes and our economy will go from a yellow to red flag.”

 Biden’s criticisms appeared to refer to a mailer distributed by North Carolina’s Republican Party last week. The ad tries to link Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers with pictures of Ayers, including his mug shot, and a description of Ayers’ violent anti-Vietnam war activities from decades ago. The mailer declares the two are friends and says Obama is “not who you think he is.”

 Obama has condemned Ayers’ radical activities, which occurred when Obama was a child. He met Ayers a quarter century later when Ayers was an education professor at the University of Illinois and a Chicago neighbor. They worked on the boards of two nonprofit charitable groups from the mid-1990s to 2002, and Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois senate, but the two are not close.

 Biden was on a bus tour through college campuses in North Carolina’s more liberal corridors – the fast-growing urban areas that have pushed the state toward the Democrats for the first time in decades. He also planned a visit to Raleigh.

 McCain’s campaign announced he would return to the state Tuesday.

WASHINGTON – Asked by a third-grader what a vice president does, Republican candidate Sarah Palin responded that the vice president is the president’s “team mate” but also “runs the Senate” and “can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes.”

While aimed at a typical 8-year-old, Palin’s explanations oversimplify the Constitution’s definition of the duties of the vice president and don’t match the office’s traditional role in Senate activities.

The vice president’s main duty is to replace the president if the president dies, resigns, is removed from office or can no longer carry out his or her duties for other reasons. The Constitution names the vice president as the president of the Senate but allows the vice president to cast a vote only to break a tie.

The vice president, as a member of the executive branch of the government, has no official role in developing legislation or determining how it is presented to or debated by the Senate, which is part of the legislative branch. In all meaningful ways, the leader of the majority party runs the Senate.

Traditionally, the vice president appears in the Senate for ceremonial events and in case of a tie vote. Although the vice president can preside over the Senate, vice presidents have left that day-to-day chore to senators themselves. In the past, each president has determined the role of the vice president in an administration.
  
The subject of the vice president’s duties came up as Palin sat for an interview with KUSA-TV in Denver, which has a feature called “Question from the Third Grade.” The interviewer asked, “Brandon Garcia wants to know, ‘What does the vice president do?”‘

“That’s a great question, Brandon, and a vice president has a really great job, because not only are they there to support the president’s agenda, they’re like the team member, the team mate to that president,” Palin said.

“But also, they’re in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job,” she said.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Senator Joe Biden will return to North Carolina Thursday and will hold Change We Need Rallies in the Charlotte area, Winston-Salem and Raleigh. 

Biden was last in North Carolina on Sept. 27, when he appeared in Greensboro with Senator Barack Obama. 

Details of the Charlotte visit have not been announced.

Winston-Salem
Wake Forest University
Hearn Plaza outside of Reynolda Hall
2240 Reynolda Rd
Winston-Salem, NC  27106

Doors Open: 12:15pm
Program Begins: 2:15pm

Raleigh
Meredith College
McIver Amphitheater
3800 Hillsborough,
Raleigh, NC 27607

Doors Open: 5 p.m.
Program Begins: 7 p.m.

The events are free and open to the public.  Tickets are NOT required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged. Members of the public are invited to RSVP at www.nc.barackobama.com.  Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

ELON, N.C. — Governor Sarah Palin will be back in North Carolina Thursday.

Tickets are available for Gov. Sarah Palin’s first visit to North Carolina tomorrow.

Palin will hold a rally in Greenville Tuesday. Doors Open at 4 p.m. The event takes place at Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum, East Carolina University, 1 Ficklen Drive in Greenville.

After the rally concludes, attedees are invited to join fellow McCain-Palin supporters to watch the second Presidential Debate.

Tickets for the event are available for pickup at all North Carolina Victory Offices. Tickets are free of charge and will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis.

For additional information, call 919-828-6423 or email email@ncgop.org

Ticket Distribution Offices:

Asheville Victory Office
16 Regent Park Blvd, Suite I
Asheville, NC 28806
(919) 866-2130

Boone Victory Office
149 Meadowview Drive
Boone, NC 28607
(573) 647-1616

Charlotte Victory Office
1515 Mockingbird Lane, Suite 218
Charlotte, NC 28209
(704) 910-0696

Cornelius Victory Office
8301-17 Magnolia State Drive
Cornelius, NC 28031
(704) 987-4301

Durham Victory Office
4600 Durham Chapel Hill Blvd
Durham, NC 27707
(919) 539-5928

Fayetteville Victory Office
201 S. McPherson Church Road, Suite 204
Fayetteville, NC 28303
(910) 864-6584

Gastonia Victory Office
224 South New Hope Road
Gastonia, NC 28055
(704) 868-3330

Goldsboro Victory Office
147 South Center Street
Goldsboro, NC 27530
(573) 647-9016

Greensboro / High Point Victory Office
3800 Tinsley Road, Suite 103
High Point, NC 27265
(336) 885-0467

Greenville Victory Office
103B Commerce Street
Greenville, NC 27858
(252) 321-1996

Hickory Victory Office
1899 Tate Blvd. SE, Suite 1105
Hickory, NC 28602
(828) 324-1639

Jacksonville Victory Office
487 Western Blvd
Jacksonville, NC 28540
(910) 347-7442

Laurinburg Victory Office
684 Highway 401 North
Laurinburg, NC 28532
(919) 862-6079

Raleigh Victory Office
1506 Hillsborough Street
Raleigh, NC 27605
(919) 828-6423

Rocky Mount Victory Office
1826 Sunset Avenue
Rocky Mount, NC 27804
(919) 862-6183

Salisbury Victory Office
100 West Innes Street
Salisbury, NC 28144
(919) 827-5949

Wilmington Victory Office
3145 Wrightsville Avenue
Wilmington, NC 28403
(910) 251-8493

Winston-Salem Victory Office
2110 Cloverdale Ave, Suite D
Winston Salem, NC 27013
(336) 724-6000

ST. LOUIS – Sarah Palin is vowing to take more questions from voters and reporters in the final month before the election.

Since John McCain selected her to be his vice presidential running mate, Palin has granted only a handful of interviews and done few campaign events solo. But now she’s declaring “my life is certainly an open book.”

In an interview with Fox News, Palin says she looks forward to “speaking to the media more and more every day and providing whatever access the media” wants.

On another matter, Palin says she’s disappointed that the McCain campaign decided to stop competing in Michigan. She says she “fired off an e-mail” this morning questioning the move.

Palin says people in Michigan “are hurting” because of the economic downtown, and she’d like to walk through the state’s auto plants and speak to them about it.

ST. LOUIS — Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden sparred over taxes, energy policy and the Iraq war in a high-profile debate in which Palin sought to reclaim her identity as a feisty reformer and Biden tried to undercut the maverick image of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain.

“I think things went very well last night,” Palin said Friday as she flew to Texas for a fundraiser. “It was energizing and I was happy to have had the opportunity.”

Palin, in the 90-minute forum broadcast Thursday night from Washington University in St. Louis, was under intense pressure to show basic competence on issues facing the next president after a series of embarrassing television interviews called into question her readiness for high office.

For the most part she appeared confident and folksy while casting Biden and Democratic standard bearer Barack Obama as tax-raisers who would risk defeat in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

Two quick polls indicated that Biden fared better in the debate. A CBS News/Knowledge Networks Poll found that 46 percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate thought Biden won, with 21 percent siding with Palin. A CNN poll found respondents judging Biden the winner by a margin of 51 percent to 36 percent but calling Palin more likable by 54 percent to Biden’s 36 percent.
 
Palin tried to portray the Democrats as obsessed with the failures of President Bush even as she acknowledged his Republican administration was responsible for “huge blunders” in the war and elsewhere.

“For a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there’s just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that’s where you’re going,” Palin said, saying she and McCain were the real change agents in the race.

But Palin also sidestepped certain questions, pivoting at times to talking points and generalities.

Asked by moderator Gwen Ifill if she would support legislation allowing debt-strapped mortgage holders to file for bankruptcy to get out from under that debt, Palin said yes but avoided details, quickly steering the focus back to a more general discussion of the “toxic mess” in the financial industry.

And asked how she as vice president would help reduce partisanship in Washington, she said, “Let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again.”

Biden, for his part, largely avoided direct challenges to Palin and instead worked to undermine McCain, who has sought throughout the campaign to distance himself from the unpopular Bush.

The Delaware senator repeatedly noted that McCain had sided with Bush on crucial issues, from launching the war in Iraq to tax policies that widened the income disparity between rich and poor.

“He’s been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people’s lives,” Biden said of McCain, noting that the Arizona senator had voted for Bush’s budget proposals and against legislation providing heating oil assistance to low income families and enrolling more children in government-sponsored health insurance.

The candidates traded jabs on energy. Palin criticized the Democratic ticket for opposing offshore oil drilling while Biden chided McCain for voting against proposals in the Senate to expand the development of alternative energy sources.

Palin repeatedly mentioned Obama’s vote in 2005 for an energy bill that allowed oil companies to receive large corporate tax breaks, saying she had worked to stop such corporate greed among oil interests in Alaska.

“Bless their hearts … they’re not my biggest fans,” Palin said of executives at ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

Palin also restated her controversial view that climate change is largely due to cyclical changes in the earth’s atmosphere and not primarily caused by human behavior. Biden disagreed, saying climate change was caused by man.

On taxes, Biden reaffirmed his position that it was “patriotic” for people who earn more than $250,000 to pay additional taxes. Obama’s tax plan would cut taxes for about 90 percent of Americans, Biden said.

When Palin called his position a “redistribution of wealth principle,” Biden shot back, observing that McCain wanted to reduce taxes on businesses and the very rich.

“We don’t call a redistribution in my neighborhood Scranton, Claymont, Wilmington, the places I grew up … to say that not giving ExxonMobil another $4 billion tax cut this year as John calls for and giving it to middle class people to be able to pay to get their kids to college. We call that fairness,” Biden said.

On social issues, the candidates both said they supported partnership rights for gay and lesbian partners but opposed same sex marriage.

The exchange over Iraq was personal for the two candidates, both of whom have sons set to deploy there with military units.

“Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that’s for sure,” Palin told Biden, who like Obama supports a timetable to remove U.S. troops from the region.

“You guys opposed the surge,” Palin said, referring to Bush’s decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 combat troops to Iraq. “The surge worked. Barack Obama still can’t admit the surge works.”

Biden defended Obama’s vote in May 2007 not to fund military operations in Iraq unless a timeline was set for withdrawal, even though Biden sharply criticized the Illinois senator’s vote at the time. And Biden tried to turn the table on McCain, questioning his judgment on the Iraq conflict from the beginning.