As County Commission Melvin “Skip” Alston announced last week that he wouldn’t run for another term in his county seat, his name was being bandied about in Raleigh in terms of several positions. Depending on who you listened to, he might have been running for lieutenant governor, Congress or some state legislative seat.

As it turns out, there were good reasons for those rumors.

“I had considered several different options of running for different positions, even lieutenant governor,” Alston said.

Alston has been a sometimes controversial but always influential figure in Guilford County. He has been a lobbyist and headed the state chapter of the NAACP. He’s also usually on the invite list when big-name pols, like President Barack Obama, come to town.

Alston said that he ruled out a statewide run for lieutenant governor because he didn’t think he could raise the money necessary to mount an effective primary campaign.

Alston said he also looked at running in the 12th Congressional District, currently served by Rep. Mel Watt. At the time, Alston said, there were rumors Watt would bow out. Since then, Alston has talked to Watt and reports the veteran congressman plans to seek re-election.

If and when Watt does step away, Alston said, he will run for that seat.

“It is my desire to possibly run one day for Congress,” Alston said.

As of yet, Watt has not officially filed to run for another term.

Alston also looked at running for a pair of legislative seats. He decided not to run for state Senate because his friend, and fellow county commissioner, Bruce Davis is challenging incumbent Gladys Robinson. And he decided not to go for state House because his friend, and co-founder of the International Civil Rights Museum, Earl Jones plans to challenge Rep. Marcus Brandon.

That leaves Alston not planning to jump into any political campaigns himself this year. However, he said if someone else changed their plans, he might jump into a race.

“I’m keeping my options open until the end of the filing period,” he said.

That said, Alston plans to be involved in other folks’ political campaigns. He has already volunteered to help Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton in his campaign for governor, Alston said.

U.S. Rep. Brad Miller says that he will not run for governor. Miller was one of several Democrats whose names came up when Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, decided not to run for a second term.

Miller would have been a favorite of the progressive / left wing of the party. But he said in a written statement that he wants to keep working on problems related to the financial services industry and that the governor's mansion would not be the place to do that.

Miller's old district ran from Raleigh, up along the Virginia border and into Greensboro. He has served five terms in office, but decided not to run for re-election because it would have meant a primary showdown with fellow Democrat David Price (background link).

His full statement :

After much consideration, I have decided not to run for Governor.

As a former state legislator and a citizen, I care deeply about the issues that North Carolina faces as a state.

My mother struggled as a widowed bookkeeper to make sure I had the opportunity for an education that was denied her and my father. We need a Governor who will fight the efforts of Republicans in the legislature to close those doors of opportunity by their assault on public education.

But the issues I have worked on in Congress for a decade are the injustice and dysfunction in our nation’s economy. The financial crisis was not the result of a “perfect storm” of unforeseeable economic events, but of blameworthy conduct, of what Franklin Roosevelt called “heedless greed,” for which there has been too little accountability.

Although my term in Congress expires at the end of the year, I believe I will have other opportunities to continue work on those issues.

I have been an energetic and determined candidate in the past. Although my determination to hold elective office appears now to be in remission, I may seek elective office again. And I will certainly support other energetic and determined candidates for office.

Remember how Seinfeld was a show about nothing? That’s kind of what today’s legislative session was about today.

Republican leaders planned today’s session in case they needed to deal with redistricting. With no redistricting problems in sight, they had no business to do and promptly adjourned.

So why was everyone here? Because back in January, legislative leaders used parliamentary rules to turn a session about one veto override into a session about another veto override. That session was called with less than two hours notice for 12:45 a.m. (Background)

With that January session as background, it’s understandable why Democrats showed up in force.

And liberal-leaning groups, lead by Progress NC and Democracy North Carolina, brought more than 50 people to the General Assembly today to protest and keep and eye on the session. When they brought people into the building to stand outside the Speakers’ office, they were told to go elsewhere. Most of the group went up to the third floor to watch the very quick skeleton session.

It's worth noting that this group wasn't making any more noise than than average middle school group that traipses through the building on a fairly regular basis.

“Our group is too large,” Adam Sotak, organizing director for Democracy North Carolina told his group. This provoked much grumbling and questions about where rules for the legislative building came from.

Well, the rules were signed back when Liston Ramsey was House Speaker and J.J. Harrington was Senate President Pro Tempore. There’s no exact date on when they were put in place but the last revision came Nov. 18, 1987.

You can read them here. You can also read them if you happen to notice an 8.5-by-11 inch sign next to the entrance to the legislative building. To be honest, I’ve walked past that thing hundreds, if not thousands, of times and never noticed it. And I've never seen the rule cited before, although I have seen it enforced a few times.

But the relevant rule about the second floor reads:

3. Visiting on Second Floor of State Legislative Building. Individuals and groups of visitors who come to the State Legislative Building for the purpose of viewing the building and observing the sessions of either or both houses shall not visit the second floor of the building. Legislative staff guides shall conduct groups of visitors so as to comply with this rule. Visitors on the second floor shall, at the request of the legislative staff, state the nature of their business on that floor, and shall immediately leave that floor at the request of legislative staff.

Apparently, the Speakers staff requested that the group outside his office leave.

Aside from that hiccup (there were no arrests and everyone kept their tempers) the session went as expected.

Lawmakers will meet for one more skeleton session on Saturday to meet statutory and constitutional requirements. Tills said that he had no plans to be in town for it and that there would be no business conducted.

Ah, the first day of filing. For us political geeks, it's like pitchers and catchers reporting for the baseball season. Many would-be judges, Congressmen and governors crowded into the State Board of Elections office today to be among the first to put their names on the ballot. Similar scenes played out across the state state.

Candidates have until noon on Feb. 29 to make their intentions known.

In Raleigh today, a number of notables showed up. Rep. Bill Faison became the first candidate in the Democratic field for governor to sign up.

"We'll make a run of it," Faison said as he hugged two of his five children after filing his paperwork.

Faison took questions from reporters and was asked about his divorce, which involves a somewhat explicit filing. "The truth is the thing that's going to win out," Faison said, not specifically addressing anything in the N+O story or the filing.

Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow, a Republican, put in an appearance to file his paperwork to run in the 6th Congressional District. This is the same district where U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, also a Republican, said he will see re-election.

"We need the Congress to get in touch with the people," Yow said. "There's a huge disconnect."

Former state Rep. Linda Coleman, a Democrat who currently serves heads the Office of State Personnel, filed her paperwork to run for Lieutenant Governor. She'll apparently face Sen. Eric Mansfield, who confirmed that he will seek that post as well.

Mike Causey, a Republican Guilford County farmer, is taking his fourth run at Insurance Commissioner.

"I really feel like this is not a partisan type of race," Causey told me. Rather, he said, his campaign will be based on who can do the better job. And Causey said he's been hearing complaints about the office as run by incumbent Democrat Wayne Goodwin, who also filed to run for re-election today.

In Guilford County, Reps. Pricey Harrison and Alma Adams, both Democrats filed to run for re-election to their House seats. County Commissioner Bruce Davis, a Democrat, filed to run in Senate District 28, currently held by Sen. Gladys Robinson and part of 2010's great switch-a-roo.

We'll have more filings in tomorrows' News & Record.

A few notes from my Sunday story on lawmakers who hold concealed weapons permits:

• Rep. Rayne Brown wrote me an e-mail to say that she, too, was a conceal weapons permit holder. “I’ve been one for several years and am glad that I am,” she wrote.
  
  Brown did not come up in my check of the database. That’s because she’s listed at “Alicia Powell Brown," in the database.
   
• With Brown, the total number of North Carolina lawmakers with conceal carry permits is 34, 28 of those in the state House.
   
• For those who are curious, there were 9,546 conceal carry permit holders in Guilford County on the first of the year, about 1.95 percent of the county’s census-estimated population. Although Guilford ranks third among counties for raw number of permits (Wake and Mecklenburg rank 1 and 2) it is 87th in terms of per-capita conceal carry.
   
• Cherokee County has the curios distinction of having the fewest raw number of permit holders in the state (1,601) but ranking first in percentage of population with a conceal carry permit (5.82 percent)

The word from the corner offices here on Jones Street is that the N.C. General Assembly won't be doing any business on Feb. 16, which had been scheduled as a legislative mini-session.

House Speaker Thom Tillis sent an e-mail to members this morning saying it would be a "Skeleton / NO VOTE" session. In the e-mail he writes, "I have conferred with Representative Hackney and have informed him that no matters will be taken up on the floor except for the unrecorded votes to adopt the Journal and to adjourn." He went on to write that there was no need to travel to Raleigh.

That jibes with what Senate Rules Chairman Tom Apodaca told me this morning.

Now, there will be some skepticism about this pronouncement from the Republican leadership. One legacy of the early January "midnight madness" session is that nobody in the legislature's orbit (lobbyists, reporters, etc.) is quite sure to think when legislative leaders talk about their plans for mini-sessions (link). Fueling that skepticism was a post from the liberal-leaning N.C. Policy Watch this week that suggested unemployment issues might be on the table Feb. 16.

But staffers in Tillis' office say "the deed is done" and its to late to turn around and plan to legislate next week. I suspect that Democrats and those who watch the legislature will take a trust but verify (or mistrust and verify) stance on this one.

One post script for what it's worth: about an hour before the Tillis e-mail went out, I talked with House Majority Paul "Skip" Stam. He told me, "My current expectation is there will not be controversial legislation but there will be legislation." What I've been told (by two folks other than Stam) is that there was the possibility lawmakers would have taken up an economic incentives deal but that looks like it is off the table (or simply unneeded) for the moment.

Your random bit of North Carolina election trivia today: there likely will be more Libertarian candidates for president on the North Carolina primary ballot than there will be Republicans and Democrats combined.

The State Board of Elections has posted a PDF containing the nominations from the three state party chairmen (link). The breakdown is thus:

• Democrats: 1 nominee -- President Barack Obama
• Republicans: 4 nominees -- Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.
• Libertarians: 6 nominees -- Roger Gary, R.J. Harris, Gary Johnson, Carl Person, Bill Still, Lee Wrights.

I was interested in the fact that North Carolina law basically allows the chairman of a party to nominate "candidates whose candidacy is generally advocated and recognized in the news media throughout the United States or in North Carolina." (link) That seemed like it gave a lot of discretion to the parties. But there is also a way by which someone, if they're on the outs with their party's leadership, can gather 10,000 signatures to get on the primary ballot as well (link).

Among the Libertarian contenders, the best known might be Gary Johnson (link), who was the Republican Governor of New Mexico from 1995-2003.

From the Republican's nominating letter: "I would respectfully request that, in the event any of above candidates withdraw from the race or suspend his campaign prior to the printing of ballots, that such candidate's name be removed from the list in order to avoid voter confusion." 

Hat tip: Gerry Cohen

Actually, that headline is a bit off. What State Treasurer Janet Cowell said as she release the state's annual debt affordability study was:

The annual analysis, approved by the Debt Affordability Advisory Committee, found that the state has exhausted its General Fund debt capacity until fiscal year 2013. Additionally, the combined debt capacity of the Highway Fund and the Highway Trust Fund has been exhausted until fiscal year 2014.

The committee sets a percentage of revenue as the primary metric for determining debt affordability. This percentage for the General Fund is slightly above 4 percent, which is the self-imposed target adopted by the committee. The Highway Fund and Highway Trust Fund’s percentage also slightly exceeds its 6 percent target.

North Carolina’s “triple A” bond rating has been reaffirmed by all three national bond rating agencies. Currently, all of the state’s debt ratios are at or below the median levels for the state’s peer group, composed of other states rated “triple A” by all three agencies. North Carolina’s debt is considered manageable at current levels. The report acknowledges that the state’s current revenue picture is only modestly optimistic and reflects the continued slow pace of economic recovery. Additionally, the study outlines the need for replenishment of the state’s reserves.

The translation of all that really is: The state SHOULDN'T borrow any more money and if it does so, North Carolina will put its AAA bond rating at risk. So we've not hit a hard limit so much as we've gotten to the point where we've borrowed as much as is considered fiscally prudent.

The report also mentions that the state has pension and health care liabilities to worry about, a was a growing debt to the federal government incurred to pay for unemployment claims.

Click here for a full copy of the annual debt affordability study (link) (.pdf).

The current Republican-lead General Assembly isn't exactly a crowd that's big on borrowing. However, this does take away one tool from them as they go through the budget this spring. If the legislature does authorize any new big repair or renovation projects, they'll have to budget cash up front rather than borrowing on down the line.

Also worth noting: the debt limit floats with the total amount of revenue collected by the state. By letting the 1-cent sales tax expire last summer, the General Assembly effectively lowered North Carolina's self-imposed debt ceiling.

The North Carolina chapter of the ACLU (link) sent a letter to N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper and legislative leaders warning that the General Assembly appears to be violating restrictions on sectarian prayers used to open sessions of governing bodies.

"Several legislators and members of the community have contacted us to express concern about the North Carolina General Assembly's ("NCGA") frequent practice of convening session with a sectarian prayer. According to the complaints, this practice occurs in both the House and the Senate chambers, and a significant majority of these legislative prayers are explicitly sectarian and favor only one religion, Christianity."

The ACLU goes on to suggest the General Assembly adopt a non-sectarian prayer policy.

I've written about this before, in the context of a Winston-Salem case that was heard by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. At the time, Sen. Phil Berger, the president pro tempore of the Senate, said: ""I'm more concerned about the government dictating what an appropriate prayer is than I am if a particular minister mentions Christ or mentions something that applies to one specific religion or creed."

Click here to read the letter itself (.pdf).