news-record.com

RALEIGH - If Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a Republican, wins the governor's mansion next week, he might have Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to thank.

"A lot of Obama voters are not excited about him because he's a Democrat and they're not excited because he's a liberal," said John Davis, who studies elections for the pro-business group N.C. Free. "It's an anti-establishment thing. In the parlance of this election, it's change."

Plenty of voters going to the polls will vote for Obama and stick with Democrats down the ballot, Davis acknowledges.

But there's another group, he said, upset with how things are running in Washington and Raleigh and interested in new management. Democrats such as McCrory's rival, Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue, have held the governor's mansion for 16 years. Davis argues the "change voters" Obama is bringing to the polls in the presidential race might favor the Republican running for governor.

Andrew Taylor, a political science professor at N.C. State, agrees that McCrory could be getting help from Obama's change-focused campaign.

"One of the things McCrory did a really good job at is saying that Perdue is part of the furniture around here," Taylor said. "He's running a particularly nonideological campaign."

McCrory, Taylor argues, has run more on his credentials as a big-city mayor than as someone who cleaves to any one particular political orthodoxy. This has made him more acceptable to Democrats who are inclined to ticket-split.

And North Carolina has a history of ticket-splitting. In the 2000 and 2004 election, the state backed President Bush, a Republican, while twice installing Mike Easley, a Democrat, as governor.

"I think a lot of folks are wanting something different," said Richard Hudson, McCrory's campaign manager. He said that the campaign has filled requests for McCrory yard signs by people who have Obama signs in their yards.

Perdue has not ignored these change voters. She pledges to be a "hands-on" governor who is frequently seen traveling the state, a backhanded reference to Easley's preference to manage from behind the scenes and out of the public eye.

Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, have campaigned in North Carolina and spent money on television advertising here. North Carolina is a swing state for the first time in decades.

In the governor's race, Hudson says, that means the two candidates' coattail effects cancel each other out or maybe give McCrory what he described as a "slight net positive, because McCain voters are not going to go over to Perdue."

On the flip side, Obama's "Campaign for Change" has deployed thousands of workers to canvass voters across the state. And Perdue is mentioned in their literature and the standard speech many workers give to potential voters. That helps Perdue, political scientists say.

"Any candidate running at any level who can help enthuse and excite people the way this Campaign for Change has is really meaningful to the process," Perdue said last week after speaking to workers at the Obama campaign's downtown Greensboro office.

The U.S. Senate campaign between incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole and Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan may see more traditional coattail effects at play.

In a recent analysis, for example, Public Policy Polling said that Obama's campaign had helped Hagan shore up support with African American voters.

Hagan is running as someone trying to unseat the person in power, Davis said, meaning her campaign fits nicely with the talking points put forward by the Obama campaign.

And N.C. State's Taylor said Democrats will benefit from any buzz generated by the presidential campaign.

"If anyone is going to have coattails, it's going to be Obama," Taylor said. "If you look back to 2000 and 2004, he's going to do better here than (former Vice President Al) Gore or (Sen. John) Kerry did."

Although polls show the presidential race is a tossup, Obama is likely to bring more Democrats to the polls and get a higher percentage of people to vote for the Democratic side of the ticket than his two predecessors. The question, he said, is how big those effects will be and how far down the ballot they will last. For example, Democratic candidates in county commissioner races can't expect as large a bump as Perdue or Hagan might.

Hagan and Dole agree that the presidential campaign has excited voters and gotten activists and new voters interested in the election. Both argue the attention will help them win next month.

But Taylor argues McCain's coattail effects may be muted, especially when it comes to the Senate race, because of the campaign's "advertising at cross-purposes."

For example, the most recent ads launched by Dole and her allies argue that a major reason to keep the Republican in office is to prevent Democrats from having "a blank check" to run the government. The ad tacitly assumes a McCain loss.

"I think as far as those two candidates go, it's every man for themselves," he said.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com