North Carolina race turns to ‘godless’ ads

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So all you folks out there, are you keeping a scrapbook for this election, huh? GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN: Senator, I am honored to be chosen as your running mate. [APPLAUSE, CHEERS] I will be honored to serve next to the next President of the United States. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: You got that snapshot from August 29th of this year? Sarah Palin accepting her nomination as the vice presidential candidate for John McCain. We’re hosting America’s Exit Poll. Call us at 877-8MYTAKE or mytake#thetakeaway.org. And there’s a lot of exit pollsters busy in the State of North Carolina this morning. Capital Bureau Chief for North Carolina Public Radio Laura Leslie joins us from Raleigh. Laura, thanks for being with us. LAURA LESLIE: Good mornin’. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So, first of all, lay out the landscape in North Carolina. It’s a state that wasn’t expected to be terribly important. And look at this. LAURA LESLIE: Yeah, we never expected to be a swing state. I think we can say that [LAUGHS] pretty safely. We haven’t voted for a Democrat for president here since 1976. But this year the top three races in the state ? President, Senate and Governor – are all pretty much heats, or very close to it. The only one that’s sort of breaking loose at this point is the race for Senate. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Well, let’s talk about the race for Senate. Elizabeth Dole is in a tough race. Explain what’s going on. And you said it’s breaking one way. What’s happening? LAURA LESLIE: Well, actually, her Democrat opponent, Kay Hagen, who is a little known state senator, and I don’t think anybody really expected to put up much of a challenge for Dole ? Hagen has opened up about a seven-point lead at this point, which is amazing. They’ve been really pretty close for the last few months. But, you know, it looks like this is kind of a referendum on Elizabeth Dole. She’s only served one term here, but being Elizabeth Dole she’s ? she’s a rock star. You know, and nobody really thought that she would have to fight that hard to keep her seat. But it’s pretty clear at this point that, you know, she ? unless there’s a massive turnout for McCain she could be in a lot of trouble today. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So there is expected to be massive turnout though. Any idea which side the turnout is breaking? LAURA LESLIE: Well, in our early voting I think, like in a lot of states, we’ve seen, you know, a ? it’s leaned Democrat. But ? and we’ve had amazing early voting; 42 percent of our voters have already voted here. So that’s much higher than it was in 2004. You know, Republican ? the polling shows that the folks who are planning to vote today tend to lean Republican, but it’s also raining. So it’s really ? it’s really anybody’s guess. We can’t remember an election like this here ever. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Now, is it raining all over the state or just in Raleigh? LAURA LESLIE: All over the state pretty much, at least the eastern half of it, which will be bad news for Democrats [LAUGHS], I think. But ? you know, seriously, I mean, it’s, like we said, it’s anybody’s guess. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: What about congressional races there in North Carolina? You know, we’ve been talking with people all over the country who are suggesting that, you know, the Democrats are going to make serious gains and that the Republicans have virtually no coattail phenomenon to rely on today. What are you seeing? LAURA LESLIE: We have one race like that. It’s our 8th District which kind of sprawls across sort of the bottom of the state, toward the coast. And it’s ? Robin Hayes who’s a five-term Republican who’s been elected in a ? it’s kind of a conservative Dem district, but you know, North Carolina Democrats could pass for Republicans a lot of places. Anyway, so his challenger is a guy named Larry Kissell who ran against him in 2006. And in 2006 the national Dems didn’t take it seriously and they didn’t give Kissell any money, and he still came within 330 votes of beating the incumbent. So this year he’s back out on the trail. He’s a little bit better funded, but it’s still ?you know, it’s still a very tight fight. And it looks right now as if Kissell may, in fact, win and, you know, send Robin Hayes out of office, which would be pretty ? pretty surprising. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Any sense of infrastructure trouble? I mean, you’ve said [LAUGHS] on our air just moments ago that “we’ve never seen anything like this.” On the faces of poll workers in North Carolina, what does that look like? LAURA LESLIE: Well, you know, they’re all expecting very, very long days. Let’s put it that way. But no, actually, we are ? we’re lucky in that we haven’t had any problems so far in the early voting with our equipment. In 2004 there was a problem where one of our counties lost about 5,000 votes and that ended up having a state-wide race and sort of hanging in the balance for about four or five months, I think. This year things seem to be going smoothly. There’s a lot of people working at the polls. So early voting, there were, you know, long lines but they moved pretty quickly. And, you know, the officials say all signs point to, hopefully, a pretty smooth day here. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Laura, have you voted yet? LAURA LESLIE: I have. JOHN HOCKENBERRY: All right, well done. Laura Leslie, Capital Bureau Chief for North Carolina Public Radio joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina.