An independent committee, financed by Raleigh retail executive Art Pope's company, has sent mailings into the districts of five House Republicans criticizing their record.

"Robert Grady joined with Democrat Speaker Jim Black and the liberal Democrats to vote for over one billion in higher taxes," said one mailing sent out by the Republican Legislative Majority of North Carolina, a so-called 527 group.

Grady is a Jacksonville Republican. Similar letters were sent into the districts of Republican Reps. Rick Eddins of Raleigh, Julia Howard of Mocksville, Stephen LaRoque of Kinston and Richard Morgan of Moore County.

The same group spent $460,000 in 2004 to help defeat five Republicans who had worked with either Democratic House Speaker Jim Black or Republican Speaker Pro Tem Morgan, who joined with Black to form a governing House coalition in 2003.

Pope said he was trying to inform voters about which Republican lawmakers have been voting with Black.

Eddins fired back with a radio ad last week, comparing the Republican legislative committee with former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. It says the Pope group is "spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to defeat Republicans and not one single penny to defeat Democrats."

Pope, a longtime GOP activist, called the ad "silly and hypocritical." Among other things, Pope said, his group's mailers are not designed to elect or defeat anybody but to educate voters.

Madame Justice faces bar

Rachel Lea Hunter, a candidate for the state Supreme Court, could face disciplinary action by the N.C. State Bar for the use of her nickname "Madame Justice."

Hunter is challenging Associate Justice Mark Martin, the second most senior justice on the state's highest court.

An unidentified person -- the state bar never reveals that information -- filed a complaint about Hunter's nickname. In a campaign stunt earlier this year, Hunter tried to get her nickname listed on the ballot. The State Board of Elections refused on the grounds that it could lead voters to believe that she is currently a justice or a judge -- a job she has never held.

In a letter, Hunter described the complaint as "a purely politically motivated act" designed to get her to withdraw from the race or to be disciplined.

Hunter also explained that she took the nickname as a joke years ago after a Pennsylvania appeals court judge began using the name. She describes the name as "more suited to a costumed crime fighter character from a comic book or a dominatrix, not a justice on the court."

'Celebrities' tout financing

The likes of Donald Trump, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton and Jerry Seinfeld are plugging public financing for judicial campaigns in North Carolina.

Or at least they are in a new animated spoof created by the N.C. Center for Voter Education, which designed the cartoon to encourage taxpayers to fill out their tax form authorizing public funds be used to finance judicial campaigns.

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