The N.C. Republican Party on Tuesday hired Russell Peck to be its new executive director.
Peck was heavily involved in the victory of Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey's governor's race earlier this month. Christie defeated Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. Peck had worked last year as North Carolina victory director and was charged with leading the party's statewide election efforts.
"I am pleased to announce that Russell has accepted our offer and will begin work on December 1," state party chairman Tom Fetzer said in an e-mail message sent to members of the state GOP Executive Committee on Wednesday. "He will be joining us less than a month after helping to engineer a thrilling victory for Republicans in New Jersey's gubernatorial race this year.
"Many of you will remember Russell from his work last year as North Carolina's Victory Director, during which he built a statewide organization that did a fantastic job in a less than ideal political environment," Fetzer wrote.
Expressing some reservations was former state GOP Chairman Frank Rouse, who said the $75,000 salary and Peck's not being from North Carolina gave him some pause. Fetzer, as a full-time party chair, is being paid $125,000.
The party also chose former Raleigh City Councilman Kieran Shanahan to be its finance director and political consultant Mark Stephens, Fetzer's former political consulting partner, to handle direct mail for the party.
Contract awarded for e-mail archive
A California software company has received the contract to build an e-mail archive system for the state.
Mimosa Systems of Santa Clara, Calif., got the $694,448 contract to install, implement and maintain the archiving system, which will archive all messages that clear the state's spam filters.
Gov. Bev Perdue ordered tighter rules and the new archiving system after it became clear that some state employees in former Gov. Mike Easley's administration were routinely deleting messages that were public records.
"Preserving state e-mails as a public record is vital to a transparent and accountable government," Perdue said in a statement.
About 41,000 state employees use the state's e-mail service to send and receive roughly 1 million e-mail messages a day. The system filters out about 5 million e-mail messages a day that contain spam or viruses.
By staff writers Rob Christensen and Benjamin Niolet
