Yeah, they won. But how much?
Education leaders did cartwheels last week upon hearing that the state won a competitive federal Race to the Top grant.
The award is going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the state isn't sure it will get the entire $400 million it requested. On Sept. 12, state representatives will be back in Washington for final budget negotiations.
By Nov. 22, federal officials will have approved the final work plan, and local districts will start getting grant money, said state Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson.
The state was among 10 winners in the second round of the competition. In its application, state officials said they would use the money to recruit and retain quality teachers and administrators, improve low-performing schools and raise the graduation rate.
Federal officials will want monthly updates on how the state's improvement plan is progressing and how it is spending the money, Atkinson said.
Burr buys online ads
Complementing his television ads, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr has launched an Internet campaign.
The Internet ad buy is worth $120,000, campaign spokesman Samantha Smith said. That's in addition to the $500,000 the campaign has spent to air television ads.
Dome spotted one of the ads on Public Policy Polling's website. It features a graduating college student, Alex Gonzales, who says that she is worried about the future and that she believes Burr will make the best decisions in Washington.
Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, has a huge financial advantage over Democratic challenger Elaine Marshall. Her campaign has spent some money on Facebook ads but has primarily focused on using the free parts of social media to try to drum up help for the campaign.
"That's what we'll focus on is talking to people directly and trying to turn online participating into offline participation," Marshall campaign spokesman Sam Swartz said.
Rove returns
Karl Rove, the chief political adviser to former Republican President George W. Bush, will speak at UNC-Chapel Hill on Sept. 20.
Rove, now a political analyst for Fox News, will give a talk at 5 p.m. at Memorial Hall. The speech is being sponsored by the UNC College Republicans as well as other conservative groups.
Tickets are free and can be obtained from the Memorial Hall box office beginning Tuesday.
Earlier this year, Rove was in Raleigh as the star attraction at a fundraiser for Burr.
Unaffiliated voters swing right
This is beginning to sound like a broken record: The Democrats are having a big problem with unaffiliated voters.
The latest evidence is a new poll released last week by the conservative Civitas Institute which shows that Democratic legislative candidates have experienced a 20 percent drop in support from unaffiliated voters since the 2008 election.
The poll of 400 unaffiliated likely North Carolina voters found that 39 percent would likely vote for a Republican, 27 percent would vote for a Democrat and 15 percent would vote for neither. That compares with a Civitas poll taken in October 2008 before a major Democratic victory in which unaffiliated voters supported Democrats by a 37 percent to 29 percent.
The survey was conducted Aug. 16-18 by National Research Inc. of Holmdel, N.J., and had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
By staff writers Lynn Bonner, Benjamin Niolet and Rob Christensen
Get the biggest news in your email or cellphone as it's happening. Sign up for breaking news alerts.
Lawyers for John Edwards on Friday issued statements that said the hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures incurred last year by the campaign committee of the former presidential candidate were above board. 
Mitt Romney is in danger of losing his fourth straight state in Saturday's caucuses in Maine, where he and his allies have been all but absent from TV. Keep up with the latest political stories with our free daily e-mail newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox!
Subscribe to Politics - it's free!
