RALEIGH -- It had been a typical week for Gov. Bev Perdue: an appearance at a high school, a ribbon-cutting, a job announcement.
The governor's unexpected somber announcement that she would not seek re-election was at odds with her public face in the days leading up to it. She began on Tuesday with a news conference on technology at Apex High School, where she spoke enthusiastically about education.
"She was about as happy as I'd seen her," state Rep. Tom Murry, a Republican from Morrisville, who was also at the event, said Thursday. "She was upbeat."
On Wednesday, Perdue traveled west to the Iredell County city of Statesville for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new food processing plant. The same day, she showed up in Mills River in Henderson County with executives from Sierra Nevada Brewing to announce a new brewery and restaurant.
On Thursday around lunchtime, she was scheduled to join U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin for a conference of the state's health directors at a North Raleigh hotel. Instead, she sent her senior adviser for policy, Al Delia, who in February will become acting secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services.
An official statement didn't come from the governor until about noon. But word spread quickly throughout the morning and prompted one state agency to cancel a major news conference scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The state Department of Cultural Resources planned to tout a new "arts-driven economic development program" at an event at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham. But before the morning was half over, the news conference had been postponed.
Perdue wasn't spotted in public all day, either at her office at the State Capitol nor at the nearby mansion. She does not have any public events planned for the next week, her office reported.
But she is scheduled to attend a major Democratic Party fundraising dinner in Greensboro on Saturday. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, former Gov. Jim Hunt, N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye and U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan are also on the program.
There was no word Thursday whether she would keep that commitment.
Staff writer Lynn Bonner contributed.
