There was one bright note to Meg Scott Phipps' conviction Thursday: It was a rarity in the annals of North Carolina politics.

No statewide officeholder has been convicted of committing a crime while in office, according to political experts contacted after the verdict.

The closest comparisons they could cite were former Lt. Gov. Jimmy Green, acquitted in the early 1980s of charges that he accepted thousands of dollars in bribes; former Secretary of State Rufus Edmisten, who resigned in 1996 after reports that he had state employees perform his personal chores; and former state Sen. Harold Hardison, an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in 1988 who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper campaign contributions. Hardison was never prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.

"Trading the exercise of one's official authority for money, whether it's for electoral or personal profit, is about as bad as it gets in a position like that," said John Sanders, a retired professor of government at UNC-Chapel Hill. "We have tended to elect people of sufficient honesty and good behavior that they don't get into that kind of trouble."

Consider this:

* A 21-month FBI investigation in the 1980s of political corruption in Columbus County yielded several indictments of political figures -- including Green and state Sen. R.C. Soles (who continues to represent Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties) -- but few convictions.

* From 1975 to 1997, the state Supreme Court removed just five judges from office, according to a report published by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research. Most either improperly accepted money or committed sexual misconduct. Only 19 judges were censured, according to the report.

Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at UNC-CH, said the structure of government -- and the state's "Protestant rectitude" -- have insulated it from wrongdoing.

The governor of North Carolina is weak: He had no veto power until 1997; nine other statewide elected officials control huge agencies, including public education, agriculture, the state treasury and the State Bureau of Investigation; and lawmakers control hundreds of appointments to influential boards and commissions. That structure diffuses power and allows independent agencies to monitor one another, he said.

"We've not been immune from partisanship, racial divides, more power in the hands of the wealthy than in the poor. We're not different from America from that standpoint," Guillory said. "But the political and civic culture has made the political soil inhospitable to out-and-out corruption."

If anything, Guillory added, Phipps' misdeeds and conviction will improve the chances that North Carolina politicians will continue to behave. That doesn't mean he is glad it happened.

"It is really sad," he said. "It's hurtful to the state's body politic to have something like this happen, particularly with a member of a historic family. But it is more of an aberration than a pattern."