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McCord and Livingston stopped contributing when their new legal careers got in the way, but Protzman found new editors in some of the site's more dedicated contributors.

Aside from Protzman, the moderators now include Gordon Smith, a family and child therapist in Asheville; Linda Cloud, the head of a child-care related nonprofit in Moore County; Greg Flynn, a Raleigh architect; Betsy Muse, a stay-at-home mother in Monroe; and Robert Peterson, a science researcher in Chapel Hill.

Many of the site's top moderators have never met in person.

In general, the members of the group say they agree on a few basic issues: increasing health-care coverage for the uninsured, changing or scrapping the federal No Child Left Behind law and opposing the proposed Navy landing field in Eastern North Carolina.

But even on those issues, they differ on the details, and when it comes to the candidates they usually agree only that they prefer Democrats to Republicans.

"I think you could have three of us in a room and have four opinions," joked Cloud.

Back to the grassroots

It remains to be seen what effect BlueNC will have on the election.

In a recent week, the site had about 3,500 unique visitors a week, or 26,000 page views, according to Protzman. Ninety percent of visitors are in North Carolina, scattered from the Outer Banks to the mountains, with a small percentage coming from outside the state.

In terms of voters, that's a small slice of the electorate. But many of the readers are the kinds of networkers who influence their friends and acquaintances indirectly, said Democratic political consultant Gary Pearce.

He said that BlueNC and other blogs are reviving the old-fashioned politics that had been killed by the advent of expensive TV ad campaigns.

"Online politics is bringing back the grassroots," said Pearce, who runs a blog called Talking About Politics with Republican consultant Carter Wrenn. "The great thing about it is that anyone with a computer can talk to everybody with a computer."

Jerry Meek, chairman of the state Democratic Party, says the site serves a valuable role as a "think tank" to air ideas. But he does not know how widely read the site is and wonders if it has any more influence than a multitude of other constituencies within the party.

The site is popular with Republicans, whom BlueNC moderators sometimes call "lurkers" because they typically don't comment.

Raupe said he knows a number of GOP lawmakers who keep tabs on BlueNC.

"If Republicans are going to win an election here, they have to get a sizable percentage of the Democratic vote," he said. "That vote isn't necessarily reached on BlueNC, but the people who influence that vote read it."

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