Ballots pour in for early voting

More than 100,000 ballots have been cast so far in North Carolina's primary.

About 99,000 ballots had been cast at one-stop voting sites in the first week of early voting, according to the State Board of Elections.

An additional 10,000 by-mail absentee ballots had been returned as of Friday morning.

One-stop early voting has been under way since April 17 and will continue until May 3.

Wright or wrong

If it was attention that state Republican officials were seeking with their new ad, they certainly got it.

The new ad is supposed to start airing Tuesday.

But it has already been condemned by countless people, including officials at the Republican National Committee and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president.

The ad, titled "Extreme," has also become a YouTube favorite. As of Friday afternoon, it has been seen more than 180,000 times.

It was not doing so well, though, in YouTube's rating system averaging only two out of five possible stars in ratings by viewers.

Third-party ads

One of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's top campaign advisers says he has asked the state and national Republican parties, as well as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to steer clear of advertising in North Carolina's U.S. Senate race.

And he's calling on Jerry Meek, chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party, to do likewise with his Democratic counterparts.

"You can agree to not run advertising targeting Senator Dole during the 2008 election cycle as well as encourage your Senate nominee and national parties to abstain from third-party advertisements," Mark Stephens, Dole's chief campaign strategist, said in a letter Friday to Meek.

Stephens said his letter was a response to a request by Meek that Dole disavow the recent ad by the N.C. Republican Party that links Democratic gubernatorial candidates Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"Obviously this advertisement was run by a third-party organization and has nothing to do with Senator Dole's campaign," Dole's campaign said in a release with Stephens' letter. "However, Senator Dole does want to avoid issues like this from occurring in the U.S. Senate race."

The N.C. Democratic Party responded in a statement saying that Dole "should stop trying to change the subject and start telling the truth." The release said that if Dole has the clout to pull together such an agreement within GOP ranks, she "should use that influence to stop the dishonest ad the NCGOP plans to run."

Roads and bridges

Fred Smith is calling for a $4 billion bond issue to build roads and bridges in North Carolina.

But the Republican gubernatorial candidate's paving company, C.C. Mangum Co., would not bid for any public projects if he were elected, he said.

Thirty percent of C.C. Mangum's business comes from public contracts, and losing the government's business would be tough for the company, Smith said.

"It's a sacrifice," he said. "If I wasn't able to say that, I'd have no credibility running for governor."