Edwards reaches back to '98 tactics for Clinton

When John Edwards went after New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton last week as part of the evil Washington establishment, it should have had a familiar ring to North Carolinians.

Without mentioning Clinton by name, Edwards warned of "establishment elites" as he began a tour of New Hampshire.

"The system in Washington is rigged, and I'll say it again, it's rigged and it's rigged by greedy powers," Edwards said at Dartmouth College. "It's rigged by the system to favor the establishment."

Edwards used the same argument against Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth in 1998, when he launched his political career.

Edwards promised in 1998 not to accept contributions from political action committees, and he warned of the pernicious influence of lobbyists who he said lined the halls outside the Senate chambers.

"We're going to decide tomorrow whether we really have a democracy where absolutely every North Carolinian's and every American's voice is heard on the floor of the United States Senate -- not just the voice of special-interest PACs, not just the voice of Washington lobbyists," Edwards said the day before the 1998 election.

Clinton-Easley ticket in '08?

That's one scenario laid out recently by Stanley Fish on the New York Times blog.

He reasons that the New York senator will be looking for some geographical balance if she captures the Democratic nomination.

Among the possibilities? Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle -- and Easley.

Easley, Fish writes, "is a Democrat who has run ahead of his party in two elections. However, he is not well known outside the region, and it is a question as to whether he could deliver his own state."

Campaign audit help wanted

The State Board of Elections is still struggling with a backlog of unaudited campaign finance reports because it cannot find two people with the expertise to do the work. The jobs offer a salary as high as $48,000 annually.

The catch is they expire Dec. 31, 2008. Lawmakers, when they created three auditing positions last year, made them temporary. That caveat has created huge problems for the board.

So far, it has been able to hire only one employee, who still remains. Two others left last spring for permanent positions. Two postings of the jobs have not produced enough qualified candidates.

"They are decent-paying jobs," said Kim Strach, the board's campaign finance director. "It's just that people want some stability."

Elections director Gary Bartlett said he had asked lawmakers to make the positions permanent in this year's budget so the board can catch up on the campaign filings and not fall behind again, but lawmakers did not take up the request.

He thanked lawmakers for seeing the problem in the first place and trying to address it but said, "we just need some permanency."