Dan Besse made his first environmental complaint while he was in junior high, when he would walk the streams in his native Hickory. The color of one stream caught his eye.

"It would change from white to red to green to purple, depending on what the hosiery mill upstream was dyeing the socks that day," he said.

Besse says he figured out that a mechanical problem was causing the leaks.

At his prompting, the mill fixed it. The leaks stopped.

A longtime fixture of North Carolina's environmental movement and a two-term member of the Winston-Salem City Council, Besse wants to bring his advocacy work to the lieutenant governor's office.

The job has historically belonged to political insiders. Two of Besse's opponents -- a former aide to Gov. Mike Easley and one of the state Senate's budget writers -- have more experience than he does in the highest levels of state government.

Besse's experience comes from three decades working for change at government's lower levels -- as a member of state environmental regulatory boards, as an attorney for the poor and as an activist for clean water, abortion rights and other causes.

The lieutenant governor's office, he said, should be used as a bully pulpit.

"That office represents an opportunity to get a new perspective into the policy mix at the state level," he said.

Besse was born into a modest family. They lived in a mill village, and most of his family worked at a Southern Desk furniture factory. His father, Besse recalls, put himself through college by working the second shift at General Electric's transformer plant.

"What put me to sleep at night was the hum of that hosiery mill. It was a comforting sound because it reminded me that people had jobs," Besse said at a recent campaign stop in Tarboro.

Growing up in Catawba County led him to the Republican Party, an affiliation he said was affirmed when segregationist George Wallace won the N.C. Democratic primary in 1972. Besse says he identified with the GOP's libertarian wing -- opposing the newer Jesse Helms faction -- until he switched parties after the 1992 election.

Beginning in 1983, Besse spent 10 years as a lawyer for indigent clients in the New Bern area before moving to Winston-Salem. In the '80s and '90s, he held leadership positions with several environmental groups, including the N.C. League of Conservation Voters, and he still edits the weekly electronic newsletter of the Conservation Council of North Carolina.

As a member of the state Environmental Management Commission, he played a key role in devising complex state regulations related to mercury, wetlands and air quality -- issues that pitted environmentalists against energy companies, developers and other industries. Besse pushed the rules through long, behind-the-scenes negotiations.

"He's a workhorse, not a show horse," said Bill Holman, an environmental secretary under Gov. Jim Hunt. "He's someone who listens carefully and does his homework and tries to work with key interests."