RALEIGH - In some ways, next week's North Carolina primary is like rock star Bruce Springsteen showing up at a high school battle of the bands.

In a very short time, the Democratic presidential duel between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken center stage. And the dozens of Tar Heel races -- from the statehouse to the courthouse -- have been reduced to a political sideshow struggling to draw voters' attention.

The presidential candidates are drawing the huge crowds, dominating the TV ads, vacuuming up the news coverage and driving the voter turnout.

State candidates, strategists and party leaders -- some of whom have been carefully planning their campaigns for years -- are scrambling to figure out how to maneuver in a changed political landscape.

Instead of the 700,000 to 800,000 Democratic primary voters that they once expected, strategists now think there will be 1.2 million to 1.5 million Democratic primary voters -- many of them new voters with few connections to the party.

"What it has really done is you have twice the number of voters and about half the attention you normally get," said Gary Pearce, a veteran Democratic strategist in Raleigh. "That is a dramatic change from when they started that race."

Coattails get heavier

Presidential endorsements are one of the major changes this year. Historically, North Carolina Democrats have tried to keep a distance from their party's presidential candidates, because Democratic White House hopefuls have rarely won in North Carolina.

From the campaign of Walter Mondale to that of John Kerry, North Carolina Democratic politicians have often made themselves scarce when their party's nominee campaigned in North Carolina.

But with Obama expected to drive up turnout among blacks, young people and independents, the two major Democratic gubernatorial candidates, state Treasurer Richard Moore and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, have sought to grab Obama's coattails.

One radio ad notes that "Richard Moore was the first Democrat running for governor to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency."

The Perdue campaign has been sending out mailers and making automated telephone calls to black households.

"I've endorsed Barack Obama, because I believe that he is truly committed -- as I am -- to bringing real change for our families," says the Perdue mailer.

Hampton Dellinger, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor who has endorsed Obama, worked recent Obama rallies in Raleigh and Greensboro. He features a photograph with Obama on his Web site.

At a recent Democratic rally in Rocky Mount, Dan Besse, another Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, told Obama supporters he met as he worked the barbecue line that he was supporting their candidate.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal of Chapel Hill has endorsed Obama.

The N.C. Republican Party wants to make Perdue and Moore pay a price for their Obama endorsement. The GOP plans to begin running a TV commercial Tuesday tying them to both Obama and his controversial former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The ad has already been previewed on online outlets such as YouTube.

"They should know better," says the announcer in the GOP ad. "He is just too extreme for North Carolina."

No clear benefactor

No one is quite sure who the surge in voter interest will help. After the hundreds of thousands of new voters cast their ballots for Obama or Clinton, who will they support for governor, or state treasurer or labor commissioner? Or will they even vote in those races?

The best guess is that the new wave of voters will help black candidates, women candidates and more liberal candidates.

"You have to assume any independent or unaffiliated voter is being attracted by something they are hearing -- either the prospect of the first black president or the first female president or excitement about their message," Pearce said. "I think it [the expanded vote] is heavily skewed to more progressive and change-oriented, perhaps more upscale, voters."

There is also a theory that if a large number of moderate independents vote in the Democratic primary, it could hurt some Republican candidates with support from moderates, such as gubernatorial candidates Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, or former N.C. Supreme Court justice Bob Orr.

Effect hard to gauge

But all this is guesswork. None of the candidates or their managers truly knows.

"I think, intuitively, you think there are large effects," said Andrew Taylor, a political science professor at N.C. State University. "But it is difficult to figure out how it will work out. It drives campaign managers and consultants crazy. It's largely out of their control."

While the governor and senate candidates struggle to gin up a crowd to fill a back room of a restaurant, Obama fills arenas -- 8,000 people in Greenville and 2,000 in Raleigh. While most candidates are lucky to have one campaign office, Obama and Clinton have opened 41 storefront campaign offices combined.

"We are no longer the headliners in the election," said Jay Reiff, who is managing Moore's gubernatorial campaign.

"We're dealing with political superstars."