RALEIGH - To understand the impact of what happened last Tuesday, it's worth noting what didn't happen for so long in North Carolina.

For a long time, black people couldn't vote -- and in many parts of the South, few could even after it was guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Until well into the 20th century, women couldn't vote -- and North Carolina legislators made fun of any suggestion that they should.

One day during the 1897 General Assembly, Republican state Sen. James Hyatt of Yancey County introduced Senate Bill 676, "an act to provide for woman suffrage in North Carolina."

It was the first bill ever introduced in the legislature to allow women to vote. The Senate wasted no time dispatching that radical notion. It referred the bill to the Committee on Insane Asylums, where S.B. 676 died.

It would be another 23 years before enough states approved a 1918 constitutional amendment providing for universal suffrage, including in North Carolina. But still the legislature resisted Gov. Thomas Bickett's appeal to greet women voters "with a smile" instead of a frown. In a 1920 session, the legislature frittered away a chance to be the last state needed to ratify the amendment. Tennessee did that job.

That fall, voters in Western North Carolina elected Lillian Exum Clement to the state House, the first woman in the legislature. She had been nominated before she could vote. And in a strange coda to the state's traditional resistance to change, it would be another 51 years before the legislature changed its stance on women voting. In a symbolic but otherwise meaningless gesture, the General Assembly finally approved the 19th Amendment on May 6, 1971.

By then, state Rep. Henry Frye of Greensboro had already finished his first term as the first black person elected to the General Assembly in the 20th century. In 1974 lawyer Susie Sharp was the first woman to become chief justice of the state Supreme Court -- winning 74 percent of the vote.

Female and black candidates would slowly make inroads in Tar Heel politics in ensuing years. Frye would eventually become the first black chief justice, while Republican Elizabeth Dole would become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002. By then, Democrat Bev Perdue had become the first woman to be elected lieutenant governor (and in last Tuesday's primary, she gained her party's gubernatorial nomination).

Tuesday's election ratcheted things forward again. In the Democratic presidential primary, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama knocked off New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in a contest that gave many new voters here their first taste of what it's like to help decide a national campaign. But the real story was that North Carolina voters -- including Democrats, unaffiliated voters and thousands of former Republicans who switched their registration -- chose a black man in the heaviest voter turnout in state primary history.

This is real change, reflecting an electorate that is less conservative and more interested in solutions than in ideology. It hasn't been that long since Alabama segregationist George Wallace dispatched New South Gov. Terry Sanford in the 1972 presidential primary -- nor since U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms topped former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 Senate races.

Something else notable happened Tuesday: Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a latecomer to the Republican race for the nomination for governor, beat back a field of three other strong candidates to win without a runoff. His closest challenger was state Sen. Fred Smith, who ran to McCrory's right.

In a party whose primaries have a reputation for favoring the most conservative candidate, the comparatively moderate McCrory won with a campaign that featured simple ads showing the seven-term mayor talking directly into the camera about what he'd do if elected.

These outcomes tell a story not just of how politics has changed in North Carolina, but how voters are changing as well. In both political parties, voters are embracing change in ways that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

(Jack Betts is a Charlotte Observer associate editor and columnist who is based in Raleigh.)

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