Race for governor remains close

McCrory, Perdue are campaigning across North Carolina in the final days before the election

The Democratic and Republican candidates for governor pounded turfs Saturday where each hopes to squeeze out a victory in a nerve-wrackingly close race.

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, led a morning rally in Goldsboro and swung through a sweet potato festival in Snow Hill, where she bought a pecan pie to take home to her husband, Bob Eaves, for their wedding anniversary that day. She was revving up support in the traditionally Democratic eastern end of the state that has helped send many a Democrat to the executive mansion.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a Republican, flew by helicopter to stops throughout the Charlotte and Greensboro media markets, at one point randomly asking the pilot to land in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Mocksville so he could shake hands. His campaign hopes his support in the urban centers will counter the Democrats' eastern strength.

He dropped in to, among other spots, Concord, Salisbury and Graham, before finishing the day in his hometown of Jamestown.

The governor's race has proven the least predictable of the state's marquee races this year, defying, to some degree, the national Democratic tide. Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign has spent months and lots of money recruiting and advertising in the state. That has buoyed both his campaign and that of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan.

Perdue, however, has remained statistically tied with McCrory despite a fund-raising edge and a century-long history of Democratic advantage in the race for governor.

"I have done all I can do across North Carolina to talk to people, to listen to people, to make known the fact that I've got what it takes to be a great governor for North Carolina," Perdue said to applause in Goldsboro, several hundred feet from an early-voting site. "So when you go into church tomorrow, don't you hesitate one ounce to say to the person sitting beside you in the pew, 'I saw her. ... I saw the future of North Carolina.'"

She also sought to steer her campaign message -- which has hop-scotched across a variety of themes -- to the economy. She told the crowd that she is ready to help the state deal with a financial slump. Perdue reminded the audience that, after Hurricane Floyd, she helped find more than $850 million in the state budget for Eastern North Carolina's recovery. And she found the money without raising taxes.

McCrory hammered his months-long pledge to change what he calls a culture of corruption and arrogance in Raleigh.

"I need to get the egos in Raleigh to come back to reality," he told a crowd on the campus of his alma mater, Catawba College.

He also used his speeches to rebut Perdue's television advertising, essentially acknowledging that her commercials have taken a toll.

"The people of North Carolina are smarter than Beverly Perdue's commercials," he said, calling the ads lies and rhetorically asking whether that was how she wanted to win.

McCrory has criticized a Perdue ad accusing him of wanting to import garbage from other states because he opposed legislation that would make the traveling trash more difficult to bring in. He and other mayors opposed the bill because of a tax it imposed on cities and towns.

"Bev Perdue has a lot of negative stuff out there," said Brian Wyatt, 46, a state employee at a McCrory rally in Yadkinville, underscoring that even his supporters have noted the potential impact of the ads.

McCrory has a Winston-Salem fund-raiser planned for today and Monday rallies scheduled in Raleigh, Lexington and Charlotte.

Perdue and Eaves plan to go to churches today. On Monday, she will tour the state by plane and plans a family dinner in Raleigh.