kimblr.com

(05-06) 22:23 PDT — A landslide victory for Barack Obama in North Carolina and a nail-biter win for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana - where she had been expected to prevail easily - turned Tuesday night’s Democratic primaries into a momentum-killer for the New York senator, who seems to be falling even further behind in her quest for the party’s presidential nomination.
And even as voters were still casting ballots in the nation’s final big-state primaries, Clinton launched a new tactic, suggesting that the “finish line” for the nomination has shifted.
Obama earned a decisive, double-digit victory in North Carolina, where 115 delegates were at stake. Winning in the Tar Heel State appeared to be a strong sign that he was back on track after his campaign appeared nearly derailed by the controversy regarding his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Clinton, pounding populist themes like a gas-tax holiday and underscoring her connections with working-class voters, delivered another back-to-the-wall victory in Indiana on Tuesday, squeaking out a 51-49 percent win, a 12,000-vote margin over Obama in a state with 72 delegates up for grabs.
The Obama campaign quickly downplayed Clinton’s showing in Indiana, seizing on exit polls that suggested she might have gotten a boost from the “Limbaugh effect” - as an estimated 11 percent of Republicans said they crossed over to vote Democratic, the vast majority for the New York senator. Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh earlier this year launched what he calls “Operation Chaos” to try to skew the Democratic primary vote totals, and he told The Chronicle Tuesday night he was “extremely proud” of the results in the most recent primaries.
With six contests left to go in the calendar, Obama’s definitive win in North Carolina, which boosted both his popular vote and delegate count, puts Clinton further behind in the endgame for the nomination. And it is likely to weaken her case with potential campaign donors and undecided superdelegates alike.

sfgate.com

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama took a big step toward the Democratic presidential nomination with an easy victory in North Carolina on Tuesday, and Hillary Clinton vowed to keep her struggling campaign alive after narrowly winning Indiana.
The results helped Obama widen his lead over Clinton in the gruelling Democratic duel for the right to face Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election with just six nominating contests remaining.
Both candidates looked ahead to contests next week in West Virginia and May 20 in Oregon and Kentucky, but Clinton was nearly out of opportunities to change the course of the race.
“We have seen that it’s possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction, that it’s possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems,” Obama said at a victory rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Illinois senator’s 14-point victory in North Carolina was a dramatic comeback from a difficult campaign stretch that began last month with a big loss in Pennsylvania and was prolonged by the controversy over racially charged comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama, 46, sounded like he was already focused on the general election showdown with McCain. “This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country,” said Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president.
The results meant Clinton missed her best chance to narrow Obama’s lead in pledged delegates who will help pick the nominee at August’s convention. She won Indiana by just 23,000 votes out of more than 1.25 million votes cast in the state, but promised to keep up the fight.
“It’s full speed on to the White House,” Clinton said at a victory rally in Indianapolis, with her husband former President Bill Clinton standing behind her. “We’ve got a long road ahead, but we’re going to keep fighting.”

swissinfo.ch

I NDIANAPOLIS - Barack Obama swept to victory in the North Carolina primary today but fell behind Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana, the last big-delegate prizes left in their long race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Obama’s win mirrored earlier triumphs in Southern states with large black populations, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina among them.
That made Indiana a virtual must-win Midwestern state for the former first lady, who was hoping to counter Obama’s persistent delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries.
Returns from 40 percent of Indiana precincts showed Clinton with 56 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Obama.
In North Carolina, Obama was gaining 64 percent of the vote.
The economy was the top issue by far in both states, according to interviews with voters as they left their polling places.
Indiana exit polls charted a racial divide that has become familiar in a long, historic campaign pitting a black man against a white woman.
Obama was gaining more than 90 percent of the black vote in Indiana, while Clinton was winning an estimated 61 percent of the white vote there, running ahead of her rival among white men as well as women.
She also had 51 percent of independents’ votes, to 49 for her rival, a statistical tie, and was winning among Democrats, 53-47.
In North Carolina, Clinton won 60 percent of the white vote, but Obama claimed support from roughly 90 percent of the blacks who cast ballots.
The impact of a long-running controversy over Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was difficult to measure.
In North Carolina, six in 10 voters who said Wright’s incendiary comments affected their votes sided with Clinton. A somewhat larger percentage of voters who said the pastor’s remarks did not matter supported Obama.
The effect of Clinton’s call for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax — which dominated the final days of the two primaries — was impossible to judge.

news.bostonherald.com

ABC NEWS’ Bret Hovell and Russell Goldman report: Sen. John McCain said Thursday that if elected president — and becomes the de facto head of the GOP — he would not demand a change in the leadership of the North Carolina Republican Party despite condemning its plan to air an ad attacking Sen. Barack Obama, D- Ill, and his controversial minister.
At a press conference in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward the Arizona senator and presumptive Republican nominee said, “I cannot enforce my will [but] I can make it clear to them that I will have no part of it.”
As reported by ABC NEWS’ Jake Tapper Wednesday, McCain condemned the state party’s plan to roll out an ad which equates Democratic gubernatorial candidates Richard Moore and Beverly Purdue with controversial comments made by Obama’s longtime minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Moore and Purdue are vyng with each other to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina and both have endorsed Obama.
The GOP ad features a clip of Wright making a 2001 speech in which he says “God bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America.”
"They should know better," the narrator says. "He’s just too extreme for North Carolina."
In New Orleans, where McCain is visiting in part to court African American voters, McCain reiterated his displeasure with the ad.
“There’s no place in the Republican Party for the kind of ad that was put up by the North Carolina Republican Party. We communicated with them in the strongest possible terms,” he said.
One day after McCain first called for the party to withdraw the ad, a spokesperson for the state North Carolina GOP said the television spot would run next week.
“The ad will still run,” Brent Woodcox, spokesman for the N.C. Republican Party, told ABC News. “It’s going to be rolled out beginning next week.”

blogs.abcnews.com

Aztecs city champs
The San Diego State men’s tennis team defeated the University of San Diego 6-1 last week to claim the city title.
The Aztecs won all but one singles match and swept the doubles.
The biggest upset of the day was in doubles, as San Diego State’s Bartosz Galos and Juan Gomez stunned No. 44-ranked Chris Coetzee and Thomas Liversage.
San Diego State (9-5) is ranked No. 59 in the nation. USD (7-6) is No. 67.
Tee it up
San Diego State finished at 847 and USD at 851 in a field that also included No. 5-ranked Oklahoma State, Southern Methodist, Wichita State, Nevada, Arizona, Illinois, Denver and Coastal Carolina. David Palm led the Aztecs, shooting 9 under and finishing second. SDSU’s Aaron Goldberg (Torrey Pines) was sixth.
On the track

nctimes.com

The number of people employed in North Carolina was essentially flat in the 12 months ending in February, according to the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina. But the seasonally adjusted drop of 76 workers helped make the state unemployment rate 5 percent in February for the first time since December 2005, the ESC said.
The threshold is an important one because economists consider anything under 5 percent to be "full employment."
Seasonally adjusted North Carolina unemployment was at 4.9 percent in January and 4.5 percent in February 2007. U.S. unemployment was at 4.8 percent in February.
ESC's figures suggest an uptick in unemployment activity over the past few months. Revised numbers show that the seasonally adjusted N.C. unemployment rate was 4.7 percent from June 2007 to December 2007, but the figure has increased in each of the past two months.
More people have given up looking for work as well. North Carolina's seasonally adjusted "labor force participation rate," or the percentage of people who are either employed or actively looking for work, dropped 0.3 percentage points from January to 64.9 percent.
ESC will release county unemployment rates for February on April 2.

bizjournals.com

putting the david in davidson
My friends at PRNewswire sent these statistics out Friday regarding the difference in size between Davidson and Wisconsin.
Davidson has 1,700 students, 162 full-time faculty, 600 staff members and 18,723 active alumni. Wisconsin’s total enrollment is 42,041, double the number of Davidson’s students, faculty, staff and alumni combined.
But no matter what, both teams can only put five players on the court at one time.
Who knew? Bobby Knight, responding to a question from fellow college basketball talking head Dick Vitale, confirmed on ESPN on Friday that he was almost hired years ago as head coach at Davidson. Knight didn’t offer further information as to how long ago or who got the job.
They just showed Kansas assistant coach and former Jayhawk star Danny Manning watching the Davidson game.
He was the source of considerable friction between the Kansas and UNC programs more than 20 years ago.
Manning had been playing high school basketball in North Carolina, when then-Kansas head coach Larry Brown hired Danny’s father, Ed, as an assistant coach. Manning was thought to be a sure thing to play at UNC for Dean Smith, but wound up at Kansas, leading the Jayhawks to the 1988 national championship.
So he started it. Len Elmore said his former college coach, Maryland’s Lefty Driesell, was among the first coaches in the ACC to get student sections moved close to the floor. “He was a marketing genius,” said Elmore.
The more I watch Stephen Curry of Davidson, the more he reminds me of another North Carolina kid who was slightly built yet managed to get loose over and over again to make shots from everywhere.
His name was Pete Maravich.
Curry isn’t the ballhandler the Pistol was. There may never be another ballhandler as good as Maravich. But he’s definitely got the shooting part down.

fayobserver.com

NEW HANOVER COUNTY — After a disappointing first year, lottery sales are better than projected for 2008, so far.
A $230 million Powerball jackpot is bringing people to the Han-Dee Hugo's on Shipyard Boulevard. People are scooping up Powerball tickets and taking a look at the other games being sold.
In its first year, the lottery made $100 million less than expected for education. This year, the lottery is close to $20 million ahead of projections.
Last week, the lottery broke its single week sales record.
The latest game, the $100 million Cash Spectacular, is a scratch off game that costs $10 a ticket.
Bigger prizes and better odds are keeping people on the North Carolina side of the lottery border war with South Carolina.
“We live in ocean isle, so we used to go back and forth between south and north Carolina, now we're doing north Carolina to support education and I have kids in school,” said James Coley a lottery customer.
The Powerball prize tonight is more than $230 million. Money like that brings people into the stores, but as clerks said, it also gets people to buy other games.
To go to the Powerball website, click here.

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