By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

SOUTH BEND, Ind -- North Carolina voters will choose between Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory (R) in a November election to choose a successor to a two-term Democratic governor barred from seeking a third term.

In Indiana, with nearly all of the votes counted in the battle to choose a Democratic rival to Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), political novice Jim Schellinger and former congresswoman Jill Long Thompson were separated by about 600 votes out of 1.07 million votes cast.

North Carolina's Democratic contest cost Perdue, 61, and state Treasurer Richard Moore, 47, about $16 million as they tried to push past each other amid the clamor of the most intense presidential primary in the state since 1988 -- also the last time a Republican was elected governor.

Down-ticket races in Indiana were all but swallowed by the attention paid to the Democratic presidential primary between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Nearly half of likely voters in Indiana's Democratic gubernatorial primary described themselves as undecided less than two weeks before the polls opened.

Schellinger, 48, is a newcomer to politics, an Indianapolis architect who grew up in a working-class South Bend home and attended the University of Notre Dame. He substantially outraised Long Thompson and counted among his backers Joe Kernan, a former governor.

Long Thompson, 55, grew up on a farm and represented South Bend in Congress for three terms, ending in 1995. She later served in a rural development job in the Clinton administration.

Daniels, a former White House budget director under President Bush, was unopposed in the Republican primary. He is drawing on a campaign fund that dwarfs the resources of Schellinger and Long Thompson.