While most of the country has weighed in on the party primaries, North Carolina has yet to vote. The linked article may be interesting reading for some of my out-of-state readers who are still scratching their heads wondering how a couple of unreconstructed lefties like Barry and myself are surviving life in a red state.

The view on the ground—especially here in Durham—is a bit different. To give you an idea, although NC as a whole went for Bush, our precinct voted 87% for Kerry.

The other odd thing is that the Republicans tend to only run for the national races here. The local politics are still so heavily Democratic that the Republicans often don’t even bother to field a candidate. We have 10 Dems running for 5 county commissioner seats…and no Repubs running at all. So essentially, the Democratic primary is the election.

I’m just amazed and excited that I get to cast my presidential primary vote between two people who are NOT old white men…nothing against old white men…my Dad was an old white man and he was one swell guy.

Another note on the linked article: the paragraph about RTP begins “It’s high-tech economy…” So nice to know that even the AP types “it’s” for “its” sometimes.