President-elect Obama has won North Carolina, a symbolic triumph in a state that hadn’t voted for a Democrat in more than a generation.
The Associated Press declared Obama the winner Thursday after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots.
That survey found that there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican John McCain to close a 13,693-vote deficit.
North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes brings Obama’s total to 364 — nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call.
Obama’s win in North Carolina was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976.
As President-elect Barack Obama pulls together a cabinet and staff within the coming months, two familiar to Duke and North Carolinians are rumored to be among those he is considering.
Former Duke distinguished lecturer Anthony Zinni is in line for national security adviser. Zinni is a retired marine general and former head of the U.S. Central Command. Last Spring, he taught an undergraduate class through Duke’s Hart Leadership Program called Leading in a New World, which focused on how leaders and organizations are responding to a changing world.
Former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt is rumored to be a candidate for education secretary. Hunt served as governor from 1977-1985 and again from 1993-2001, and also served on current Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ federal Commission on the Future of Education
Mike Munger, the Libertarian candidate for governor and chair of Duke’s political science department, reflected on his bid in a DukeNews YouTube clip Wednesday, calling it “one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever been so glad is finished.”
Results show he secured just under 3 percent of the vote, meaning Libertarian candidates will remain on the ballot through 2012. Munger passed the threshold required by North Carolina’s ballot access law, one of the most rigid in the country for Libertarians to automatically be placed on the ballot. He captured 120,000 votes Tuesday, but to get on the ballot in the first place he had to petition for more than 100,000 signatures.
He’ll resume focus on teaching (throughout the campaign, he never stopped), but according to the Independent Weekly, Munger isn’t finished campaigning just yet. At a party at Raleigh’s University Club, he announced he would seek the State Senate seat in 2010, and his campaign manager Barbara Howe told The Chronicle Tuesday that he hadn’t ruled out another run for the state’s top spot in 2012.
In the clip, he also comments on parties, and the impact Democratic support had on Barack Obama’s election. “The main reason Barack Obama won… was the ground game they played here in North Carolina.”
Having played some ground game himself, logging tens of thousands of miles campaigning across the state, he says he has new perspective to inform his teaching.
“Anyone who teaches political science should have lost an election,” he jokes.
Here’s betting his political science class had a rousing discussion today.
John Hope Franklin, professor emeritus of history, called the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States “one of the most historic moments—if not the most historic moment—in the history of the country.”
Franklin says he suspected “people would be reluctant to see an African-American president of the United States… [but he] knew it would come sooner or later.”
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is officially the most popular Democrat in North Carolina. Cooper picked up 2.5 million votes, or 61% of the electorate in the Nov. 4 election, more than any other candidate.
In April 2007, it was Cooper who officially ended the case against the three Duke Lacrosse players falsely accused of rape. As Naureen Khan reported in The Chronicle, Cooper ran an ad based on his role in the case. In the ad, Cooper emphasizes his use of DNA testing to prove whether people are guilty of the crimes they are being charged with committing. See the ad below:
