Illegal immigration final issue in NC guv's race
Monday, November 3 | 5:12 p.m.

By GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press Writer
North Carolina's close campaign for governor between Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory ended Monday the same way that it started - with allegations about illegal immigration.

Perdue, the Democratic nominee and lieutenant governor, said she had approved running 11th-hour ads to defend her record on illegal immigration after what she called several attacks. An arm of the Republican Governors Association criticized her this fall on the issue in a mailer addressed to her husband, Bob Eaves.

"Finally when it came to my own house, my own mailbox, addressed to Bob, enough is enough," she said on the final stop of her last day of campaigning, a restaurant in Raleigh's fashionable Five Points district. "So we set the record straight."

Perdue's campaign didn't immediately release recordings of the ads. The McCrory campaign provided what it called copies of two ads, which were scattered with Spanish phrases. The narrator in one ad accuses McCrory, Charlotte's mayor, of lying about Perdue's record and allowing illegal immigrants to work on big construction jobs in his city.

"It's time to say adios to Pat McCrory," the narrator says. A man in another ad says: "we'd be loco to vote for Pat McCrory."

McCrory campaign manager Richard Hudson called the ad "an outrageous, personal and racist attack."

"This is a despicable act of desperation by the lieutenant governor that marks a new low for North Carolina gubernatorial politics," he said.

McCrory's campaign talked up illegal immigration three days after he and Perdue won their respective primaries in May, accusing Perdue of supporting a policy that allows illegal immigrants to attend the state's community colleges.

But Perdue and McCrory both had said publicly that they had opposed the policy. A McCrory strategist said at the time that Perdue had failed to take action in her capacity as president of the state Senate or a member of the community college board to reverse the policy.

The mailer by the GOP governors group accused Perdue of "rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants" and supporting or voting for legislation that would have expanded benefits for them.

It was unclear late Monday where the radio ads were airing, but McCrory spokeswoman Amy Auth said his campaign staffers had heard the ads playing in eastern North Carolina.

The Perdue ads accused McCrory of saying that "the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte needed illegal workers to keep costs down." But Auth said the ad is untruthful.

In a 2006 interview with The Charlotte Observer, McCrory was asked whether the city could meet its $150 million budget on the Hall of Fame "without illegal immigrant workers?"

McCrory was quoted as saying: "I don't know. I would hope so. I think it could be. I'm making an assumption that the contractors we hire would be following the law."

Perdue and McCrory crisscrossed North Carolina on election eve Monday, trying to build up supporters and urging undecided voters to choose them to become the successor to Democratic Gov. Mike Easley.

Libertarian Mike Munger also is running.

http://www.columbian.com/article/20081103/APP/811031277