Jesse's rod

摘要

Senate races in North Carolina are nearly always tight. Politicians as different as Jesse Helms and John Edwards can tell you that. The race to succeed would-be Vice-President Edwards is no exception. For much of the past summer Richard Burr, the Republican candidate for the Senate, trailed his Democratic rival, Erskine Bowles, by as much as 10 percentage points. Now they are neck and neck. Mr Burr had a slow start largely because the five-term congressman and one-time sales manager was barely known by voters outside his own district. Mr Bowles was Bill Clinton's chief of staff and ran for the state's other Senate seat in 2002 (but was beaten by Elizabeth Dole). Mr Burr caught up after he had unleashed a $6m advertising blitzkrieg in late September, hammering Mr Bowles as the worst kind of liberal. The once rather gentlemanly Mr Burr said his supporters wanted "skin to rip and blood to flow".