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Elizabeth Dole wouldn't have been running prior to when she did as she was a resident of another state, and Jesse was still holding the seat. And she didn't run in the early 1990's. She ran in 2002.

I know when Dole ran for that seat. I used the early 1990s as the frame of reference because that's the time period covered in these population figures. Do you honestly think a candidate of Dole's caliber could have been elected in North Carolina in, say, 1986? My guess is that she would have gotten her @ss kicked by a conservative Democrat. Unless she were running as a conservative Democrat, of course.

And suburbs tend to vote republican.

Ask anyone in the New York City metropolitan area what a "suburban Republican" is, and I'll bet most Republicans in this country wouldn't even recognize them.

Suburban Republicans have elected people like George Pataki, Tom Kean, and Christie Todd Whitman to office. The more suburban Republicans you get down there in North Carolina (especially as they move there from New York), the more your GOP candidates are going to start looking like these people. Trust me -- Liddy Dole is only the beginning.

My simple warning to you folks is this . . . Don't make the mistake of confusing "Republican" with "conservative" when these former New Yorkers start moving in next door.

Let me know when "Conservative Democrats" start approaching anything resembling a conservative.

Suburban Republicans have elected people like George Pataki, Tom Kean, and Christie Todd Whitman to office. The more suburban Republicans you get down there in North Carolina (especially as they move there from New York), the more your GOP candidates are going to start looking like these people. Trust me -- Liddy Dole is only the beginning.

Again, you're confusing the northern liberals, who wouldn't move South if you paid 'em, with the escapees, who are glad to reach saner territory.

I live in the North Carolina suburbs, bursting with Yankees -- and NC suburbs are the driving force of conservatism in the state right now. You want good conservatives, you look at the senators and reps from Mecklenburg and Wake. You want RINOs? Try rural Moore County.

The only suburban liberals 'round here are the hippies around Chapel Hill et al, buncha rich white granola-eating elitist professors.

The normal suburbanites have good jobs, send their kids to private or parochial school, have insurance through their jobs, and go to church on Sunday. Their primary interest is to keep their property, income, and business taxes down and resist disruptions to social order like "gay rights".

On the other hand they don't have the same appetite for good-old-boy us-vs-them rhetoric that has allowed Dems to hold sway over rural NC.