by D.G. Martin

Has North Carolina opted out of presidential politics?

While other states are scrambling to get to the head of the line in the presidential primary process, North Carolina goes ìho-hum.î

Even with a very viable and attractive presidential candidate living close by, most North Carolinians are a lot more interested in the prospect for rain than in who might be our president for the next four to eight years.

Why donít we care very much this time?

Maybe folks think that it is simply too early. But the earliness has not kept folks in other parts of the country from going to work for their candidates. Nor has it kept Beverly Perdue, Richard Moore, Fred Smith, Bill Graham and Bob Orr and their supporters from early and vigorous gubernatorial campaigning.

Then maybe itís the candidates. Maybe most North Carolinians have not yet been swept away by any of the candidates so far. Other than Edwards, who has built a loyal core of supporters during his earlier campaigns here, the candidates have not spent enough time here to develop the personal connections and friendships that can be the basis of hardcore political support.

So why donít the candidates spend time here?

The answer is a simple one. North Carolina does not matter to them. Our stateís presidential primaries will take place after other statesí primaries and causes have already determined the party nominees.

So we are left wondering how vigorously contested presidential primaries would turn out here. We will not get to see how John Edwards would do in a Democratic primary. Would he win his own state? Or would he risk being crowded out by the appeal of other candidates? In South Carolina, where his hometown ties are also strong and where he won an early primary contest in 2004, some of the strong support he had from women and blacks has drifted to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. How would conservative North Carolina Democrats react to Edwardsí ìmove to the leftî as he campaigned for support among liberal primary voters in other states?

On the Republican side, I will always wonder how Fred Thompson, the former senator from our neighbor Tennessee, would have done in an early North Carolina primary. He looks good on TV. But those of us who appear from time to time on television know that we come across a lot better in the hands of good script writers, camera operators, directors, editors, make-up artists and expensive hair stylists.

Without all that help every day on the campaign trail, Thompsonís natural look may come across more as gruff, impatient and haggard, rather than the cool, confident district attorney he played on TV. Still, Thompsonís homespun approach might appeal to North Carolinians if it were delivered in person to primary voters here. But we will probably never know.

There is another reason North Carolina will not get much attention from presidential candidates. Conventional political wisdom says that North Carolina is a reliable ìredî or Republican state at the presidential level.

If the candidates think the outcome is not in doubt, why should they spend time and resources here?

However, even if the presidential candidates do not think North Carolina is important to them, the presidential election and the partiesí candidates will be an important part of North Carolina politics.

First of all, not every Democrat is willing to concede the North Carolina presidential contest to the Republicans. But even if there is no question about the ultimate outcome, the person at the top of the ticket will matter to every other candidate running in North Carolina next year.

Prospective Republican candidates for every state and local office are asking whether Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, or someone else would best mobilize and excite the Republican base without turning off more moderate swing voters. And they will be asking which one might be best at appealing to the swing voters without cooling the enthusiasm of the base.

Democrats have the same kinds of concerns.

In short, while North Carolina might not matter to the presidential candidates, who those presidential candidates are matters a lot to North Carolina.

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D.G. Martin is the host of North Carolina Bookwatch, UNC-TVís weekly local literary series.