The Old Reliable endorses McCrory

That agitated buzz you heard Sunday maybe have been from the steady conversation zipping across the political spectrum Sunday after The News & Observer, long the state's most important politicial newspaper, endorsed Republican Pat McCrory for governor.

The N&O was once known as The Old Reliable -- though not just for its steady support of Democrats dating to the days when its owners, the Daniels family of Raleigh, were involved nationally in Democratic Party politics. It had never previously endorsed a Republican for president, U.S. Senator or governor on its editorial pages -- at least as far as Editorial Page Editor Steve Ford knows. "I haven't carefully researched the matter, but I don't remember any such previous endorsement during my time with the paper (since 1981), and I doubt there was one before that," he said in an e-mail Monday.

Ferrel Guillory, a former reporter, editor, columnist and opinion writer with the News & Observer and now a professor of journalism and director of the program on public life at UNC Chapel Hill, thought the paper had always endorsed Democrats, even in 1928 when Al Smith, a Catholic, was abandoned by Democrats elsewhere across the South because they were alarmed by his faith. The McCrory endorsement, he said, "Is a clear break for the N&O from its past."

Like the Charlotte Observer, the N&O has also endorsed Barack Obama for president and Kay Hagan for Senate. They're both Democrats. And, of course, the N&O has also endorsed Republicans in other offices down the ballot, including in this election.

While the state's other large newspapers, including the Observer and the Greensboro News-Record had previously endorsed Republicans, the Old Reliable had not. John Hood of the Locke Foundation called the endorsement of McCrory over Democrat Bev Perdue "jaw-dropping," though I doubt it truly stunned anyone. Endorsements by newspapers have run steadily against Perdue, except in Eastern N.C. papers in Wilmington and Greenville and the Sandhills area paper in Southern Pines -- owned by several Daniels family members.

It's worth remembering that the News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer were ring leaders in the late 19th-century effort to undermine the Republican Party and overturn a Fusion government of Republicans and African Americans in Wilmington and replace them with Democrats. That episode is thought to be the only coup in the United States turning out a legally elected government.