The 2008 primary election campaign certainly gave Tar Heel voters a no-holds-barred mix of the good, the bad and the just plain ugly.

The Good: The neck-and-neck Democratic presidential primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton not only ramped up interest in the campaign across the state, but actually made North Carolina's primary – historically just a political afterthought – important to the outcome of the contest. Voter registration levels surged, Tar Heel voters were treated to in-person appearances by the two Democratic rivals and their families and the spotlight of the national media was leveled directly at our state.

The Bad: While that spotlight shown brightly on our state, the N.C. Republican Party released a television commercial featuring some of Obama's former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's more objectionable comments as it pointed out that the two main candidates vying for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination – Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and N.C. State Treasurer Richard Moore – had endorsed Obama. Despite condemnation from presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and the Republican National Committee, N.C. GOP Chairwoman Linda Daves not only stuck by the ad but later boasted about how many political contributions it generated for the party.

The Just Plain Ugly: In one of the nastier gubernatorial primary battles in recent memory, Moore went over the edge in the latter days of the campaign by running ads seeking to portray Perdue as some kind of secret Ku Klux Klan sympathizer on the basis of a single vote she made in the legislature and items bearing the Confederate flag sold in retail stores owned by her husband. This last-ditch effort by Moore to close the gap with Perdue even brought the condemnation of former Gov. Jim Hunt, a politician never known for going easy on his political adversaries.

So with just two days remaining until election day, voters should be prepared to ride this roller-coaster-ride of an election year all the way to November.