Consultant: Small -- not medium -- is the message.

• Author: Gray, Tim

The candidate looks lost. Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker, perfectly barbered and heavily starched, stands in the doorway to the conference room of his campaign headquarters. He jerks his head between the newspaper reporter at his side and political consultant Gary Pearce, who's talking to another reporter at a Coke-can-littered table. Pearce, in a blue, V-neck sweater, khakis and moccasins, is about as reclined as you can get in a molded-plastic chair, his butt just catching the front edge, shoulder blades propped on the back. He's a straight line from the fingers laced behind his head to the crossed, bare ankles poking out of the worn cuffs of his pants.

"We can go somewhere else," Pearce volunteers. But he doesn't move, doesn't even straighten up in the chair the way folks do when the boss shows up. His body belies his words. "No, uh, well, we'll just go to my office," Wicker says, retreating.

The interaction shows what both men know: Wicker, way behind Attorney General Mike Easley in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor, needs Pearce more than Pearce needs Wicker. The lieutenant governor is earnest, smart and hard-working, but he's spent the last eight years in a job that's the political equivalent of an office without a phone. Pearce, as he must, insists candidates are far more important than consultants. Truth is, candidates come and go, but consultants are a constant. And in North Carolina, none is more prominent these days than Pearce.

To Wicker's campaign, as to others, he brings a hefty Rolodex. Two of them, actually. They sit on the credenza behind the desk at his Raleigh office. Spinning through them, Pearce found Wicker a campaign manager, a research director and Harrison Hickman, one of the country's leading Democratic pollsters. More important, Pearce bestowed the Jim Hunt halo on Wicker. Pearce has been the governor's adviser since 1976 and still consults for him. Hunt calls him "an unconventional thinker with great ideas about strategy. Gary understands that folks can't follow a 20-point program. They can follow three points, and you can make three very dear." Hunt, with an approval rating of more than 70% in his 16th year in office, stays neutral in Democratic primaries, and Pearce insists his work with Wicker implies no endorsement. But

Hunt and Pearce might be the only people in the state who believe that.

A Wicker win would do Pearce good. Hunt, his most reliable client, will leave office in January without plans...