Her story and history.

• Author: Mooneyham, Scott
• Position: CAPITALGOODS - Beverly Perdue

On this, there can be no debate: Beverly Perdue made history. she did it when she became the first woman elected governor of North Carolina. she will do it again when she leaves office as the first governor since gubernatorial succession.

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was allowed here, in 1981, to fail to seek and win a second term. On that second score, it is obviously not the kind of legacy that she had envisioned for herself. But is it what she deserves? Did she do this to herself? Or was she simply caught up in historical tides that left her adrift, with no real course to rescue her political fortunes?

Perdue stunned the state's political establishment in January when she announced that she wouldn't seek a second term. There had been some whispers back in the fall, but no one really believed them. She explained the decision by saying that she didn't want to politicize a debate about adequately funding public schools. "A re-election campaign in this already divisive environment will make it more difficult to find any bipartisan solutions," her official announcement read.

The more likely truth is that she had accepted the obvious, that she wasn't going to win. Her polls numbers remained poor. National publications proclaimed her the nation's most vulnerable incumbent governor. More important, she was increasingly being told no when she dialed for campaign cash. It didn't matter whether the calls were to wealthy individual donors or to a traditional Democratic ally, labor. The answer wasn't always a judgment of her policies. Sometimes it was a judgment on her chances.

Those chances were based on her public standing, and that was based on three difficult years in office. At the start of her term, she didn't seem particularly daunted by her circumstances--taking office just after the financial collapse, during a recession and facing a budget shortfall. Sitting down for an interview with BUSIHESB NORTH CAROLINA in December 2008, she talked about helping small business and encouraging entrepreneurship.

"I'm a realist," she said at the time. "I know it is going to be much slower." Then she added, "I intend to grow a green economy, a military aerospace economy, an agri-biotech economy. I intend to help manufacturing and small businesses and agriculture." She wasn't able to do much of that. Was it her fault? Not really. Did any governor in any state oversee a whole lot of economic growth over the last three years, particularly in Southern states trying...