as the honorary chair for the Charlotte chapter of the Alzheimer's Foundation and the Arthritis Foundation. Governor of North Carolina Elections 2008 McCrory reportedly commissioned a poll to test the waters for a run for governor in November 2007, shortly after his seventh mayoral re-election victory, but well after other Republican gubernatorial candidates had begun campaigning. A 2007 Rasmussen Reports poll had McCrory leading both major Democratic candidates, Bev Perdue and Richard H. Moore, by three points each. The Raleigh News & Observer reported on January 9, 2008, that McCrory had filed the necessary paperwork with the State Board of Elections to run for governor. He announced his candidacy in his hometown of Jamestown on January 15, 2008. In the primary election on May 6, 2008, McCrory defeated four opponents, including State Senator Fred Smith, to win the Republican nomination for governor. During the primary, McCrory was criticized for lacking conservative credentials and for the high taxes and large debt accrued in Charlotte while he was mayor. McCrory countered with negative ads against his foremost opponent, Sen. Fred Smith, inaccurately accusing Smith of running up state debt while in the legislature. In the general election, Democratic lieutenant governor Bev Perdue raised $5.6 million and ran attack ads against McCrory, criticizing him on various issues. McCrory later referred to the ads as "shameless, inaccurate, and negative". Perdue and McCrory remained close, with the two often polling in a statistical tie in what was the tightest race for governor in the nation. The McCrory campaign spent $3.4 million, and an independent expenditure funded by the Republican Governor's association assisted McCrory with a further $6.2 million in spending for attack ads on Perdue. Perdue ran slightly behind her opponent in polls released the week before the election. Pundits speculated that Perdue was hurt by belonging to the same party as the increasingly unpopular incumbent Governor Mike Easley, and by McCrory's efforts to tag her as part of corruption in Raleigh. Consultants also mentioned Perdue's "difficulty of being the candidate of continuity in a change election." In October 2008, McCrory received the endorsement of most major newspapers in the state, which typically endorse Democrats. McCrory's candidacy for governor was endorsed by the Raleigh News and Observer, the Charlotte Observer, the Greensboro News & Record, the Winston-Salem Journal, and the UNC-Chapel Hill Daily Tar Heel. Even so, Perdue squeaked out a win with 2,146,083 votes