State Sen. Dan Blue, who was the first black House speaker in modern Southern history, says he may run for governor of North Carolina.
“I have talked to scores of people and given some thought to it and some analysis,” the Raleigh Democrat told the
News & Observer in an interview published Wednesday. “It’s a pretty significant undertaking, and you just don’t dash to it.”
Gov. Bev Perdue has said she will not seek re-election. So far three Democrats, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, state Rep. William Faison, and former U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge have already announced they are running for the party’s nomination.
But if Blue, 62, does decide to run, he could be a serious factor in the May 8 Democratic party, where an estimated 30 percent of the voters would be African-American, the News & Observer said.
Blue was first elected to the North Carolina House in 1980 and served as speaker from 1991 to 1994, the year Republicans took control.
He was in the state House from 1981 to 2002 and again from 2006 to 2009, when he was appointed to the state Senate. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2002 but came in second in the Democratic primary.
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