NPR's Morning Edition on Wake school board elections

The Wake County school board election runoff made today's edition of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" show.

During the segment, Dave DeWitt of WUNC painted this year's election to the national audience as a d Democratic backlash to Republican businessman Art Pope. He credits Pope with the 2009 school board election results that brought in the new majority, a hotly debated charge over the past two years.

"The chief architect of the 2009 turnaround was a local businessman named Art Pope," DeWitt says. "He spends millions of dollars funding a statewide network of conservative think tanks, election advocacy groups and PACs.

After winning the Wake school board races, the Pope Machine last year used similar tactics to help Republicans win majorities in the North Carolina legislature and pick up a seat on the Congressional delegation. Now Democratic-leaning groups are striking back."

DeWitt points to the various attacks by these groups, in particular those taken by Progress NC Action, a liberal advocacy group that has targeted Heather Losurdo throughout the campaign.

"During the campaign, a group called Progress NC Action has publicized her 20-year old bankruptcy, a job she held at a strip club in 1993 and her positive reaction to a racist joke her husband posted about President Obama an Facebook," DeWitt says. "None of those are likely to play well with voters in her district, suburban North Raleigh. It's a relatively affluent area evenly split between registered Democrats and Republicans and has a high number of Independents."

CORRECTED SPELLING OF DEWITT'S LAST NAME TO CAPITALIZE THE W