Those who would be North Carolina’s governor for the next four years kicked things up a notch Wednesday as two Republican candidates topped off their respective filings for office with some spicy issues and the Democratic incumbent continued to play catch-up.

I’m not sure whether former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot or former Senate minority leader Patrick Ballantine was the line-breaker here, but for some reason both candidates chose to file for the office on the same day, thus forcing themselves into sharing a single set of media stories rather than owning the news cycle for 24 hours. Both Bill Cobey and George Little, who filed earlier in the week, had smoother starts to their official candidacies.

Still, both Vinroot and Ballantine were able to work in some pretty good zingers. Vinroot’s campaign came up with a clever take on the recent appearance of a $200 million surplus in the 2003-04 state budget. Because Gov. Mike Easley and the state legislature generated this (modest) overage by hiking taxes on North Carolina households, Vinroot proposed that the surplus be returned to the taxpayers as a sign of good faith. He even unveiled a web site set up by his campaign, nctaxcut.com, where visitors can sign an online petition to demand the rebate.

For his part, Ballantine said that his decade of experience in the state legislature gave him a leg up in understanding the policy issues and competing with Easley in the fall. “We’ve suffered enormous job losses,” he said of the current governor’s tenure. “The state budget mushrooms each year, our education system is not delivering a quality education to our children. Health care costs are rising and Medicaid costs are out of control.”

Meanwhile, Easley followed up Tuesday’s announcement of a package of business subsidies and tax cuts with a statement Wednesday calling for the creation of a commission to study ethical standards for all statewide elected officials. Apparently in response to the Meg Scott Phipps imbroglio and a questionable prison deal within his own administration, Easley sought to distance himself from the scandals and become a champion for government reform. But since Cobey had already made news earlier in the week with his call for a new commitment to higher ethical standards and practices in state government, Easley’s move looked more like an attempt to catch up than like a bold initiative for reform.

This is not unlike the aforementioned tax cuts, which come after three years of state tax increases supported or proposed by Easley. Obviously he believed these new taxes were needed to preserve valuable government programs (I think they served to preserve needless government programs, and I’ll let you be the judge) but his call now for modest tax relief for some small businesses has to be seen in context — the point Vinroot is trying to stress with his announcement and new web site.

The fall campaign will be here before you know it. First the Republicans must choose a standard-bearer — and today’s pile-up at the elections board didn’t serve to clarify matters much. The July 20 primary is only weeks away, there’s no clear frontrunner or movement among the candidates, and a legislative session beckons.

For political prognosticators, it’s a real pickle.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.