RALEIGH – The North Carolina primaries are coming up on July 20. Are voters primed and ready to participate in these oddly timed, midsummer contests?

My colleagues and I at Carolina Journal and the John Locke Foundation are doing our part to generate an affirmative response to this question. As regular readers know, we’ve been publishing a steady stream of articles and columns profiling the major issues, races, and candidates in North Carolina this year. For the past few weeks, I’ve also devoted my syndicated column for newspapers across the state to major statewide primaries for governor, lieutenant governor, Council of State, and Congress.

I’m also pleased to announce that I’ll be participating in an Election Night radio program on July 20 produced by my friends and colleagues at “N.C. Spin”. Our wall-to-wall returns and analysis of North Carolina races will begin at 7 p.m. and continue throughout the evening until all the major contests have been called. Over at the John Locke Foundation’s blog, “The Locker Room,” I posted a listed of radio stations already signed up to carry the show. I think we’re up to 27 affiliates.

To read up on some of the issues candidates are debating this year, you can look at the Locke Foundation’s most recent briefing book for state and local candidates. We’re currently working on an updated book, “Agenda 2004,” which will be published later this summer. We’ll follow it up this fall with our traditional statewide opinion poll probing voter sentiments about general-election contests and public-policy matters. Our previous surveys on taxes, the state budget, education, transportation, health care, government reform, and others are available here, here, and here.

In the last several days before the July 20 primaries, I’m going to devote this column to profiling some of the races that haven’t gotten a lot of attention yet by the print and broadcast media or Carolina Journal. They include party primaries for insurance commissioner, agriculture commissioner, state court of appeals, state auditor, and some U.S. House seats. Meanwhile, Chad Adams of JLF‘s Center for Local Innovation will be posting some previews here at Carolina Journal Online of some of North Carolina’s most spirited primaries for county commission seats. Finally, we’ll be taping our last pre-primary edition of our weekly newsmagazine, “Carolina Journal Radio”, which will include some election analysis and is available on 17 commercial radio stations.

As usual, we welcome your comments and suggestions about how we can better serve our readers, listeners, and viewers across the state. Thanks for choosing to be among them.

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