• Shameless plug: Tonight, the John Locke Foundation celebrates its 24th anniversary at the North Ridge Country Club. (Info here.) JLF President John Hood looks back at the foundation’s early days here.

• 7th Congressional District candidate Woody White, a Republican county commissioner from New Hanover County, runs the first ad in his campaign for the GOP nomination against former state Sen. David Rouzer.

http://youtu.be/63NQyNlf_JU

• National Review political reporter Jim Geraghty unearths another uncomfortable promise U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan made about Obamacare’s effect on Medicare.

• Rep. Walter Jones officially has an opponent for the GOP nomination in the 3rd Congressional District. Taylor Griffin, a former Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush administration and former political strategist, filed this week.

• State Sen. Bill Rabon, a Southport Republican and a veterinarian, has attracted a challenger thanks to remarks he made in January about the puppy-mill regulations backed by Gov. Pat McCrory. Democrat Ernie Ward, who attended the January constituent meeting at which Rabon called McCrory’s intervention in the legislation “a flagrant violation of power,” will run against Rabon.