• TIME reports that three tax-exempt nonprofits that ran campaign ads in North Carolina tacitly supporting Democrats may well have crossed the line into political advocacy, risking their tax-exempt IRS status. The groups are the Natural Resources Defense Council, which ran the ad below mentioning GOP state Sen. Bill Cook; NRDC and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which joined the North Carolina Environmental Partnership to sponsor the “fracking crew” ads targeting four GOP lawmakers; and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which blanketed airwaves with ads attacking the Koch brothers while defending Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. The groups insist the ads had nothing to do with the election. (Ahem.) IRS watchers tell the magazine they think it’s unlikely the IRS will act.
• Senate Republicans chose members to fill committee assignments, and incoming Sen. Thom Tillis is expected to join the important Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, among others. Sen. Richard Burr, who’s up for re-election in 2016, is set to chair the Intelligence Committee. The full Senate has to approve the selections.
• Speaking of the Senate, Gov. Pat McCrory has named a longtime Washington fixture, Jimmy Broughton, as deputy chief of staff. Broughton, a Winston-Salem attorney and Raleigh native, was the late Sen. Jesse Helms’ chief of staff from 1994 until the senator retired in 2003.
• The New York Times offers a big reason outgoing Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan lost to Tillis, notwithstanding a large spending advantage over the Republican challenger: Compared with other recent elections, white Democrats and young voters of all backgrounds stayed home.