North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue has decided to pursue re-election this year with a strategy catering to left-leaning voters, including a push for a statewide sales-tax increase. John Locke Foundation President John Hood panned that strategy this week. His column on the topic attracted attention from the Beaufort Observer and N.C. Senate Republicans. The Senate GOP also promoted in its daily press email Hood’s columns on liberals’ three lines of attack against the Republican-led General Assembly and the connection between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. The Greensboro News & Record‘s “Mixing It Up” column quoted from Hood’s recent assessment of a late-night vote to override one of Perdue’s vetoes. The News & Observer‘s Rob Christensen cited Hood in a column about conservative graduates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Letters to the Franklin Press criticizing Hood prompted the newspaper to publish an editorial justifying its decision to run his syndicated column. ThePresidency.us promoted Hood’s recent column previewing the 2012 election season. Hood’s latest contributions to National Review Online’s primary blog, “The Corner,” include an entry on liberal filmmaker Michael Moore.