In his column on the U.S. Senate race, the Charlotte Observer’s Jack Betts gives Jim Neal a little more ink, in the process paying John Edwards a left-handed compliment:

Neal has a hard row to hoe, but not because he’s gay. It’s because he’s an unknown candidate who hasn’t run for office before. Of course, so was John Edwards in 1997 when he decided to challenge Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth. But Edwards had a ton of money to put into the race.

When Neal came by several weeks ago to chat, he struck me as a focused, intelligent candidate who knew more about what he wanted to do in the Senate than Edwards did when he first got into the 1998 Senate race. I also thought it would be a quixotic run against a well-known incumbent.

Of course the lingering question is whether or not Edwards has figured out what he’s doing now that he’s in the presidential race.