RALEIGH For Republican state legislators, it's the ugliest primary season in years. In districts scattered across the state, legislators associated with Republican Co-Speaker Richard Morgan - who made an alliance with Democratic Co-Speaker Jim Black last year - are locked in angry battles before Tuesday's primary that focus on party betrayals and breaking no-tax-increase pledges:

If Ralph Nader had any shame left -- already a big if, and waxing -- he would quit his presidential run in embarrassment. Increasingly, it owes its thin breath of life, not to any popular groundswell, but to cynical resuscitation by Republicans -- and often by the most conservative Republicans at that. Is this any way for a hyper-liberal to act?

Few people like higher taxes, and elected officials often stake their political careers on promising not to raise them. The seven Republican candidates running for three seats on the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners are all making such promises, though they vary in how far they will go on that pledge. The primary is Tuesday. The top three winners will face Democrat William McDonough and Libertarian Richard Norman in November.

A soccer mom who her hurt shoulder after tripping over a cooler at a concession area can sue the nonprofit athletic association that organized a tournament, a state appeals court ruled yesterday. While state law protects youth groups from lawsuits by spectators, the court said Karin Roberts of Winslow Township, Camden County, may sue the Timber Birch- Broadmoor Athletic Association because she says she was a volunteer who kept score and provided first aid for kids.

The leader of a Republican-leaning anti-tax group says his organization is ready to collect petition signatures to help Ralph Nader win a spot on Oregon's presidential ballot by the Aug. 24 deadline. Democrats are challenging Mr. Nader's efforts to appear on ballots in some states. In San Francisco on Tuesday, his running mate, Peter Camejo, compared the Democratic Party to "a dictator" using fear and false rhetoric to give voters the illusion they have an open electoral system.

Ralph Nader's Oregon campaign was cleared Friday to circulate petitions statewide, the third effort to get him on the state's presidential election ballot. State elections officials gave the go-ahead after Nader supporters picked a "stand-in" running mate in Oregon for the independent presidential candidate because of the state's election requirements. Backers now have to collect and turn in 15,306 validated voter signatures by Aug. 24 to put Nader on the Nov. 2 ballot.