Months ago, then-N.C. Republican Party head Tom Fetzer predicted that Gov. Bev Perdue wouldn’t run for a second term.

Fetzer is either pretty sharp, pretty lucky or was just doing his job.

Perdue’s decision not to run might have been part of the Raleigh rumor mill, but not many people took it seriously. A similar rumor about Mike Easley followed the former governor in the weeks leading up to 2004 election filing.

Just a day before her announcement, Perdue staff members appeared to be operating under the assumption that a bid for a second term was coming.

Standing outside the Capitol Building, one of them told me, “It’s going to be an interesting election. I think people are mad.”

Fetzer’s prediction appeared to be based on a belief that scandal – unpaid campaign airplane flights in 2008 – would undo Perdue.

It might have been a factor. It wasn’t the reason.

Like everything else in politics these days, money was the key.

Perdue explained the decision by saying that she didn’t want to politicize a debate about adequately funding the public schools.

“A re-election campaign in this already divisive environment will make it more difficult to find any bipartisan solutions,” Perdue said in a prepared statement. “I hope this decision will open the door to an honest and bipartisan effort to help our schools.”

Perhaps she is right. Perhaps it will.

But in the immediate aftermath of the announcement, political insiders had another explanation: Perdue was increasingly hearing “no” when she picked up the phone to ask for campaign donations.

Perdue’s campaign had reported that it raised $1.3 million during the past six months, and that she had more than $2 million available at the beginning of the year. The Republican that Perdue was expected to face next fall, former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, reported raising slightly more than Perdue during the last six months, but had a similar amount of money on hand.

The numbers don’t look so bad at first blush. Perdue, though, had vastly outspent McCrory in 2008 and barely beaten him.

More troubling might have been what the Democratic governor was hearing going forward.

Big labor, a traditional ally of Democrats, wasn’t going to put as much money into the Perdue campaign this time around. Labor leaders simply weren’t convinced that she could win.

Regardless of the reasons, the decision was unprecedented. Since 1980, when North Carolina began allowing governors to run for more than a single term, the state has had nothing but two-term governors, including one – Jim Hunt – who was a two-time, two-term governor.

Perdue’s announcement sent her fellow Democrats scrambling.

Democratic N.C. Rep. Bill Faison of Orange County had been making noise about a gubernatorial bid for a while. Other names immediately mentioned included Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, Treasurer Janet Cowell, former UNC system president Erskine Bowles and current state Sen. and former N.C. House Speaker Dan Blue.

The result was a lot of uncertainty just a few months before a primary.