The Edwards pick may give Democratic Senate candidate Erskine Bowles a slight boost in North Carolina, on the assumption that he’ll bring more NC Dems to the polls in November–perhaps not enough for Kerry-Edwards to top Bush-Cheney, but maybe enough to help Bowles edge past GOP congressman Richard Burr in the Senate race. On the other hand, Doug Heye of the Burr campaign made the following points to me in a phone conversation a few minutes ago: 1. This will make it harder for Bowles to stay away from the Democratic national ticket, which is something he’s been trying to do; 2. The pick energizes Republicans as much as Democrats. “We’ve already gotten a few calls this morning from people offering to volunteer for us,” says Heye; 3. Burr has nothing to fear from Edwards–even before Edwards announced that he wouldn’t be running for re-election, Burr was in the race, i.e., he was originally preparing to take on the single-term senator. Looks like he’s going to wind up doing that, at some level, after all.