Feb. 1--WASHINGTON -- The earliest Carolinas reaction to President Bush's State of the Union address came at 6:56 p.m. Tuesday -- two hours before the president showed up at the Capitol.

In a statement e-mailed to reporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., gave a thumbs-up to Bush's calls for energy independence using advances in technology.

"The hydrogen economy of the future could ... well be developed in South Carolina," Graham said. "What Detroit was to the automotive industry, South Carolina can be to hydrogen."

Other Carolinas tidbits surrounding the State of the Union:

-- GOP Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte, who's mulling a 2008 run for N.C. governor, finagled a seat in the House gallery for former state Sen. Patrick Ballantine, the GOP's 2004 candidate for governor. The two also dined before the speech at the Oceanaire, a pricey seafood restaurant a few blocks from the White House.

Was Myrick angling for an early endorsement?

"We haven't even discussed that yet," Ballantine said during a brief phone interview around dinnertime Tuesday. "It may come up. ... She and I are friends. She asked me to come up, and I was thrilled to be going to the State of the Union."

-- Right behind the president as he entered the House chamber just before 9 p.m. were Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. -- both members of Congress' "escort committee." They're part of their respective parties' leadership.

-- Far from Washington, partisans gathered at more than 2,000 State of the Union "watch parties." National Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean attended one in Durham, at a restaurant called Satisfaction -- probably not the word to describe Dean's reaction to the president's address.

-- In Kannapolis, meanwhile, CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester watched the speech with former employees of Pillowtex Corp., the textile company that laid off 7,650 workers -- 4,800 of them in North Carolina -- in 2003. She made the trip to get their reactions to Bush's comments on trade and the economy.

-- The Tar Heel State is ahead of the president in his call for home-grown energy solutions:

A 54 million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant is planned for Beaufort County, on the central N.C. coast. Another ethanol plant is being discussed in Hoke County, 100 miles southeast of Charlotte.

Duke Power and Progress Energy are considering plans for new nuclear plants, the state's first in more than 20 years.