Posted on 04/20/2014 6:47:37 AM PDT by cotton1706
GREENSBORO — As the May 6 primary draws near, national attention is intensely focused on North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race — already one of the most expensive and hotly contested in the country.
Eight Republicans are vying for the chance to take on Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat. Millions have been spent on ads by political groups from outside the state. Accusations, scandal-mongering and open political civil war have become the campaign’s daily routine.
“That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise,” said Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science and history at Catawba College. “Kay Hagan is in that endangered species category. She is very vulnerable, and the Republicans see a good chance to take the seat and the Senate.”
Just which Republican can defeat Hagan is, at this point, the big question.
Democrats Will Stewart and Ernest Reeves and Libertarians Sean Haugh and Tim D’Annunzio have also filed for the seat, but none is expected to be a real factor in November’s election.
“This Republican primary is the continuation of what the Republican Party as a whole has been seeing — a sort of uncivil war within itself,” Bitzer said. “With these candidates Republicans are coming down to the pragmatic question, ‘How do we win this election?’ versus ‘Are you enough of an ideologue?’”
Recent polls show Thom Tillis, speaker of the N.C. House, at the head of the GOP pack by anywhere from a few percentage points to double digits. Tillis is one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, part of the GOP majority in Raleigh that has brought sweeping conservative changes to the state in the past few years.
(Excerpt) Read more at journalnow.com ...
A failure to win this seat would be a national embarrassment for the Republicans. Hagan has to be one of most useless Senators ever. Her IQ probably rivals the temperatures of NC during this past Winter.
Don.t bother to vote for Tillis.
Go for broke and write in Karl Rove.
Not on policy, but on something about him arranging a golden parachute for a couple of aides. "It cost the taxpayers $19,000."
If that's the best she can do...
“Hagan’s already running attack ads against Tillis.
Not on policy, but on something about him arranging a golden parachute for a couple of aides. “It cost the taxpayers $19,000.”
If that’s the best she can do...”
It’s also probably a McCaskill strategy so that people will say “hey, Hagan’s afraid of Tillis, then I’ll vote for Tillis” when Tillis is the establishment, go along guy who will vote like Richard Burr, that is, give the democrats (and McConnell) a vote when they need one.
North Carolina is a pretty good example of what the Democrats are facing. Sen. Kay Hagan will be at the top of the ticket. The fact that a wealthy white woman will be leading the Democratic ticket makes it unlikely that many of the voters who went to the polls in 2008 and 2012 to vote for the first black president are going to bother to go to the polls to give a millionaire white woman her second term.
Pundits predict, with good reason, that the turnout in November will be whiter and wealthier than the turnout in 2008 or 2012. In presidential elections between 40 percent and 50 percent of the electorate generally vote. With Obama on the ticket that increased to over 60 percent. That additional 10 percent or so didn’t show up to vote for Sen. John McCain or Mitt Romney. The majority went to the polls to vote for Obama.
Despite that fact Romney carried North Carolina in 2012. But more importantly, Gov. Pat McCrory won the governor’s race and Republicans won both the state House and state Senate by large margins.
Another change that is going to affect the race is the abolition of straight-ticket voting. People who have been going to the polls for years and hitting the straight party ticket are not going to be able to do that and are going to find themselves tediously going through the ballot to vote for each race. It will be interesting to see what the fall off is for the down ticket races like state House, state Senate and county commissioner.
http://www.rhinotimes.com/under-the-hammer-4-17-14.html
Apparently the Hagan Campaign has some “surprises” to pull out of the bag on Brannon and that’s why they’re hoping he is Hagan’s opponent in November. Tillis.... well, we all know he has baggage. So, I’m thinking Mark Harris might be the one to “save” this race for the GOP. I’m sure he has the less skeletons in the closet, that could come out in the Fall. And, I don’t think he would make the Rookie, Tea Party gaffes that so many of our Tea Party Candidates make. Bevin and Wolf have pretty well joined the ranks of Akin and Mourdock. If I lived in NC, right now, I’d be going with Harris.
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