The spoiler who could deliver NC Senate seat to Kay Hagan

americanthinker.com ^ | 7/7/14 | Thomas Lifson

[cotton1706]

By all rights, the GOP should easily pick up the North Carolina Senate seat currently held by Kay Hagan. Except:

Most evenings, Sean Haugh is a pizza deliveryman.

But every other week or so, the Libertarian Party’s Senate nominee in North Carolina opens a few craft beers on the counter of the bar in his campaign manager’s basement. He takes deep gulps from a pint glass bearing an image of Austrian-school economist Mur­ray Rothbard and expresses his Everyman frustrations with the current political system into a video camera.

So far, Haugh’s campaign barely exists anywhere but on YouTube. But it is doing surprisingly well in a high-stakes Senate contest in which candidates and outside groups have already spent more than $15 million.

Four polls lately put his support somewhere between 8 and 11 percent — not enough to suggest a realistic possibility of winning, but conceivably enough to affect the outcome of the race. The same surveys show the margin between incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan and her GOP challenger, state House Speaker Thom Tillis, at six points or less.

When I see a candidate who claims to be for small government but whose candidacy will hand a Senate seat to someone who will vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader, I see red. It’s time for people to denounce Haugh as the spoiler and egotist he is.

[Sirius Lee]

I don’t know Ann Archy.

No, you don't. You need to apologize.

[Admin Moderator]

Knock off the personal attacks and profanity.

[MUDDOG]

Correction to my Post #35:

In NC, the 40% runoff rule applies only to primaries. You can win the general election with any plurality.

So the gist of my earlier post still stands, that Kay Hagan can win by splitting the nonliberal vote.

Georgia has a 50%+1 runoff rule for the general election, which allowed Repub Paul Coverdell in 1992 to defeat in a runoff the incumbent Democratic US senator Wyche Fowler, who had won the plurality in the general election.

[MUDDOG]

Correction #2:

I just voted in the Repub primary run-off, and talked to the poll workers.

Here's the rule for NC:

You can vote in the Repub primary run-off if

1. You are registered Repub, whether or not you voted in the original primary; or
2. You are registered unaffiliated AND you voted in the original Repub primary.

(NC gives unaffiliated voters the choice of which party primary to vote in for the original primary.)

[MUDDOG]

Dang it, I meant the previous post for you, and forgot to change the "To" field.

Please see Post #66.