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North Carolina's rightward turn could be boon to Kay Hagan
The legislative session that just ended in North Carolina was a conservative bonanza — and Tar Heel State Democrats think that may be just what Sen. Kay Hagan needed to save her seat.
Next fall, Hagan (D-N.C.) will defend her seat in a Republican-controlled red state that narrowly went to Mitt Romney in 2012. The state’s Democrats are betting that the recent actions of the state Legislature will be perceived as overreach, helping out Hagan: Tougher abortion restrictions, broader conceal-carry powers and more stringent voter ID requirements all passed out of the statehouse following a busy and controversial session of the state Legislature.
Democrats are eager to tie the eventual Republican challenger to the statehouse — especially if House Speaker Thom Tillis receives the nomination.
Along with Democratic-held seats in the red states of Alaska, Louisiana and Arkansas, Hagan’s spot is considered a top pickup opportunity for Republicans, who need six more senators to take control of the upper chamber.
But Democrats note that North Carolina isn’t as deeply red as other places with competitive races, arguing that Romney barely won the state in 2012 and noting that President Barack Obama took the state in 2008. If they can paint the North Carolina GOP as being too extreme, the thinking goes, they can garner enough centrist votes to keep a hold on the Senate seat.
“Any Senate race is going to be a bit of a fight, but three months ago, I would have thought it was going to be a lot tougher than it is now,” longtime Democratic strategist Thomas Mills told POLITICO.
On Monday night, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed a controversial abortion bill that critics charge would restrict access to the procedure; supporters say it bolsters clinic standards. He also approved a gun bill that allows more leeway for where gun owners with conceal-carry permits can bring their weapons even as it adds more information to the state’s background checks system. The governor has also signaled that he will sign a measure that increases requirements for voting, among a bevy of other bills.
“The first thought is this: The bills passing are not right for the state of North Carolina,” said a North Carolina Democrat who is close to the Hagan campaign. “Beyond that, I think any strategist would look and be able to tell that Thom Tillis and [Senate Leader] Phil Berger are going to be caught up in the wildly unpopular legislation.”
Still, observers on both sides of the aisle note that Hagan needs to tread carefully. North Carolina has a more conservative electorate, and Republicans argue that if Obama couldn’t win over those voters during a devastating year for the GOP nationally, a Democratic candidate in a nonpresidential election has a tough road ahead.
Tillis is among the better-known Republican contenders for the seat, and Berger, among others, could jump in the race, but Democrats are invoking the activities of the state Legislature, regardless of who scores the nomination. They say the GOP-dominated statehouse has energized a broad coalition of opposition and hope to capitalize on that enthusiasm.
“In a low-turnout election where you’ve got nothing else on the ticket, no president, no gubernatorial, nothing … the party that has the most motivated voters tends to win,” Mills said. “It’s going to be very interesting to see because I think generally in an election like that, it’s driven totally by national mood. There’s [now] the possibility that it’s going to be driven by reaction to the state Legislature.”
Democrats point to “Moral Monday” rallies — weekly protests against the state Legislature’s actions over the past several months — as one encouraging sign for 2014.
On Monday, a rally in Raleigh drew 10,000 people largely protesting elements of the budget, according to organizers in news reports, though police pegged that turnout at closer to 3,000. Still, it was considered the biggest Moral Monday rally since the protests kicked off in April, reports said. On a smaller scale, Mills also pointed to an event in a “little tiny town” near Asheville that, he said, drew 450 people earlier this week.
“You don’t get that kind of reaction unless people are pissed,” he said.
A survey released earlier this month from the Raleigh-based, liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling firm found Hagan up double digits over all of her potential opponents — even as her own favorability rating only clocks in at 43 percent favorable to 45 percent unfavorable. The poll attributed her gains over opponents to “the incredible unpopularity of the North Carolina Legislature.”
In another poll from this month, PPP found that 80 percent of North Carolinian voters opposed the way the Legislature handled a more restrictive abortion measure, which was attached to bills concerning Sharia law and motorcycle safety. Only 35 percent of those surveyed approved of the way the Republicans were handling state government; 55 percent disapproved.
“What Republicans have really done, which is kind of interesting, is a lot of more conservative legislation passed in the legislative session that wouldn’t necessarily be unpopular with voters simply on its merits,” PPP pollster Tom Jensen said in an interview. “But the process they’ve gone through to pass a lot of this stuff has antagonized a lot of voters and created serious trust issues.”
“I think it’s really going to be a positive for Sen. Hagan to be able to run against all of that kind of stuff that Republicans did. It made them seem sort of untrustworthy,” Jensen added.
Republicans argue that many of the policies the Legislature pushed are supported in North Carolina. And strategists and commentators from both sides say Hagan risks overplaying her hand if she goes too far to the left on issues like abortion.
Moreover, Republicans say, if Obama couldn’t win during a year in which the GOP took a shellacking, a one-term Democratic senator certainly won’t.
“He spent more money in North Carolina — they never pulled out spending there,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring of Obama. “Yet in an off year, the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] is going to turn out more voters? It doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
Dayspring also brushed off PPP polling by saying that the firm’s founder has supported Hagan in the past. PPP, however, has a reputation for accuracy, winning props most recently for its polling in the 2012 presidential race.
Carter Wrenn, a GOP strategist who worked for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and is a longtime political player in North Carolina, downplayed the importance of state legislature activity in a federal election.
“Historically, most people can’t tell you who their state rep is,” he said. “I’m not sure that you can just assume the state Legislature is going to be a dominant factor in the race for Senate. It’s a possibility because we’ve had a lot of publicity and controversy, more than normal. But whether the average swing voter is paying attention to the state Legislature, I’m not sure that’s right.”
Gary Pearce, a well-respected North Carolina Democratic strategist and Wrenn’s co-author at their blog, talkingaboutpolitics.com, said Democrats shouldn’t be jubilant just yet, noting that much of Hagan’s trajectory hinges on “which way the tide is running nationally.”
“It’s not easy at all for a Democrat to win a Senate race in North Carolina. That’s always a tough thing going back 40 years,” he said. But, he added, if voters nationally take a dim view of Republican legislators again in 2014, “if that sort of accelerates, that gets compounded because of what happened here.”
With McCrory’s November win, Republicans now control both the statehouse and the executive branch for the first time since the 1800s.
But Don Taylor, a professor of public policy at Duke who is plugged in to Democratic political circles in the state, said Republicans may have misread their mandate. By pushing so aggressively on the policy front, he said, the GOP could prompt a course correction back to Democrats in 2014 — even though he described that party as in “complete disarray.”
“If the Republicans had taken a more, ‘Let’s run the trains on time,’ sort of country club, business issues [approach], they could have run the state for 25 years,” he said. “But they screeched way right. They couldn’t help themselves. And so they are doing more to rehabilitate the Democratic Party in six months than in what might have taken six years.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/north-carolina-senate-race-2014-kay-hagan-95025.html#ixzz2aiO83M6R
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is going to win North Carolina. According to the latest Polling in North Carolina, the Republican party is in trouble with the electorate in North Carolina.
There were a number of Democrats, that crossed over and sold Pat McCrory to the North Carolina Electorate by campaigning for him. Many of them were conservative Democrats and I have found a few of their names.
Representative Dewey Hill, who recently retired after twenty years in the Assembly along with current representative James Crawford led the Democrats for Pat McCrory campaign. These guys are traitors to the Democrated Party.
Pat McCrory also won Independents in North Carolina overwhelmingly. I came across an article by one Independent supporter who voted for McCrory, and now she feels McCrory lied to her. She is now demonstrating against Pat McCrory because she felt fooled by him and others who told her, he was moderate. She spoke to people who voted for McCrory as Mayor of Charlotte.
There maybe some Polling evidence to prove there are more voters like this woman. According to Public Policy Polling in North Carolina, McCrory has seen a 15 point decline in his approval ratings since taking office. This guy is in a free fall. Only 40 percent of the electorate approve of him to 49 percent disapprove. That is a 15 point reversal.
What is even more significant, the General Assembly in North Carolina has a 20 percent approval to a whopping 56 percent disapproval now regardless of the claims in the above article. According to this Polling, the republicans are in deep trouble in North Carolina. They better start mending fences very quick.
When you get an electorate angry, they come out to vote. It is as good as a revolt. They have pissed off a lot of people, especially many that received unemployment checks and now have less means of income. The Republicans are actually hurting North Carolinians where they can feel the pain.
