Sen. Elizabeth Dole said accusations that she has not spent much time in North Carolina are misleading.

Her opponent, Democrat Kay Hagan, has said that Dole has been an absentee senator. A story in The Winston-Salem Journal, citing tax-paid travel records, found she spent only 13 days in the state in 2006, Rob Christensen reports.

But Dole says she often travels to the state on her own dime.

"I've been home constantly, whether it was a personal thing or whether it was my brother," Dole told The News and Observer editorial board this week. Her older brother died of cancer earlier this year.

"You don’' put out a press release every time you come home," Dole said. "I have paid for my own travel a great deal."

She said she should not be punished for paying her own way back to North Carolina.

She also said it was unfair to portray her as an outsider who has spent much of her life in Washington D.C. or in her husband Bob Dole's state of Kansas.

"In terms being from Kansas," Dole said, "what could be more untrue?"

"My roots are so deep in North Carolina," Dole said. "I could show you all the way back, many, many generations back. I grew up Salisbury, went to Salisbury high school. I went to Duke. I was on the Duke board for 11 years. I have a family business. Our farm has been turned into a real estate development just outside Salisbury."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, has sent out a fund raising letter criticizing her colleague, Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

"You deserve more from your U.S. senator — you deserve someone who will represent North Carolinians," said McCaskill in an email mailed out by the campaign of Democrat Kay Hagan, Rob Christensen reports.

"Elizabeth Dole registered to vote in North Carolina just two days after it was announced that Jesse Helms' seat was up for grabs," McCaskill writes. "She even ran for president as a Kansan well before she thought about running for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina. Just like you, I'm ready to join you in handing her a pair of Ruby Red Slippers so she can click her heels three times and go back to Kansas."

McCaskill also criticized Dole, while speaking to a North Carolina delegation breakfast at the Democratic convention.

Previously: McCaskill stumps for Hagan

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole says Kay Hagan should leave her husband alone.

In a post on her campaign blog, the Salisbury Republican says that her Democratic rival's campaign has made "personal attacks" on Bob Dole, noting a recent Associated Press article about a "red slipper" campaign making fun of Dole's Kansas roots.

"But the attack against Bob that has troubled me the most came from her press release of April 25th. It attacked me for giving a floor speech commemorating my husband’s service," she writes. 

Dole notes that she spoke during "morning business," a routine time for senators to speak on various issues, and said her speech was meant to commemorate her husband's service to veterans and injuries sustained in World War II.

"I believe the voters of North Carolina will be better served if my opponent spent her time and resources on the challenges we face as a state and nation — rather than launching personal attacks at a man who has served this nation so honorably," she writes. 

Can you send someone "back" to a place they never lived? 

On Wednesday in western North Carolina, folks supporting Democrat Kay Hagan's campaign for U.S. Senate planned to gather and decorate ruby red slippers for GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole, urging the incumbent to return to Kansas.

Except Dole has never lived in Kansas.

If anything, she's more of a D.C. gal, working in Washington most of her career and living primarily in the Watergate Apartment building since marrying then-Sen. Bob Dole in 1975, Barb Barrett reports.

Mr. Dole, of course, IS from Kansas.

The small town of Russell figures prominently in his biography. But he had already been elected to the Senate when he met the former Miss Hanford on Capitol Hill.

Hagan's ruby slipper joke — an allusion to her common refrain that she’d like to get Elizabeth Dole back home Dorothy-style — was pretty funny to folks in the Sunflower State and its environs on Thursday.

More after the jump.

   Comments (4)

Kathleen Sebelius argues that the pocketbook will trump the prayer book.

Campaigning in Raleigh on behalf of Barack Obama, the Kansas governor told Dome that concerns about jobs and the economy will be more important to voters than "wedge issues" like abortion or same-sex marriage in the November election.

She cited her own experience in Kansas, a state so dominated by Republicans that liberal author Thomas Frank wrote a 2004 book called "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (Sebelius noted proudly that Frank has since changed his mind.)

"For a certain period of time, a lot of voters were lured to the Republican Party on social issues such as abortion," she said, arguing that the 2006 Congressional elections were the start of a shift away from that approach. "The 2008 election will be a continuation of voters returning to their self-interest."

She said that middle-class families will be attracted to Obama's plans to create jobs and make college more affordable.

"Most Americans want our focus to be on them and their families," she said.

Kathleen Sebelius will lead a voter-registration drive for Barack Obama Thursday.

The second-term Kansas governor will speak at Davidson College near Charlotte at 2:45 p.m. as part of a last-minute drive to sign up college students to vote before Friday's deadline.

In a press release, the Obama campaign noted Davidson's recent loss to Kansas in the NCAA tournament.

"Though they were rivals in the recent NCAA Tournament, fans and students at Davidson and the Governor have found common ground in supporting Senator Obama's campaign for change," it notes. 

Sebelius will also speak at a women for Obama event at the campaign's Charlotte office at 5:30 p.m. and at a community event in the Heritage Room in Salisbury at 7:30 p.m.. 

Kay Hagan wants to send U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole "home."

Speaking at a Groundhog Day event in Dunn, the state senator and candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate said that it's time for change in Washington, the Dunn Daily Record reports.

"We need to give Sen. Elizabeth Dole a pair of ruby red slippers so she can click her heels together three times and go back to Kansas with her husband where she came from," Ms. Hagan said. "We need a senator from North Carolina again."

Dole grew up in Salisbury. Her husband, Bob, was a U.S. senator from Kansas for 27 years.

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, lieutenant governor candidate Pat Smathers and state Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson were also at the event.