Tip: Clicking on tags in this page allows you to drill further with combined tag search. For example, if you are currently viewing the tag search result page for "health care", clicking on "Kay Hagan" will bring you to a list of contents that are tagged with both "health care" and "Kay Hagan."
The two old codgers in rocking chairs who famously helped sink U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's re-election bid have switched sides.
Rob Christensen reported today that the two guys from a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad have now cut a spot in support of Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Here's the new ad followed by the 2008 ad.
Voters are evenly split when asked to rate U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, according to a new poll by Public Policy Polling.
The firm asked 788 likely voters for an opinion on Burr's job performance and 35 percent said they approved while 35 percent disapproved. The remaining 30 percent were undecided.
As you can see on our new Polling Central feature, Burr's approval rating is lower than former Sen. Elizabeth Dole's was at the same point in the election cycle. (Polling Central is interactive. To compare Dole and Burr, just click the boxes for Dole's poll results.) In February 2008, PPP found that 43 percent of voters approved of Dole while 32 percent disapproved.
Of course, unlike 2008, this year could be shaping up to be a difficult one nationally for Democrats. When PPP asked whether voters would choose Burr or a Democrat, 42 percent would vote for Burr while 35 percent would select a Democrat. The remaining 23 percent were unsure.
Name recognition is very low for the three major candidates in the Democratic primary: 86 percent were undecided when asked for an opinion of Lexington lawyer Cal Cunningham, 83 percent were not sure about Chapel Hill lawyer Ken Lewis and 71 percent were unsure of Secretary of State Elaine Marshall.
Burr leads the three major Democrats in head-to-head match-ups by at least 10 percentage points.
The poll was conducted Feb. 12-15 and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Former state Sen. Cal Cunningham figures he needs $8.5 million to win the U.S. Senate race.
Cunningham, a Lexington Democrat, lawyer and Iraq war veteran, described his fundraising needs and chances in the election in a prospectus. His budget is based on Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan's victory over Republican Elizabeth Dole last year.
In that cycle, Hagan raised and spent $8.5 million—$1.4 million in primary spending and $7.1 million in general election campaign spending. Cunningham anticipates spending $1.5 million to communicate in the primary campaign and another $7 million for the general election.
The document is written as a question-and-answer pitch about Cunningham's chances and assets. Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is vulnerable, according to the prospectus, because his polling numbers are down and his votes in the Senate can be used against him. The document says nothing about Cunningham's Democratic primary opponents, Elaine Marshall and Kenneth Lewis.
The prospectus notes that Cunningham has the full confidence and backing of the national Democratic Party.
Cunningham entered the race with the full support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the encouragement of the White House and numerous current and former Democratic elected officials in North Carolina. The DSCC and the White House have expressed commitment to dedicate resources to this campaign.
Former state Sen. Cal Cunningham of Lexington has apparently changed his mind, and is moving toward entering the U.S. Senate race next year.
Cunningham, an Iraq war veteran, last month announced he was ending an exploratory effort and would not challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr in 2010, Rob Christensen reports.
Since then, Cunningham has been heavily courted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has has been urging him to reconsider his decision.
Cunningham was not returning calls Tuesday. But the word on the street is that he has signaled to Democrats in Washington that he is prepared to enter the race.
He is apparently holding off making any statement for a few days out of respect for Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who lost her husband, William Holdford, to cancer over the weekend. He is being buried today.
Marshall and Kenneth Lewis, a Chapel Hill lawyer, are the two Democrats who have announced candidacies.
The senatorial committee has evolved into the major banker of Senate campaigns and therefore plays a major role in recruiting candidates. The senatorial committee first tried to recruit Attorney General Roy Cooper and U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge before turning to Cunningham.
The Democrats are hoping for a repeat of the Kay Hagan experience. During the 2008 election cycle, Hagan, a Democratic state senator first explored a Senate bid, then announced she would not be a candidate, only to to be recruited back into the race by the senatorial committee. She eventually defeated Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole.
Update: Marshall consultant Thomas Mills told Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper that voters should take note of the fact that Cunningham seems very concerned about approval from Washington.
"It’s pretty tasteless to leak or announce you’re running on the day that Secretary Marshall’s dealing with her husband’s funeral," Marshall consultant Thomas Mills said. "But if he is running, this is all about D.C. money. He’s waited until he got the approval of D.C. power brokers — that’s not a very good indication of the type of Senator he would make."
Update: Cunningham issued a statement Tuesday saying, "This week our thoughts and prayers are with Secretary Marshall and we are not making any announcements of any kind."
U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan has launched both a YouTube channel and a Twitter account to chronicle her work in the U.S. Senate.
For now, her last Tweet is from "the office of Sen. Kay Hagan," with updates posted by staff. Example: "welcoming a great group of North Carolinians for this week's Carolina Coffee," Barb Barrett reports.
Hagan had a campaign Twitter account last year, posting about her platform, her daily travels and occasional jabs at the competition ("This is what a Republican-run, special interest-based economy looks like," she tweeted a year ago.)
Her YouTube channel has a pair of videos so far. One welcomes viewers; the other features her biography.
"Tools like YouTube and Twitter will allow me and my office to share information about the most pressing issues facing North Carolina and our country and keep constituents updated about the latest news in the Senate," Hagan said in a statement. "North Carolinians can use these tools to keep up with me while I am in Washington and traveling across the state."
Also on Twitter:
Update: Post includees Rep. Walter Jones' Twitter feed, which was inadvertently left off the list.
Former Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has asked supporters to help former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole retire more than $350,000 in campaign debt.
Dole, a Republican, ran up the debt in her unsuccessful attempt to fend off a challenge from Kay Hagan, a Democrat, in a bitterly fought campaign, reports the Atlantic's Politics blog.
Huckabee's message may be a move to win support of Bob and Elizabeth Dole for a future presidential run. In his plea for help, Huckabee describes the Democratic effort within North Carolina during last year's election.
The Democratic Party spent $12 million to defeat her in North Carolina and special interest groups spent millions more.
The Obama campaign opened 50 field offices with 400 paid staff and 21,000 volunteers, all geared to three weeks of early voting. North Carolina had the biggest increase in voter turnout of any state in the nation, a reflection of the huge amounts of money poured into the state.
I hope you will join me in assisting her with a generous contribution today to retire her debt of $356,043. I believe it would be a travesty if she were left with a debt after all her hard work as a public servant.
APPLE BITES: This week it was all about Jobs — with a lower-case and upper-case J. The same day that Gov. Beverly Perdue signed into law changes to the state's corporate taxes designed to lure Apple, the company founded by Steve Jobs announced it would build a $1 billion data center. Opponents of corporate incentives, meantime, felt more like the biblical Job, suffering yet again.
BURR'S CRUSADE: U.S. Sen. Richard Burr stood up for tobacco in the Senate. The Winston-Salem Republican spent more than four hours on the floor arguing against a bill to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. He said it would stifle innovation in nicotine delivery systems and hurt the "gold standard" of food and drug oversight. He and Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan proposed an alternate bill.
EMPTYING HOUSE? Another state representative is leaving. Rep. Bonner Stiller, a Brunswick County Republican, will step down this month to spend more time with his family. He joins four other legislators this term who've stepped down to accept a gubernatorial appointment (Rep. Linda Coleman) or move to the state Senate (now Sen. Dan Blue) or because they died (Sen. Vernon Malone) or were under investigation (Rep. Cary Allred).
IN OTHER NEWS: An East Carolina University professor will discuss his studies of the vice presidency with Joe Biden. ... Elizabeth Edwards is not interested in running for U.S. Senate, but she will open a furniture store in Chapel Hill. ... Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole will make her first political appearance since losing in November when she introduces one-time GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in Charlotte next week. ... Hagan ran into Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the ladies' room at the Capitol.
Charles Meeker is not in the running.
The longtime Raleigh mayor told Dome this morning that he's not considering a run for the Democratic nomination to face U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.
"I'm not looking at running for Senate," he said.
Meeker considered a campaign against Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2008, but he's not looked at leaving the mayor's seat soon.
"This is the highest office in my view," he said.
Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole remembered Jack Kemp Sunday.
Speaking with her husband Bob at a lecture at the University of Kansas, Dole told a crowd of between 500 and 1,000 students that the former Congressman was full of energy and enthusiasm when he helped her campaign in North Carolina.
"Jack believed in what he was doing with all his heart," she said, according to the Topeka Capital Journal. "He will be truly missed."
Kemp, a former Congressman who was Bob Dole's vice presidential pick, died of cancer Saturday. In October, he campaigned on a bus tour for Elizabeth Dole's re-election with Sen. Richard Burr in five mountain counties.
She also said she was disappointed with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to switch parties and with the recent tone in Washington.
"In recent years, it's become much more raucous," she said, according to KTKA TV. "You feel like it's almost combat now. I do think we have to work hard at getting that civility back."
Dole added that she and her husband also plan to go on the NutriSystem diet plan.
Since 1990, the most competitive Senate races in the country have been in North Carolina.
An analysis by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota found that the last seven races here were decided by an average of six percentage points — the lowest in the nation.
The next closest states were Minnesota (6.4), New Jersey (7.5) and Missouri (8.4). Every other state had more than a 10 percent average margin.
The national average of the 344 Senate races was 22.8 percentage points. Nationally, less than a third were decided by less than 10 points, while all of North Carolina's races were below that cutoff.
The least competitive state was North Dakota, which had no competitive races during that period of time.
The closest win in North Carolina was Lauch Faircloth's in 1992, which was decided by four points. The biggest win was Elizabeth Dole's in 2002, when the margin was 8.6 points.
(That was closely followed by Kay Hagan's 8.5 point defeat of her in 2008.)
As a Dome tipster points out, the races prior to 1990 were not much less competitive, either.
