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."
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Re: Dole defends time spent in N.C.
Dole doesn't get it. She is the Senator for North Carolina, not the Dole family and friends, bless her heart.
Why wasn't she in NC much in 2006? Because she was the go to person in her party to get Republicans elected to the US Senate in *other* states, a job she failed at miserably, as the Democrats picked up seats.
But don't hate the player, hate the game. The Republicans think that by representing special interests -- CAFTA, Big Oil's desire to drill anywhere they want, and deregulation of the health care, insurance agencies, and investment banks on Wall Street -- that she is representing everyone.
Call it tricke down representation. Heck it is effective as tricke-down economics, which is to say not effective at all. The people of North Carolina deserve better via Kay Hagen.