Hagan and Neal on the road, Dole on the attack
My Google reader has been culling stories related to North Carolina's U.S. Senate campaign over the past week. It looks like the leading Democrats are on the road.
State Sen. Kay Hagan was spotted in Florida, playing up her local connections to win a campaign in North Carolina, where she's playing up her local connection. Hagan last week was in Lakeland, where her father was mayor at one point. Her uncle, Lawton Chiles, was a governor and U.S. Senator from Florida.
"Let's just say I was born in North Carolina, went to law school in North Carolina, worked all my career in North Carolina and have three children who went through the schools there. So I can represent the people of North Carolina," Hagan said in an interview with the Lakeland Ledger.
Also on the road was Jim Neal, a Chapel Hill investment banker.
The New York Observer noted Neal would be in town at the end of January, as did Page Six, which famously decided that Jesse Helms had passed on to the great Senate seat in the sky before he actually had.
Meanwhile, Dole took a swipe at her would-be rivals last week, saying they shouldn't support the SCIP children's health insurance program at the expense of the state's traditional cash crop, tobacco.
"To fund it on the back of North Carolina's economy - and especially on the backs of the tobacco industry - when there are other funding options, is unfair," Dole said in a speech to the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina.