Hagan's ad
So state Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, has a new television commercial out in her campaign against Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole. Her campaign folks have billed it as her first television commercial of the fall campaign, which is true enough if you don't count the third party attack ads that have been running against Dole.
If you listen to the ad, you’ll heard that Hagan was one who helped “Balance five state budgets in a row.”
Aside from the tortured grammar, you might also remember that the state constitution requires North Carolina’s budget to be balanced. So laying claim to a balanced budget is a bit silly because all of North Carolina’s budgets are required to be balanced or the governor balances them for you.
Speaking of that: Hagan was in the Senate when it drafted budgets in 2000 and 2001 that were a bit overly optimistic in terms of revenue growth. That forced Gov. Mike Easley to take some unpopular steps like confiscating local revenues and pinching money from state retirement funds.
As for the rest of the ad, Republicans will probably scoff a bit at the “reaching across party lines” thing, but Hagan can show enough cooperation with others to back that one up. And state budgets did indeed expand funding for early childhood education and raise teacher pay while she was in the legislature.
