Hagan has "grave concerns" about bailout
State Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat running to unseat Elizabeth Dole, just held an interesting conference call.
The express purpose of the call was to ding Sen. Elizabeth Dole for her action, or lack of action, as a member of the Senate Banking Committee and for supposedly wanting to loosen regulations for Wall Street firms. (You can read Hagan's backgrounder on the call here. I haven't checked through it, so I'm not expressing an opinion on whether all this ads up to what Hagan is saying.)
Toward the end of the call, Hagan was asked about the financial bailout package and whether she would vote for it - several times. And several times, she resisted giving a yes or no answer.
Click here to listen to the exchanges.
As to whether Dole should support it: "I'm letting her make that decision on her own. I'll be interested to see what she does and what she says about it."
As to whether she herself would vote for it: "I keep questioning why in the world are we in this position today where we are."
Finally, when asked whether she, herself, would back it, Hagan ticked off a list of things that she wanted to see but added, "I have grave concerns about a lot of the stuff that's going on right now."
What do you want to be that the Dole campaign is going to push back on that with something like: If you're going to go after an incumbent for not taking the lead on financial legislation, shouldn't you, yourself, have a position on whether the marquis piece of financial rescue legislation of the day should, itself, be passed?
Comments (5)
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Hagan is getting into the risky territory of being wishy washy. (Has anybody asked her yet why she opposes unions for public employees but supports the Free Employee Choice Act that makes it easier for employees of private enterprise to unionize? Here.)
As for Hagan's latest accusations, I think Dole can at least fire back with her sponsorship of S.190 in 2005.
Posted on September 30, 2008 2:14 PM
Hi Mark,
Interesting. But instead of waiting for the Dole campaign to ask the question in your last paragraph why doesn't our very competent reporter, Mark Binker, ask that very same question of Hagan?
And please keep us updated each day on Hagan's position as that's apt to change daily depending on which way the political wind blows.
Posted on September 30, 2008 2:20 PM
I just listened to the audio. I'm the kind of voter who should be lining up behind Hagan. I was never the kind of voter who liked Jessee Helms "because you know where he stands." But I'm finding it difficult not to be turned off by Hagan because it's so hard to tell where she stands. Some questions demand a yes, no or I don't know answer. Dancing around is insulting to the people she is asking to represent and it begs for suspicion.
Posted on September 30, 2008 2:21 PM
Tony: Aside from asking a question four or five different ways, what are we to do?
Posted on September 30, 2008 3:02 PM
Understood Mark.
Posted on September 30, 2008 10:02 PM