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Tillis, Hagan Continue Sparring At Wilmington Debate; Haugh Has His Say
Publisher's note: The author of this post is Dan Way, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.
WILMINGTON Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan did her best at a debate Thursday night to portray North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis as a crony of corporate CEOs seeking tax favors at the expense of the middle class and poor people who would take that practice to Washington.
But Hagan came under attack from Republican Tillis as a mere rubber stamp for President Obama. He said together they have imposed failed, costly, and destructive policies on individuals, businesses, and the fabric of the American spirit.
It was the third time Hagan and Tillis squared off, but the first time that Libertarian candidate Sean Haugh was included.
After the debate, Hagan abruptly left the WECT-TV studios without attending a customary interview with reporters, prompting one newsman to joke that her post-debate attendance was still better than her attendance record at Armed Services Committee meetings. Hagan has attended less than half the open meetings of the committee in 2014, a point Tillis has repeated during debates and in campaign ads.
An aide told reporters Hagan had to get on the road and had said all she needed to say during the debate.
Haugh had a consistent theme: "We need to stop all war, and stop spending more money than we have," he said. "We've already fought two wars in Iraq that have had disastrous results for us. There's no amount of bombing or military aid out there than can solve any of our problems."
In the most memorable statement of the night, Tillis called Hagan out for repeatedly saying she has urged Obama to take action on energy issues.
"Sen. Hagan said she told the president he should open up the [Keystone] XL Pipeline. Sen. Hagan, you're a U.S. senator. You know how you tell the president what to do? You pass legislation to get him to do it," Tillis said.
"So these idle words, being a pen pal, writing a letter. We don't need a pen pal, we need a senator," Tillis said. He repeated the pen pal zinger later on defense issues.
Hagan, who called Tillis "spineless" at several turns, at one point appeared frustrated with the Republican challenger's repeated broadsides linking her to Obama by voting for his policies 96 percent of the time, and Obama's recent statement that all of his policies would be on the Nov. 4 ballot.
"He is looking at the positions that I am taking then disagreeing with them, but he is not being specific about what he would do," Hagan said.
Haugh said his message of liberty offers an alternative the entrenched Democratic and Republican parties who are in bed with corporate special interests seeking regulations that stifle economic growth and entrepreneurship while shifting money from the pockets of taxpayers to Washington cronies.
By injecting his message into the race and winning votes, Haugh said, Democrats and Republicans will be forced to recognize they need to change their policies and seek better solutions.
Haugh's standing in the polls has tumbled from the 8-11 percent range to about 2 percent as the election draws near.
"As we look at the poll numbers, I'm starting to come back up again. ...There's almost a month left where I feel like I have no place else to go but up," Haugh said in post-debate comments. He joked that he should have changed his name to "Someone Else," who got 11 percent in an early Rasmussen poll.
Some of the most vigorous back-and-forth during the debate involved Tillis and Hagan discussing foreign policy, energy, and Hagan's vote for a federal stimulus law, which later benefited a family-owned business.
"Speaker Tillis did vote at the state level to accept recovery act tax credits in North Carolina, and once again this is a ludicrous attack, hypocritical, that he is attacking me on when ... an investment of his benefited directly from that," Hagan said.
"Sen. Hagan voted for the stimulus package. I would have voted against it" because it wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, Tillis said. He labeled Hagan's family benefiting directly from her vote on stimulus as "crony capitalism," and differentiated it from an investment in stock he made in a bank that received stimulus money.
"When you miss more than half your meetings when you sit on the Armed Services Committee, and you know ISIS is the threat that it's emerged to be, you show up for work," Tillis said. "Sen. Hagan put a cocktail fundraiser on Park Avenue ahead of a classified briefing where these threats were being discussed."
Tillis said Hagan "hasn't had a single meeting to discuss the threat of ISIS on a committee that she chairs on emerging threats. She's failing on a comprehensive strategy for ISIS, and incidentally she's failing on a comprehensive strategy for addressing the ebola threat."
He said the nation is not safe and secure from the Ebola virus, and that he called early on for a travel ban with the West African nations where the deadly viral disease is erupting.
"Sen. Hagan hasn't acted. In fact, now [the federal government is] doing half measures at a few airports when we should be having a comprehensive ban until we can get this squared away," he said.
"Speaker Tillis' hometown newspaper" (The Charlotte Observer) has called on him to resign [from the House] because of the number of days he missed at the General Assembly because he was out fundraising," Hagan countered.
She said "our mission should be to eradicate" the ISIS "terrorists," and "I've chaired numerous counterterrorism hearings. I have talked to top generals and top military officials, and I do this constantly. We have actually taken a vote on arming and training the moderate Syrian rebels."
Travel bans "should be part of this overall strategy, but it can't be the only part" in fighting the Ebola outbreak, Hagan said, adding that isolating those countries won't solve the problem.
Haugh said free trade with nations instead of a "perpetual state of war" and arming rebels in other nations is the path America should be on to make global friends and regain its lost moral standing in the world.
Hagan listed a variety of federal spending programs that have aided coastal dredging and beach renourishment.
"People here in Eastern North Carolina, on the coast, know that I am their advocate," Hagan said.
"If the president and Sen. Hagan have their way, we will regulate ourselves out of a lot of beach access," Tillis said.
"Sen. Hagan supports the EPA's overreach, and it's become ridiculous," Tillis said.
"The EPA now has gotten to the point to where they're regulating the content of mud puddles. They're also regulating what you can do along the coast and making it more difficult to dredge and more difficult to replenish the beaches," Tillis said. "It's just another example of a policy that President Obama likes, therefore Sen. Hagan likes it."
Hagan said she supports an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, and offshore drilling and fracking, with environmental safeguards. She said Tillis made it a crime to disclose the fluids used by fracking companies to extract oil and gas.
Tillis and Haugh support offshore drilling, with Haugh calling for the federal government to cease helping to pay for environmental disasters and requiring oil companies and insurers to be liable for all spill cleanup and costs.
"The president has failed on energy policy, and Sen. Hagan has been with him every step of the way," Tillis said. The United States could be "an energy superpower" serving its citizens and exporting energy to Western Europe to end Russia's influence and incursions into sovereign nations.
Tillis and Haugh have agreed to participate in a debate Oct. 21 hosted by Time Warner Cable News and co-sponsored by The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh. Hagan has declined to participate, so the status of the debate is uncertain.
Go Back
Hagan leaves studio without talking with reporters afterward
AP photo/Gerry Broome, pool
From left, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, Libertarian Sean Haugh, and Republican Thom Tillis Thursday at what may be their only debate.
But Hagan came under attack from Republican Tillis as a mere rubber stamp for President Obama. He said together they have imposed failed, costly, and destructive policies on individuals, businesses, and the fabric of the American spirit.
It was the third time Hagan and Tillis squared off, but the first time that Libertarian candidate Sean Haugh was included.
After the debate, Hagan abruptly left the WECT-TV studios without attending a customary interview with reporters, prompting one newsman to joke that her post-debate attendance was still better than her attendance record at Armed Services Committee meetings. Hagan has attended less than half the open meetings of the committee in 2014, a point Tillis has repeated during debates and in campaign ads.
An aide told reporters Hagan had to get on the road and had said all she needed to say during the debate.
Haugh had a consistent theme: "We need to stop all war, and stop spending more money than we have," he said. "We've already fought two wars in Iraq that have had disastrous results for us. There's no amount of bombing or military aid out there than can solve any of our problems."
In the most memorable statement of the night, Tillis called Hagan out for repeatedly saying she has urged Obama to take action on energy issues.
"Sen. Hagan said she told the president he should open up the [Keystone] XL Pipeline. Sen. Hagan, you're a U.S. senator. You know how you tell the president what to do? You pass legislation to get him to do it," Tillis said.
"So these idle words, being a pen pal, writing a letter. We don't need a pen pal, we need a senator," Tillis said. He repeated the pen pal zinger later on defense issues.
Hagan, who called Tillis "spineless" at several turns, at one point appeared frustrated with the Republican challenger's repeated broadsides linking her to Obama by voting for his policies 96 percent of the time, and Obama's recent statement that all of his policies would be on the Nov. 4 ballot.
"He is looking at the positions that I am taking then disagreeing with them, but he is not being specific about what he would do," Hagan said.
Haugh said his message of liberty offers an alternative the entrenched Democratic and Republican parties who are in bed with corporate special interests seeking regulations that stifle economic growth and entrepreneurship while shifting money from the pockets of taxpayers to Washington cronies.
By injecting his message into the race and winning votes, Haugh said, Democrats and Republicans will be forced to recognize they need to change their policies and seek better solutions.
Haugh's standing in the polls has tumbled from the 8-11 percent range to about 2 percent as the election draws near.
"As we look at the poll numbers, I'm starting to come back up again. ...There's almost a month left where I feel like I have no place else to go but up," Haugh said in post-debate comments. He joked that he should have changed his name to "Someone Else," who got 11 percent in an early Rasmussen poll.
Some of the most vigorous back-and-forth during the debate involved Tillis and Hagan discussing foreign policy, energy, and Hagan's vote for a federal stimulus law, which later benefited a family-owned business.
"Speaker Tillis did vote at the state level to accept recovery act tax credits in North Carolina, and once again this is a ludicrous attack, hypocritical, that he is attacking me on when ... an investment of his benefited directly from that," Hagan said.
"Sen. Hagan voted for the stimulus package. I would have voted against it" because it wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, Tillis said. He labeled Hagan's family benefiting directly from her vote on stimulus as "crony capitalism," and differentiated it from an investment in stock he made in a bank that received stimulus money.
"When you miss more than half your meetings when you sit on the Armed Services Committee, and you know ISIS is the threat that it's emerged to be, you show up for work," Tillis said. "Sen. Hagan put a cocktail fundraiser on Park Avenue ahead of a classified briefing where these threats were being discussed."
Tillis said Hagan "hasn't had a single meeting to discuss the threat of ISIS on a committee that she chairs on emerging threats. She's failing on a comprehensive strategy for ISIS, and incidentally she's failing on a comprehensive strategy for addressing the ebola threat."
He said the nation is not safe and secure from the Ebola virus, and that he called early on for a travel ban with the West African nations where the deadly viral disease is erupting.
"Sen. Hagan hasn't acted. In fact, now [the federal government is] doing half measures at a few airports when we should be having a comprehensive ban until we can get this squared away," he said.
"Speaker Tillis' hometown newspaper" (The Charlotte Observer) has called on him to resign [from the House] because of the number of days he missed at the General Assembly because he was out fundraising," Hagan countered.
She said "our mission should be to eradicate" the ISIS "terrorists," and "I've chaired numerous counterterrorism hearings. I have talked to top generals and top military officials, and I do this constantly. We have actually taken a vote on arming and training the moderate Syrian rebels."
Travel bans "should be part of this overall strategy, but it can't be the only part" in fighting the Ebola outbreak, Hagan said, adding that isolating those countries won't solve the problem.
Haugh said free trade with nations instead of a "perpetual state of war" and arming rebels in other nations is the path America should be on to make global friends and regain its lost moral standing in the world.
Hagan listed a variety of federal spending programs that have aided coastal dredging and beach renourishment.
"People here in Eastern North Carolina, on the coast, know that I am their advocate," Hagan said.
"If the president and Sen. Hagan have their way, we will regulate ourselves out of a lot of beach access," Tillis said.
"Sen. Hagan supports the EPA's overreach, and it's become ridiculous," Tillis said.
"The EPA now has gotten to the point to where they're regulating the content of mud puddles. They're also regulating what you can do along the coast and making it more difficult to dredge and more difficult to replenish the beaches," Tillis said. "It's just another example of a policy that President Obama likes, therefore Sen. Hagan likes it."
Hagan said she supports an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, and offshore drilling and fracking, with environmental safeguards. She said Tillis made it a crime to disclose the fluids used by fracking companies to extract oil and gas.
Tillis and Haugh support offshore drilling, with Haugh calling for the federal government to cease helping to pay for environmental disasters and requiring oil companies and insurers to be liable for all spill cleanup and costs.
"The president has failed on energy policy, and Sen. Hagan has been with him every step of the way," Tillis said. The United States could be "an energy superpower" serving its citizens and exporting energy to Western Europe to end Russia's influence and incursions into sovereign nations.
Tillis and Haugh have agreed to participate in a debate Oct. 21 hosted by Time Warner Cable News and co-sponsored by The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh. Hagan has declined to participate, so the status of the debate is uncertain.
Comment
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Any opponent who tries to tie another candidate to another politician ---and fails to make his own point of "what he intends to do" is FOOLISH. For me, this proves Tillis is FOOLISH.
Any 3rd party candidate with a severely diminishing poll result is wise to pull the plug now rather than go into debt fighting a losing battle.
My prediction, having listened carefully to all the Candidates for NC State Senator is~~~Hagan will win!
My grandpappy, a SC Democrat farmer who thought Strom Thurmond could walk on water wisely said, "The higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more you see his tail!"
Boys~~~a whole lot of monkey tail is now showing badly!!!!