The famed “Saluda grade,” as described on the cast iron sign, is “the steepest, standard-gauge mainline railway grade in the US. Opened in 1878. Three miles long. Crests here.” South of Asheville the Eastern Continental Divide snakes in a southwesterly direction through these Blue Ridge Mountains — a Republican redoubt even before Jesse Helms snatched the segregationists away from the Democratic Party and launched the Grand Old Party’s modern era in North Carolina.
“Ladies and gentleman, take a good look at this young woman running for Senate,” said Hop Foster, the jovial master of ceremonies as the 55-year-old Democratic candidate for US Senate passed the review stand.
The incumbent’s representation in the parade looked modest by comparison. An elderly man walked the route sandwiched between campaign placards facing front and back and slung around his neck. “Elizabeth Dole,” Foster intoned. “She’s in there now, and trying to get back in.” The emcee later betrayed his partisan preference by referring to Tommy Melton, the Democratic chairman of the Polk County Commission as “my friend.”
With recent polls placing Dole about 10 percentage points ahead of Hagan, the incumbent clearly enjoys frontrunner status.
“Hagan’s challenge is she’s not run a statewide campaign before,” said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill. “This is a big state. She’s got to make the transition from someone who just campaigns in her state Senate district in Guilford County. She’s got to be seen as having the gravity and substance to be a US senator.”
The town fair had attracted numerous young people, including some tough-looking white boys with burr haircuts who walked the railroad tracks, avoiding the crowds clotting the street. One of them wore a shirt popular in some parts of the South in the early ’90s bearing a Confederate battle flag and the retort, “You wear your X, I’ll wear mine.” The crowd brimmed with professional craftspeople, weavers, bikers and salt-of the-earth women with tanned and lined faces, dressed in tight blue jeans with painted lips and bleached hair mixed with less aged women from the country-club set. Dole carried this county by a margin of 18.2 percent six years ago. In 2004, when the Democrats got their next crack at a US Senate seat, their candidate lost by only 7.2 percent in Polk County. Notwithstanding those precedents, it would be an understatement to say Democrats are feeling energized this year. Down the mountain, at about 8:30 a.m., before the parade got underway, the local Democrats awaited the Hagan campaign’s arrival in a white clapboard house serving their headquarters in the county seat of Columbus. With a capacity of 70, the hall was full by the time Chip Hagan, husband of the candidate, poked his head through the doorway.
“Welcome to your extended family,” said Tom Thomas, a local candidate for state Senate. Chip Hagan beamed. “I love extended family.”
The campaign made about 25 stops during the week of Independence Day, with the end of the legislative session in Raleigh creating only a minor hiccup before Hagan pushed forward again in a flurry of retail politics.
With less than a hundred days to go before Election Day, such intimate and familial moments on the trail are likely to soon be overtaken by the mass-media campaign — less personal, but infinitely more effective in shaping perceptions.
Comprised of a sequence of encounters with voters, speeches, town-hall meetings and greetings to the party
faithful
— all real-time, in-the-flesh politicking — the campaign right now can
sometimes feel like something of a dress rehearsal for the more
important battle for hearts and minds to be fought later, ad against
ad, on living-room television screens. It feels like a test run by the
candidate and her party allies in Washington as they analyze polling,
gauge the mood of likely voters and consider the peculiarities of North
Carolina politics before presenting the proper tableau — Kay the Mother
and Wife, Kay the Proud Military Family Member, Kay the Effective
Budget Writer in Raleigh — and highlighting the right issue positions —
fixing international trade, getting out of Iraq with honor, providing
relief for high gas prices — to roll out a finished product for a
consumer market otherwise known as the electorate.
At the
Saluda Coon Dog Day Parade, the various candidates and activists with
the Polk County Democrats contingent rested on a flatbed trailer lined
with hay bales and towed behind a cherry-red Ford F-250 diesel V8
four-wheel-drive pickup. The Democrats positioned themselves behind a
smaller pickup covered in butcher paper and advertising “Saluda
Coon-Shine” in heavy black Magic Marker lettering.
Across the
road, the county Republicans, including Commissioner Ted Owens, milled
around their conveyance, a black Nissan pickup.
“I’m hoping
they’ll vote for Dole,” the broad-shouldered Owens said when asked
which candidate he expected to find favor with the electorate in Polk
County.
“Hold their nose and vote for her,” said a man who had
been conferring with the commissioner, and Owens hastily excused
himself.
Later Owens stood behind the cab clasping the roll
bars like a rancher surveying his stock. As the parade commenced, a
volley of hard candy flew from the hands of a group of high-school
students seated in the bed of the Saluda Coon-Shine truck, and the
Republicans duly returned fire. During the parade, the students would
periodically yelp spirited calls of “legalize it.” Behind them, the
Democrats took up a brief chant of “yay for Kay.” As they neared the
review stand, one called out: “A vote for Obama is a vote for your
mama.”
The
Senate campaign is about more than Saluda and Polk County, about more
than North Carolina even, but how voters responded to her here might
give some indication of how her candidacy will play across the state.
For the national Democratic Party, the contest between Hagan and Dole
is a chance to broaden its majority in the Senate and to multiply the
power of a hoped-for Obama presidency, to recalibrate the balance of
political power in Washington for perhaps a generation. The national
party clearly views Hagan as a viable candidate, and has committed its
resources accordingly.
Two months before Hagan won her primary
against five other candidates, including an openly gay Chapel Hill
resident favored by bloggers and others in the liberal activist wing of
the party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had spent
$158,693 to cover expenses for the Hagan campaign. (National party
committees are normally limited to giving a total of $39,900 to
individual Senate campaigns over the course of a campaign, but under
the so called Millionaire’s Amendment, congressional candidates in
North Carolina facing opponents who spend significant personal funds
may receive coordinated party expenditures from party committees such
as the DSCC of up to $575,500.) The DSCC spent $66,717 from early March
up to the date of the primary on payroll for Hagan’s campaign staff.
The
committee spent $20,626 on media production and $18,372 on political
consulting, including research, direct mail and fundraising support,
all on Hagan’s behalf. Among the committee’s expenditures was a $10,064
check dated April 17 to AWF Consulting of Washington for catering and
facilities. The committee’s communication director, Matthew Miller,
declined to provide specific information about the event, but said it
is common for the committee to work together with candidates on
fundraisers.
Only two other Democratic Senate candidates have
received greater sums of cash in coordinated party expenditures than
Hagan: Jeff Merkley, the Oregon House speaker, who is challenging
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, with $340,453; and Sen. Mary Landrieu of
Louisiana, who is defending her seat against John Kennedy, the state’s
Republican treasurer, with $184,861.
At a campaign stop in
Charlotte on July 24, Hagan looked directly in a reporter’s eyes and
said with absolute conviction: “This is a race I’m going to win. This
is not
the
Democratic Party, which supports all candidates. This is the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, and it’s a very strategic commitment.
They know what I can do.” In addition to relying on the DSCC to cover
the cost of airline tickets and hotels, and to foot the bill for
polling, Hagan has hired staff from a pool of experienced party
operatives, including Press Secretary Dave Hoffman, who moved to
Greensboro after serving on the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of
Rhode Island, and Political Director Muthoni Wambu, who worked on
Delaware Sen. Joe Biden’s recent presidential campaign.
Hagan
said she has traveled to Washington to meet with the DSCC leadership.
In discussions with the committee, which is chaired by New York Sen.
Charles Schumer, Hagan said her national sponsors embraced “the fact
that I am a pragmatic, common-sense, hard worker who gets things done.
I live in North Carolina and my husband can vote for me. The people in
North Carolina are very frustrated with Dole. Working people in this
state are looking for a change.”
Both
Hagan and Miller acknowledged that the two parties have been in at
least periodic communication, but declined to discuss the specifics of
how the committee vetted Hagan’s candidacy.
“It is one of the
most important races in the country, and Kay Hagan is one of the best
candidates,” Miller said. “She works hard, she’s an exciting candidate
and she has run a tremendous campaign.”
The hundreds of
thousands of dollars spent by the DSCC to help Hagan during her primary
campaign will pale in comparison to $5-$6 million dollars rumored to
have been committed for television advertising buys on behalf of the
candidate before the November general election. Miller would neither
confirm nor deny the investment, which was originally reported in the News & Observer. To
put the amount in perspective, the Hagan campaign reported raising only
$2.1 million as of the end of June. The Democrats have employed a
strategy of exploiting the fact that despite her six years in office
many North Carolinians don’t know much about Dole. “She comes across to
her constituents as a known quantity, but Democrats think she’s
vulnerable for a couple reasons,” Guillory said. “Just because people
think they know her, she’s not an everyday visible person in the state.
That’s why you’ve seen her spending money on advertising. She’s raised
her visibility in recent months. My sense is that the Democrats want to
make the case that she’s a Washington figure rather than a North
Carolina leader. She’s combating that with the stuff she’s doing with
the sheriffs on immigration.”
One of Dole’s television ads
features Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes and other sheriffs
expressing gratitude to the senator for her assistance on local
immigration enforcement. The ad shows tough-talking men and comforting
images of a smiling Dole stepping out of a pickup truck, coupled with
bucolic rural scenes shot in soft light. A dozen sheriffs take turns
reciting an adulatory
narrative.
“The
politicians talk and talk about illegal immigrations,” says Sheriff
Steve Bizzell of Johnston County, “but Senator Dole actually did
something about it.” Davidson County Sheriff David Grice picks up the
thread: “Most of us didn’t have tools to apprehend illegal immigrants
who were repeatedly committing crimes.”
“The ones who are
tough, hardened criminals,” Davie County Sheriff Andy Stokes says. And
Barnes continues: “To give us access to the federal tools to identify,
apprehend… “…And deport these repeat criminals,” Alamance County
Sheriff Terry Johnson finishes.
Barnes, one of the most
powerful Republicans in Guilford County, said his application for
287(g) program was stuck because of a backlog at Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. Dole expedited the application after receiving a
call from the sheriff, and the senator helped set up a collaborative
arrangement among North Carolina sheriffs so that together they could
access the federal government’s database of illegal border crossers.
Later, Dole attended the NC Sheriffs Association conference in Atlantic
Beach to reaffirm her support for the sheriffs.
“We had a
meeting right here in this office with the sheriffs, many of whom were
involved in the commercial,” Barnes said. “She looked at some of the
problems of immigration, problems of getting information and data from
folks who did not have the paper work. She talked to us.” Barnes said
he considers Hagan a friend, but was happy to help Dole, his fellow
Republican.
“What is motivating me is that Senator Dole has
access,” Barnes said. “She’s been up there long enough that she knows
who to call, she knows who to contact, she knows what buttons to push.
From my point of view, that access and experience is a valuable thing.”
It remains unclear how much advantage Dole will realize from
highlighting the issue of immigration. “It probably helps Dole energize
the base of Republican voters more than it gets her swing voters,” said
Ferrel Guillory of the Program on Public Life. “She needs politically
to have that kind of excitement in her campaign. We’ve got to realize
that immigration has become an emotional issue in this state, because
immigration has been increasing. We’ve had a strong economy and we’ve
had jobs, and Latinos have been coming here for the jobs that the
economy has produced, many of them low-wage, low-skilled jobs.” Just as
Dole has tapped into unease among the electorate over the role of
immigrants in the state, the Hagan campaign has its own stratagem to
exploit popular frustrations through a series of encounters between the
candidate and voters at gas stations to highlight the high price of
fuel. The authenticity of one of the events, an appearance at Steve’s
Friendly BP in Greensboro on July 11, was undermined by the presence of
local Republican activists and a couple reporters horning in on the
conversation. Don Wendelken, a former Republican candidate for Guilford
County Commission, showed up on a Harley and tried to goad Hagan into
supporting domestic oil drilling, before she extricated herself with a
thumbs-up.
Mike Stone, a registered Republican who is a
candidate for Guilford County School Board, pulled his white vintage
Camaro with red SS racing stripes up to the pump. He too wanted to know
if Hagan would support new domestic oil drilling. She parried that
Congress should consider eliminating tax breaks for oil companies, and
invest the money into research on alternative energy sources.
“All
I’m saying is, let’s open the field up a little bit and put money into
renewable energy,” she said. Stone tried a different tack. “Let me ask
you this question,” he said. “If the oil companies — well, let’s get a
little more basic. We all have retirement plans, right?” “No, we
don’t,” Hagan said. “Well, you do,” Stone shot back. “I do. Right? I
bet that our retirement plan includes gas prices. So we want our
retirement plans to go up, correct?” Hagan tried to follow his logic,
and then demurred.
“I think that’s a whole separate issue,”
she said. Hagan scanned the pumps for new gas customers and departed.
While the crowd at Steve’s Friendly BP in Greensboro contained a
sizeable batch of Republican contrarians, other stops such as Polk
County have found crowds of Democrats happy to have another prominent
candidate for national office to join Obama in rallying the party.
Waiting
for the Saluda Coon Dog Day Parade to get underway, Democratic activist
Jerry Hardvall, who wore an Obama shirt, noted that in 2006 the
Democrats picked up two of five seats on the previously all-Republican
county commission. The three remaining Republicans, including Ted
Owens, face reelection this year. “It’s almost an assured thing we’re
going to flip it,” Hardvall said. “We have George Bush to thank for an
awful lot of this,” added Ray Gasperson, a Democratic candidate for
county commission. “So many people have been shocked by his policies.
After the 2004 election, I suddenly felt I had to get up and do
something. I went to the Democratic men’s breakfast. I could never have
conceived of running for county commissioner.”
That sentiment
extends to the Columbus police chief, a 62-year-old registered
Democrat, whose wife Becky chairs the county board of elections.
“The
war was something that was sold to us based on something that was never
there,” Butch Kennedy said. “It’s a shame that there were four thousand
people that gave their lives for something that was never there. I have
a hard time when the government fabricates stuff.”
Jim Jackson
recalled how, as a veteran of World War II, he switched from the
Democrats to the Republicans because of his admiration for Dwight D.
Eisenhower, and because of corruption in the local Democratic Party.
“In
1954, we had an incumbent sheriff who was arrested for drunken
driving,” said the 84-year-old Jackson, who is now regarded as a
“Democratic icon” in Polk County. “He was a Democrat. We felt we had to
get rid of him. The Republican candidate for sheriff won by
thirty-seven votes. I was a delegate to the Republican convention in
1956 in San Francisco.
That convention shifted me back to the
Democratic Party because I was very much into civil rights, and I saw
no hope for the Republican Party. I saw a little hope for the
Democratic Party. The county went exactly opposite of me. I would say
from the sixties pretty much until the last election, it was all
Republican.”
Voter registration for Democrats in Polk County
has increased 6.3 percent since the spring of 2006 — nearly double that
of the Republicans. The Democrats’ advantage in registering new voters
in Polk County closely reflects trends across the state.
Recent
history also bodes well for Democrats in the mountains and for
statewide candidates who need their votes to win elections. The
Republicans lost the 11 th Congressional District in 2006, which covers
the western end of the state, when Democrat Heath Shuler beat incumbent
Charles Taylor by a 7.6 percent margin.
Polk was among the
nine counties in which Democratic majorities helped swing the district
into Shuler’s column. Erosion of Republican clout is also evident in
the 8 th Congressional District east of Charlotte where the loss of
textile jobs to offshore locations, coupled with Republican-led trade
deals such as the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement, have
disillusioned many voters with the party. Despite little support from
the national party, Democrat Larry Kissell came within 329 votes of
ousting Republican Robin Hayes in 2006. Democratic registration has
increased by double digits since 2006 in Cabarrus County, which
includes Hayes’ native Concord. Hagan campaigned in Hayes’ district on
July 25, making stops in Wadesboro, Rockingham, Laurinburg and
Fayetteville.
Still, the precedent of past Senate campaigns
offers a mixed prognosis for Hagan. “John Edwards in 1998, ten years
ago, was the last time a Democrat won a Senate race,” Guillory
reflected.
“Democrats like John Edwards and, before him, Terry
Sanford won their seats in non presidential-election years. Democrats
haven’t won a Senate seat in a presidential election year since Sam
Ervin in sixty eight.”
Dole beat Democrat Erskine Bowles by an
8.6 percent margin in 2002, carrying not only Republican strongholds in
the mountains and conservative areas along the coast, but the state’s
three most populous counties encompassing Charlotte, Raleigh and
Greensboro.
When Bowles made a second attempt in 2004, then
against Burr, the Democrats managed to retake the three largest
counties and narrow the margin to 4.6 percent, but the Republicans
still prevailed by accumulating sufficient votes in rural counties to
send Bowles home without the coveted seat. It should come as no
surprise that the Democrats are at least outwardly bullish this time
around.
Democratic pollsters John Anzalone and Jeff Liszt, who
operate their political shop out of Montgomery, Ala., received $8,000
from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee the day before the
North Carolina primary to research Hagan’s prospects in the November
general-election match-up with Dole. “Kay Hagan faces a significantly
more advantageous political environment than previous Democratic Senate
candidates in North Carolina,” they wrote in a May 27 memo. “Democratic
registration has increased, and expanded participation in this year’s
Democratic primary suggests higher turnout among Democrats in the fall.
At the same time Democratic turnout is rising, voters are more
pessimistic about the direction of the country, and the Republican
leadership in Washington shoulders much of the blame.”
In
Charlotte, as in Polk County, Democrats appear revved up by Obama
fever. Democratic registration in Mecklenburg County, which encompasses
the Queen City, has shot up by double digit percentages since the
spring of 2006. About 25 people, not counting campaign staff and press,
attended a veterans town-hall meeting — the third Hagan had held thus
far — at American Legion Post 380 on July 24. “I hope Kay has a chance,
but I know Dole has a lot of support across the state,” said Jack
Flynn, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate against Republican Rep. Sue
Myrick in the 9 th Congressional District and a member of the US
Veterans Commission. “I think Barack is certainly going to help all the
Democratic candidates down the ticket. He may have some coattails.”
Flynn
said he perceives a clear difference between Hagan and Dole on veterans
issues, complaining that Dole has voted in support of requests by the
Bush administration to reduce benefits funneled through the Veterans
Administration.
“I’ve known Kay for several years,” he said.
“I know her to be a true friend to veterans.” And yet to win, the
Democratic Party must fashion together an unwieldy coalition of those
who favor moderate change and those frustrated by incremental advances.
Among those who may want more than Hagan is capable of delivering is
John Autry, a Navy sailor from 1972 to 1976 and organizer of the
Charlotte chapter of Veterans For Peace.
“We just want these
veterans taken care of,” Autry said. “We want a veteran friendly
Veterans Administration. We want to pay active-duty soldiers a living
wage. We don’t want any military families to have to rely on food
stamps for sustenance. We also believe the best way to support the
troops is to not send them into harm’s way needlessly. We’re going to
push forth these issues with all the candidates, not just Democrats.”
Before
hearing Hagan’s pitch Autry indicated that he had yet to form an
impression of the candidate. “When the campaign is going on everything
is easy,” he said. “Everyone’s supportive. We call them the ‘summer
soldiers.’ But when things get tough, we can’t rest. Know what I mean?”
“With US military spending exceeding that of the rest of the world
combined, wouldn’t it seem that we could find a way to take care of our
wounded warriors?” Autry asked Hagan. “Wouldn’t it seem that we could
spend some money on making sure that active-duty soldiers receive a
living wage?” Hagan responded by saying that a number of North Carolina
National Guard members have lost their houses to foreclosures while
deployed in Iraq, and mentioned that as a state senator she played a
role in creating an emergency fund to help them make mortgage payments.
During the meeting, Hagan committed to hiring a veteran on her Senate
staff, and made ample mention of two nephews in the military, her
husband’s military service in Vietnam, and the fact that her
father-in-law is a retired two-star general in the Marine Corps.
Alluding
to the backlog of disability claims filed by returning veterans at the
Veterans Administration, Hagan committed to due diligence but promised
no miracles.
“From the disability standpoint, we have got to
do more,” she said. “With $11 billion spent a day in Iraq, surely we
can do better than this. I can’t say I’m going to get it fixed the day
I’m elected, but rest assured that I’m going to be working on it.”
Hagan will have to walk a tightrope in her contest with Dole to project
an image that allows voters to distinguish her from her opponent, but
avoids casting herself as anything other than a solid middle-of
the-road business progressive.
“The Republicans’ tactic for a
long time has been to try to portray North Carolina Democrats as being
like national Democrats,” Guillory said. “In the last Senate election,
Richard Burr had those pictures of Erskine Bowles with President
Clinton. Bowles was a traditional, businessman-conservative Democrat,
but he was portrayed as being more like the liberal members of the
national
Democrats. It’s one of the challenges of the North Carolina Democrats to distance themselves from the national party.
“She’ll
be tested over: What is she going to do different than Senator Dole?”
he added. “This one is going to be fought over: Do voters want to stick
with Senator Dole, or are they fed up with the way things are going? A
solid majority think the country’s on the wrong track, so it’s whether
they feel comfortable that Hagan would put the country back on the
right track.”
To comment on this story, e-mail Jordan Green at jordan@yesweekly.com.
