Asheville Citizen-Times Editorial Endorsement: Hagan will give N.C. a better voice in the Senate

When Elizabeth Dole defeated Washington insider Erskine Bowles for the U.S. Senate, who would have believed that a relatively unknown state senator from Guilford County could pose a serious threat to her reelection six years later?

But Dole’s lack of assertiveness, her hesitation and changed positions on issues like an outlying landing field near a national wildlife refuge and offshore oil drilling, her failure to use her position on the banking committee to more effect in averting the current economic crisis and her too-frequent absence from the state have distanced her from her constituents.
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Her opponent, Kay Hagan, has represented Guilford County in the state Senate for 10 years, chairing the powerful budget committee for the past five years. The non-partisan North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research named Hagan one of North Carolina’s “Ten Most Effective Senators” during her last three terms.

Hagan lives, works and raised her family in North Carolina. The forcefulness and hard work that earned her the chairmanship of one of the most important Senate committees, her extensive understanding of the state’s economic, educational and environmental needs and her proven record of being able to work with her fellow lawmakers to get things done would better serve North Carolina. For that reason, she gets our recommendation.

In her 40 years in Washington, the 72-year-old Dole, a graduate of Duke and Harvard, has served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission, Secretary of Transportation under President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Labor under President George H.W. Bush. She was president of one of the nation’s largest charities, the American Red Cross.

When she went to Washington, she was herself the consummate insider. As the wife of former Sen. Bob Dole, she had an easy inside track when she entered the U.S. Senate. Both she and her husband have been candidates for president. Few freshmen senators arrive with the credentials and the years of inside-government experience.

For four of her years there she belonged to the majority party. Then in 2006 she headed the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a thankless task given the nation’s unhappiness with the war in Iraq, that ended badly when Republicans lost control of the Senate.

The disillusionment with the president can’t be discounted as a factor in Dole’s re-election struggle, but her real Achilles heel can be found in her own failure to meet the expectations North Carolinians had for her.

Dole has failed to translate her knowledge and experience into the kind of clout and activism that would make her a force in the Senate.

As Hagan is fond of pointing out, her 2007 effectiveness rating by Roll Call, the highly respected Capitol Hill news service that rates members Congress on the ability to be effective, is 93rd out of 100 senators.

Until the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2006, like the majority of her colleagues she voted with her party more than 90 percent of the time, 95.5 percent in her first two years. Since 2006, she has voted with her party 88 percent of the time. That record works against her when her party is led by one of the most unpopular administrations on record.

But the most damaging accusation against her is that she is an absentee senator, who spent only about two months in the state between 2004 and 2006, based on research done by the Winston-Salem Journal. Records document only 13 days spent in North Carolina in 2006. She spent 50 days in the state in 2007 as she prepared for her reelection bid and 97 days so far this year, the Journal reported in late September.

By contrast, records show North Carolina’s other Republican senator, Richard Burr, spends virtually every day when Congress is not in session in the state, according to the Journal.

Dole’s accomplishments include working with Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue to prevent military base closures in 2005, leading the fight to secure a tobacco quota buyout and working with North Carolina sheriffs and federal officials to establish the nation’s first statewide plan to identify and process illegal immigrants.

But, though she says that as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, she was one of a handful of senators raising the alarm about the need for more oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the last five years, she was ineffective in persuading her fellow senators to take action. And, she does not appear to have played a significant role in negotiations to address the credit crisis.

Hagan, 55, a graduate of Wake Forest Law School who spent 10 years working in the banking industry, says she would also seek a seat on the Banking Committee, but insists she would be a far more aggressive participant.

“I want to be a voice at the table,” she said in an interview with the Citizen-Times Editorial Board.

North Carolina needs and deserves a senator who stays in touch with her constituents and the changing dynamics of a fast-growing state. And it deserves a knowledgeable, collaborative, but forceful voice in the U.S. Senate. We believe Kay Hagan promises to be such a voice.

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