Winston-Salem Journal: Hagan Raises a Million for Race

She has easily outpaced primary opponent Neal

By James Romoser
JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU
published April 4, 2008

RALEIGH – Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat running for U.S. Senate, said yesterday that she raised more than $800,000 in the first three months of 2008 and currently has more than $1 million to spend on the race.

Hagan so far has outpaced her opponent in the Democratic primary, Jim Neal. But her fundraising trails far behind that of the Republican incumbent she is trying to unseat, Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

The next deadline for U.S. Senate candidates to file campaign-finance reports is not until later this month, but Hagan released her latest numbers early, saying that they show she can go toe-to-toe against Dole in November.

“I think that this shows that our campaign is competitive nationally and on track to win the primary,” said Colleen Flanagan, Hagan’s spokeswoman.

Earlier this week, the political-tracking Web site Real Clear Politics ranked the Dole seat for the first time as one of the nation’s 10 most competitive Senate seats.
However, a lot will depend on fundraising – particularly the extent to which the national Democratic Party and other groups funnel money into the race after the May 6 primary.

Dole, who is known as a strong fundraiser, had $2.6 million on hand at the end of 2007, and is likely to raise much more before the general election.

Hagan’s $1 million in cash on hand is far below the amount that she previously estimated that she would need to beat Dole. When she first got in the race last fall, Hagan, a state senator, said that she thought it would take $10 million to make the race competitive.

Flanagan said yesterday that the campaign did not have any specific target of how much Hagan would have to raise to be competitive in November.
Neal, an investment banker from Chapel Hill, has run a grass-roots campaign and has positioned himself to the left of Hagan, painting her as a typical politician and a government insider.

Neal’s campaign did not release its fundraising numbers yesterday for the first three months of the year, saying it would wait until the end of the filing period on April 16. But Neal’s campaign manager, Andrew Kain, said that Neal was unlikely to reach Hagan’s figures.

“We expect to be competitive. A million dollars? I don’t know that we’re going to get close to that, but frankly we’re not the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, so it makes it a little harder to raise money,” Kain said, referring to Hagan’s position in the N.C. Senate.

Hagan is tapped into North Carolina’s Democratic establishment in a way that Neal is not. Gov. Mike Easley and state Senate leader Marc Basnight, for instance, are openly supporting Hagan.

Neal has tried to close the gap by relying more on out-of-state donors, by lending his own money to his campaign and by developing a network of supporters on the Web.

But it appears that Hagan is out-fundraising Neal even over the Internet, which has been considered Neal’s turf. Hagan’s campaign said that she raised more than $230,000 online in the first three months of the year. Neal has raised about $96,000 online in that same time span, Kain said.

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