Wilson Daily Times: Senate candidate Kay Hagan visits Wilson

Wilson Daily Times
Matt Shaw
September 24, 2008

North Carolina needs to send Kay Hagan to the U.S. Senate, former Gov. Jim Hunt said today.

“The crowd in Washington has messed things up as badly as I’ve ever seen it, as bad as it’s been since the Great Depression,” Hunt said to about 85 people at Something Different restaurant this morning.

Hunt called U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole a part of the problem.

“She’s a nice woman, but I have never seen anyone go to Washington and do as little as she’s done,” Hunt said.

Hagan called Dole a servant of special interests who has little involvement in the state.

“We need a senator who spends more time in Wayne, Wilson and Watauga counties than she spends in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.,” Hagan said.

Dole and her husband, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, have lived at the Watergate since their marriage in 1975.

Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat and a state senator since 1998, has been a friend and supporter of Hunt’s since 1992 when she ran his Guilford County campaign for governor. She was his county officer again in 1996.

Hunt, who organized this morning’s fund-raiser, is the person who initially urged Hagan to run for the General Assembly and then for U.S. Senate, she said. “He will always be one of my main mentors,” she said.

Hagan started by talking about her background and family, then her experiences in the Legislature. She has chaired the senate’s budget committee for the past five years. That’s required some hard decisions as the state requires a balanced budget, she said.

In contrast, the national budget is far out of balance, running a $450 billion deficit this year, the national debt nearly $9.2 trillion, she said. That was before the recently announced bailouts of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage corporations.

This is another symptom of the Bush Administration’s efforts to eliminate federal regulations, she said.

“We took the cops off the beat. We took away any oversight and accountability,” she said. “I want to put that back.”

She also criticized Dole for repeatedly voting for $17 billion in incentives for the major oil companies, yet not supporting alternative, renewable energies.

Hagan called for a safe, secure end to the war in Iraq. The U.S. is spending $11 billion a month on roads and hospitals there when we have the same needs here, she said.

“That money isn’t making America safer,” she said.

She would also work to lower health care costs for working families, she said.

She noted that she is running for the seat that was once held by the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Until Helms announced he was going to retire, Dole was registered to vote in Kansas. Two days later, Dole registered to vote in North Carolina, Hagan said.

“We’ve gone from Senator No to Senator Nowhere in North Carolina,” Hagan said to laughter.

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