Although education is primarily a state responsibility, the state of education in North Carolina schools is a wedge issue Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan has been eager to exploit in her re-election campaign against Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis and Libertarian Sean Haugh.
Hagan again hammered that theme in a candidate debate Thursday night, alleging that Tillis has gutted education funding, and the quality of education is plummeting as a result.
But Hagan may find her focus on that issue cuts both ways with voters, based on interviews with a number of residents in Wilmington and Jacksonville who are following the campaign.
It resonates with Leeza Hendricks, who moved to Wilmington from Connecticut.
“I’m impressed with the fact that in the five years since I’ve lived here we’ve gone down to 48th in the country for our public schools [per-pupil spending], which is sad because North Carolina used to be the light of the South on things like that,” Hendricks said.
“I’ll definitely be voting for Kay Hagan. I’m a lifelong Democrat, and I was a union member for years. I don’t know what it would take for me to vote Republican,” Hendricks said. “My mother-in-law has been involved in Democratic politics for many years in Winston-Salem, and her opinion of Mr. Tillis is rather low … not of him as a person but of his performance as a politician.”
Neil Owens of Wilmington is tired of hearing Hagan focus on the state’s education budget when her priorities as a U.S. senator should be federal concerns.
“Just listening to the debates, all she wants is education. We’ve got plenty of education. He [Tillis] wants to [grow] the economy to get some jobs going. I know I got laid off and it was hard for me at my age to get a job,” Owens said.
“I’m also a veteran and what has she did for the veterans? Nothing,” Owens said. “All she wanted was whatever [President] Obama wanted, to be honest about it.”
While most vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents across the country have been reeling from charges that they are linked to the unpopularity of Obama’s policies, many pundits argue that Hagan’s focus on education has helped insulate her from those attacks.
She picked up the theme Thursday. “I think what Speaker Tillis has done to this state from our education system is really negating” any progress, Hagan said. “It is hurting our economy, it is hurting our education, and it is certainly hurting our children.”
She said Tillis “has given tax cuts to the wealthy, gutted our education system, done away with our film tax credits in this state, and put a sales tax on our electricity bills.”
But Tillis is becoming more vocal in his rebuttals.
“Sen Hagan’s said it four times tonight already that we cut education,” Tillis said during Thursday’s debate. “We’re spending $1 billion more a year on education. That’s a fact. Sen. Hagan, just because you say it isn’t going to make it any more true than the 24 times she said if you like your health care you can keep it, and if you like your doctor you can keep it.”
Tim Edwards of Jacksonville said he’ll vote for Tillis, and doesn’t buy Hagan’s line that the House speaker drained the state education budget or imposed disastrous policies on North Carolina.
“On the contrary, he’s improved it. North Carolina is the No. 1 economy in the United States now. Unemployment’s falling here better than anyplace else in the country because of lower taxes, an economic growth spurt [from] that,” Edwards said.
“Teachers have gotten a good pay raise this year, and are counting on another good one next year because we have more money to give it to them” due to Republican policies in the General Assembly, Edwards said.
His wife, Susan Edwards, said she is more concerned about the overall economy. She said the Republican-led legislature curbing extended unemployment benefits to encourage people to resume looking for work has been a positive and successful approach to bringing down the state’s jobless rate.
“I want our entire country, I want our state to be on track going the right way” more than voting on Hagan’s one-dimensional women’s issue platform, she said.
But Hagan supporters believe that is a winning approach with the female vote.
“Tonight’s debate is yet another reminder that the future of women’s health and equality is on the ballot this November. Thom Tillis has already taken North Carolina women too far back, and we can’t let him take his out-of-touch agenda to the United States Senate,” Melissa Reed, vice president for public affairs, Planned Parenthood Health Systems Action Fund, for Planned Parenthood Votes, said after Tuesday’s debate in Durham.
Jeremy Baker of Jacksonville said Tillis better represents the values and beliefs of his military-oriented community. He believes America’s national security is now in greater peril than when Obama and Hagan took office.
“I’d like to say it’s the president, but the president doesn’t make the decision on his own. There’s other people who come into play on it. This administration hasn’t been the greatest for our security,” Baker said, noting that Hagan votes with the president 96 percent of the time.
He also is concerned that in their first campaigns, both the president and Hagan said improvements were essential to the Veterans Administration, but have not followed through.
“They just need to do a better job. Veterans are the ones that keep the country free and we need to take care of them,” said Baker, who works for a private EMS company that often transports veterans to the VA Hospital.
Jeff Ockuly of Jacksonville said Hagan has “been a rubber stamp for Obama.”
He said he was disturbed when he learned that Hagan missed half of her meetings on the Armed Services Committee and failed to call one meeting of a committee on emerging threats that she chairs as ISIS became a major threat to Middle East peace.
Hagan is “not doing a good job obviously, and from not calling any meetings or being present at the meetings she should be she apparently is not doing her job,” Ockuly said.
“The economy, Obamacare, gosh, just all of the scandals that are involved with this administration, it’s a scary thing,” Ockuly said. “I just hope that Hillary [Clinton] doesn’t get the White House in 2016 or we’re really screwed.”
Dan E. Way (@danway_carolina) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.