Durham, N.C.
“All these people are saying I’m costing Kay Hagan or Thom Tillis the election,” Sean Haugh told me as he sipped a glass of Duck-Rabbit beer on Tuesday night. “It’s like it’s somehow my fault that they’re terrible candidates.”
Haugh (pronounced “haw”), the Libertarian candidate in North Carolina’s Senate race, has drawn an increasing amount of attention this summer and fall as the quirky pizza deliveryman and craft beer aficionado who could potentially determine control of the U.S. Senate. Since the end of September, Democratic senator Kay Hagan’s lead over Republican Thom Tillis has dwindled in the RealClearPolitics polling average from nearly 5 points to just 1 point. That slim margin makes it ever more plausible that Haugh, who’s now garnering 5 percent in the RCP polling average, could play a decisive role in the North Carolina Senate race, and hence control of the Senate.
