First Lady Michelle Obama gave a shout-out Thursday to Kay Hagan, a former Democratic U.S. senator whose failed re-election bid in 2014 saw her fleeing from President Obama and his poor approval numbers.
“I also want to take some time to recognize your former Senator, Kay Hagan, who is here,” the first lady said at a Clinton campaign rally in Winston-Salem, N.C. “Kay, it’s good to see you.”
Hagan lost her re-election bid in 2014 to then-state House Speaker, Thom Tillis.
Prior to her defeat, and at around the time when polls showed she was trailing her Republican opponent, Hagan made a conscious effort to disassociate herself from the president, who was also struggling with poor approval numbers of his own.
In October 2014, for example, Hagan dodged questions about whether she thought the president was a “strong leader,” and suggested in an interview with MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt that Obama had actually been pretty ineffective on certain issues.
Hunt asked simply, “Do you think that President Obama is a strong leader?”
“You know, President Obama has a lot on his plate. And it seems like whether it’s the oil spill that took place earlier, a number of years ago in the gulf, to this Ebola crisis now, to [the Islamic State] gaining strength, I mean, you look at all the combinations of things like that –” Hagan began.
“Do you think he has acted as a strong leader in those crises?” Hunt persisted.
“I think there’s definitely, like with Ebola, we’ve definitely been late to the table in making decisions about that, being sure that [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has, uh, understands and gets messages out to hospitals,” Hagan said.
“So you don’t think he showed strong leadership?” the MSNBC reporter asked again.
“Certainly there are issues that I certainly think, uh, no,” Hagan conceded.
As Hagan sought to put distance between herself and the president, GOP-related groups started releasing ads tying vulnerable lawmakers to the Obama administration.
Tillis went on to win the North Carolina senate race, capturing 49 percent of the vote to Hagan’s 47.3 percent.
