Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan likely won’t be inviting President Obama to campaign with her in red state North Carolina.
Locked in a tight election battle with Republican challenger Thom Tillis, Hagan dodged a reporter’s question when asked if she thought the president was a strong leader.
“You know, President Obama has a lot on his plate,” said Hagan during an interview broadcast Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “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 combination of things like that.”
When the reporter pressed Hagan if she thought the president has acted as a strong leader in the crises she mentioned, the senator again stopped short of directly answering.
“Like with Ebola, we have definitely been late to the table in making decisions about that, being sure that [the] CDC has — understands and gets messages out to hospitals,” she said.
Hagan eventually said that “certainly there are issues” in which the president could’ve shown stronger leadership.
The Democrat has been walking a political tightrope during her campaign, trying not to appear too cozy to Obama in a state he lost in 2012. She leads Tillis by no more than three percentage points in most recent independent polls.
