On the evening of a recent debate in Durham, N.C., Sen. Kay Hagan was confident and in control, leading Republican Thom Tillis in the polls and steering their televised discussion.
But, after the hour-long back-and-forth ended, a reporter asked Hagan whether she had missed a Senate hearing on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to attend a fundraiser for her re-election campaign.
“There was one,” Hagan responded, with news cameras rolling.
“It was scheduled early in the day, and then that hearing had to be postponed later that day,” she elaborated. “So yes, I did miss that one.”
Suddenly, the discussion in the key North Carolina Senate race turned sharply to national security — and for Tillis’ campaign, after weeks of being weighed down by its ties to a profoundly unpopular state legislature, it felt like a pivotal turning point.
Since then, Hagan’s remark has popped up in Republican attack ads as Tillis has hammered the theme on the campaign trail. Last week, Sen. John McCain joined Tillis for a discussion on national security.
“These are very, very serious times, and Sen. Hagan wasn’t there,” McCain said.
The shift in campaign discourse has come at an inopportune time for Hagan, with just two weeks until Election Day.
Avoiding discussion of national issues and focusing on Tillis’s ties to the North Carolina statehouse, where he serves as speaker, has been at the center of Hagan’s strategy to win re-election in a year when she is among the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents.
As Hagan has highlighted tax breaks for the wealthy, cuts to education and low pay for public school teachers supported by Tillis and other state Republican lawmakers, she has staved off Tillis in public polling — if only by a few points.
Lately, however, that margin has been shrinking.
Education has not been a winning issue for Tillis, Republican strategists have conceded privately, but some suspect and hope the issue has reached its saturation point with voters.
“At this point it’s all they’ve got,” said one Republican operative with ties to North Carolina, of Hagan’s campaign.
In a state where the legislature has lurched sharply to the right in a short period of time, sparking weekly protests at the Capitol in Raleigh, betting on voters’ dissatisfaction with the statehouse has seemed a safe bet for Hagan.
“That’s exactly why [Tillis] is unelectable, because people have seen how he runs the statehouse according to the exact opposite of small-r republican principles,” said Sean Haugh, the Libertarian candidate for Senate. “Very closed, no dissent, gutting bills in the middle of the night … to me this is the exact opposite of what our system of government is supposed to be, and most people agree.”
On top of cuts to education in recent years, Republican lawmakers blocked Medicaid expansion in North Carolina and cut unemployment benefits. Even some Republicans now worry the party went too far, too soon — and they looked to compensate during this summer’s budget session.
“We walked into session knowing, not just for Thom’s future, but our re-election prospects, we needed to get that teacher pay raise done,” said one North Carolina Republican strategist with ties to the statehouse. “There was no way around it.”
That was easier said than done. Negotiations amongst the Republican-led state Senate and House and Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, were marked by private acrimony and public bluster, and the session stretched on longer than most Republicans hoped or anticipated.
By the end, lawmakers approved a seven-percent pay raise for teachers.
Tillis was bruised from the fights. Not only had the noisy session received frequent, negative press attention, but Tillis had also squandered valuable time in the statehouse hashing out the budget instead of campaigning.
“The extended legislative session restricted Tillis’ ability to both raise money and campaign full-time,” said one North Carolina Republican operative. “And Democrat outside groups spent heavily in the summer on top of that, but they weren’t able to put him away.”
As Tillis has faced scrutiny for how he has helmed the statehouse, he has hammered Hagan for her own ties to an unpopular legislative body, Congress and President Obama.
Until recently, Hagan’s attacks have appeared to resonate most, as reflected in polling that has shown her maintaining a narrow but consistent lead. But quickly, and unexpectedly, the conversation in North Carolina has shifted to foreign policy — and the polls have begun to turn in Tillis’s favor.
Since Hagan confirmed to reporters that she missed a Senate hearing on ISIS for a political fundraiser, that remark has been echoed in multiple Republican attack ads. Meantime, Tillis has begun to criticize on the Obama administration’s response to the spread of Ebola, as part of his larger critique of the president’s and Hagan’s competency in office.
For Republicans, the seemingly successful pivot has been a nice October surprise.
“Ninety days ago,” said one Republican strategist with ties to the state, “no one would have thought that foreign policy is going to be a defining issue of this campaign.”
