Last week, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee reserved $9 million in TV to support Kay Hagan. Immediately, Republicans started saying that Democrats had hit the panic button and the buy showed that Hagan was in real trouble. Hagan’s been in real trouble since the race began–it’s what happens when you live in the most competitive state in the nation. In August 2016, Richard Burr will almost certainly be in similar trouble.
The DSCC’s buy is little indication of anything other than their commitment to fight for this seat. If there was a panic button hit last week, though, it came from the GOP. Carolina Rising, a GOP group run by former state director of Americans for Prosperity Dallas Woodhouse, bought $1 million in ads propping up Thom Tillis and Pat McCrory by trying to sell their teacher pay raise. Most people, especially teachers, aren’t too thrilled with the plan.
(As an aside, the ad never mentions Senate President Pro-tem Phil Berger, the third leg of the Republican power structure in Raleigh. Tillis is running for Senate and the Governor’s approval ratings have been underwater for a dangerously long time. Berger doesn’t have to run statewide, but he has openly feuded with both McCrory and Tillis. And Woodhouse quickly left Berger, Jr.’s Congressional campaign after initially being named the campaign manager. But I’m sure they are all one big happy family.)
At the same time, that ad is competing with one from the DSCC that hangs the school funding problems around Tillis’ neck. That ad will have more impact than Carolina Rising. It matches most people’s reality.
While Tillis and McCrory want to put a smiley face on their education budget, parents and school personnel are facing headlines like the ones that greeted Chapel Hill residents. The school board eliminated 22 teacher assistants and other staff because of reductions in the state budget. This week and next, parents and children across the state will start school and hear about the cuts and they’ll be besieged with requests for money for special projects and classroom supplies. Their experience will raise questions about the veracity of the Carolina Rising ad while validating the message in the DSCC one.
As long as Tillis needs to convince people that he’s not harmed public education in North Carolina, he’s in trouble. He’s released a new ad today talking about his background, not his record. He needs to change the conversation in short order, but with schools starting back, that’s a tall one.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Of the campaign material I’ve already seen from a few GOP candidates for NCGA, they are taking the brazen tact of painting themselves as the champions of public education in NC.
They talk of a 7% pay raise for teachers (but of course reality shows that the increase essentially stole longevity pay from deserving veteran teachers and is based on unsustainable or questionable sources of revenues).
They imply that the 7% raise means an additional $3500 in the pocket of every teacher (just a total misrepresentation. Their own math schooling apparently didn’t teach them well on what an “average” is).
They claim that, thanks to the GOP, public education is getting more money than ever before (true in absolute dollar terms, but hardly in expenditures per pupil. NC has strongly growing enrollments which means more money is needed to educate more students. And I’ll wager they lumped in the money that’s going to additional charter schools and to subsidizing private schools via vouchers).
Reading Chad Barefoot’s extremely slanted and misleading literature raised my blood pressure. As near to bold-faced lying as a public figure can come.
There appear to be constituents who believe the NCGOP party line about great raises, unappreciative teachers, gigantic public education investment. Perhaps they are all homeschooling their children.
NCGOP claims to be many things it is not, reformers (reforming SBI, that new three-judge panel review of any challenge to a state law, why comply with ethics codes when you can lie later, etc.), pro-education (choose life! But then be sure to home school that baby), pro-business (they ARE pro-polluters, just ask Duke), small government (ask Asheville & Boone about that), anti-regulation (but for that unfortunate MotorCycleVagina bill).
I have never seen a party so intent on destruction.
Not so intent. Like you said, they have constituents that believe all that rabble they say, that the earth is flat, and likewise, the earth is at the center of the universe. Which is why they don’t like education. Teaching the reality of things is a really big faux pas.
Thomas, I believe you meant to say “veracity” of the Carolina Rising ad, but your “voracity” works as well.because Tillis and the GOP Senate and House have been ravening upon and raping our education system.
Carol Pelosi
Thanks, Carol. Will fix it but love your interpretation.