By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
The U.S. Senate race in North Carolina has emerged as one of those national races to watch ó and watch closely.
Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who held a double-digit lead over Democrat Kay Hagan in July, found herself trailing in several polls by the end of September.
The latest Rasmussen Reports poll, conducted Sept. 23, showed Hagan ahead of Dole by a 48-45 percent margin. A Civitas poll from Sept. 17-20, showed Dole with a 43-41 percent lead over Hagan, a five-term state senator from Greensboro.
Christopher Cole of Hunt-ersville is the Libertarian candidate.
“It has gotten way too close for comfort for the Dole campaign,” says Dr. Michael Bitzer, political science professor at Catawba College. “An incumbent with such high name recognition ó it should not be this close.”
Bitzer said a combination of factors, including an anti-incumbent sentiment, the souring economy and a “general disdain of the Republican brand is really making this a national race to watch.”
“If you had asked any analyst in the beginning of the year,” Bitzer said, “Dole had it in a cakewalk. … This should not have been a race Republicans would be sweating.”
When the economy dominates discussion as it is now, that never bodes well for an incumbent of the party in power, Bitzer said. Other issues such as national security and the war in Iraq are far behind in surveys of Americans’ chief concerns, he said.
John Dinan, an associate professor of political science at Wake Forest University, said history shows that Dole should have expected a close U.S. Senate race no matter who her opponents were. He has studied U.S. Senate races in North Carolina going back to 1964, and the margin of difference in those contests has averaged out at 3 percent, while presidential winners have a 12 percent margin in the state.
It would have been an error for Dole not to expect a competitive contest, Dinan said. In North Carolina, the U.S. Senate race usually comes down to the economy, national security and what happens in the presidential race.
A big concern for Dole has to be Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and its successful targeting and registration of new N.C. voters, according to Dinan. “She would feel better if (Republican John) McCain opened up a big lead on Obama,” Dinan said.
If McCain would win in North Carolina by at least 6 percent, Dole probably would be in a good position to win herself, according to Dinan’s research on the historical voting patterns.
But the latest presidential polls suggest North Carolina has gone from Republican-leaning to a toss-up or battleground state. The Sept. 30 Rasmussen Reports poll showed Obama with a 50-47 percent lead over McCain in North Carolina.
McCain is scheduled to make his first N.C. appearance since June this coming week, stopping in Wilmington on Monday. Meanwhile, Obama has been in the state numerous times.
Bitzer says it’s the “classic down East Jessecrats” ó conservative Democrats who used to vote for the late Republican Jesse Helms ó who often determine races in North Carolina and probably will decide the U.S. Senate contest in 2008.
It’s those Jessecrat voters, Bitzer says, who make North Carolina seem a bit schizophrenic, in that the state will favor a Republican presidential candidate and a Democratic governor, or elect both a Jesse Helms and John Edwards to the U.S. Senate.
“They flip back and forth between blue and red,” Bitzer said.
Al Louden, associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University, says a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad against Dole may have changed things in the race and helped Hagan.
“You had to have a reason not to elect Elizabeth Dole,” Louden said, “and now you had the reason.”
The television ad introduced two older men in rocking chairs who hinted that Dole was too old, out of touch with North Carolina and ineffective in Washington.
The men have reappeared in two follow-up ads, meaning Democrats like the feedback they’re getting, says Louden, who studies the effect of political advertising.
The most recent Dole ad, which has her standing in front of her Salisbury home, tries to respond to any suggestion that she’s not connected with her home state and lists the ways she has been effective for North Carolina as a U.S. senator.
“The message is dead on,” Louden says.
The truth is, Louden says, that Dole remains a celebrity. She probably will get all the votes she received in the 2002 election, but with the way things are going in the presidential race, Louden says she still could come up short.
Louden doesn’t think the U.S. Senate race is really about Kay Hagan.
Rather, voters are struggling with the economy, seeing an older incumbent, questioning the time she doesn’t spend in North Carolina and showing enthusiasm for Obama as a candidate, he suggests.
Had Obama not been a player in North Carolina, Dole would be in good shape, Louden says.
Dole’s saving grace could be that people don’t dislike her, Louden says.
“But will it be enough?” he asks.