• What if they held a debate and Kay Hagan didn’t show up? “A debate on U.S. Senate debates surfaced Tuesday after Democratic incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan said she wouldn’t participate in an Oct. 21 candidate forum hosted by three of the state’s largest news organizations, including the Observer. Debate sponsors in addition to the Observer are Time Warner Cable News and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. To qualify for the debate, candidates will need to poll an average of 15 percent voter preference in three independent polls in late September and early October.” The Tillis camp says Hagan is “ducking another major debate.” The Hagan camp says they have another engagement that night.
• U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, running for her sixth term as N.C.’s 5th District member of Congress, says the problem for young people is a lack of jobs, and Democratic programs that only seek to allow them to refinance their college debt is not going to fix it. She is chair of the House Education & the Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and vice chair of the House Rules Committee.
• This is how it works. Democratic candidates manufacture a faux-outrage scandal, and then the mainstream media takes their cue and runs with it. In The Washington Post‘s PlumLine blog today is this: “The North Carolina GOP Senate candidate is taking heat for talking down to Senator Kay Hagan, and Thom Tillis now tries to clean up the mess.” The “mess” is the post-debate charge by Kay Hagan that Tillis calling her “Kay” and setting her right on issues is a case of “mansplaining,” a made-up offense from those on the left that lets them exploit their “war on women” meme a little longer.
• Sometimes a politician just can’t let go. “As elected leaders go back to work in Washington, DC, Rep. Mike McIntyre is nearing the end of his ninth and final term in the United States House of Representatives. This week he is also hosting business and political leaders from across North Carolina for the annual Business and Economic Summit. As McIntyre speaks to the myriad of speakers and panelists on the agenda for the two-day event, he also took time to reflect on the career that began in 1997, and will end when a new Representative takes office in the Seventh Congressional District in early 2015.”
