Yes!Weekly looks at the Hagan campaign, in the process describing an interesting encounter at Greensboro’s Steve’s Friendly BP station, which was my regular stop until he went above and beyond high gas prices:
Just as Dole has tapped into unease among the electorate over the role of immigrants in the state, the Hagan campaign has its own stratagem to exploit popular frustrations through a series of encounters between the candidate and voters at gas stations to highlight the high price of fuel.
The authenticity of one of the events, an appearance at Steve’s Friendly BP in Greensboro on July 11, was undermined by the presence of local Republican activists and a couple reporters horning in on the conversation. Don Wendelken, a former Republican candidate for Guilford County Commission, showed up on a Harley and tried to goad Hagan into supporting domestic oil drilling, before she extricated herself with a thumbs-up.
Mike Stone, a registered Republican who is a candidate for Guilford County School Board, pulled his white vintage Camaro with red SS racing stripes up to the pump. He too wanted to know if Hagan would support new domestic oil drilling. She parried that Congress should consider eliminating tax breaks for oil companies, and invest the money into research on alternative energy sources.
“All I’m saying is, let’s open the field up a little bit and put money into renewable energy,” she said. Stone tried a different tack. “Let me ask you this question,” he said. “If the oil companies — well, let’s get a little more basic. We all have retirement plans, right?” “No, we don’t,” Hagan said. “Well, you do,” Stone shot back. “I do. Right? I bet that our retirement plan includes gas prices. So we want our retirement plans to go up, correct?” Hagan tried to follow his logic, and then demurred.
“I think that’s a whole separate issue,” she said. Hagan scanned the pumps for new gas customers and departed.
It seems to me Hagan totally missed the logic, which is to put more oil on the market, thus reducing prices, thus eating up less of our retirement plans. But I understand she was being challenged in an informal setting and might not have been adequately prepared.
