Politico seems to have the distinction of publishing the most awkwardly hilarious story headline title of this political campaign season: "Bill Clinton Plugs Kay Hagan in N.C.." If that did not put at least a smile on your face if not cause a belly laugh, it sure had that effect on a lot of people including readers of the Politico article as well as folks on Twitter. To make matters worse, or funnier, the story was accompanied with a photo of Clinton and Hagan with the latter wearing a blue dress.
Kay Hagan
By Tim Graham | November 2, 2014 | 9:13 AM EST
The Charlotte Observer seems to be suffering from a vanishing-Kay-Hagan-scandal problem today. Republicans seized on a new story (cached here) on how Senator Hagan's husband benefited from the "stimulus" program. But the link went into "Page Not Found."
Local TV station WBTV was reporting that the Hagan family self-dealing is under "further legal review." That's not a great story for the weekend before the election. Is that why its link broke? It reported this:
By Curtis Houck | October 30, 2014 | 1:06 AM EDT
CBS News congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes profiled the North Carolina Senate race during Wednesday night’s CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and devoted much of her report highlighting the fact that the race between incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan and Republican challenger and State House Speaker Thom Tillis has become the most expensive Senate race of the cycle.
Specifically, Cordes blamed “[t]he Supreme Court” as it “paved the way for unlimited outside spending in a 2010 decision commonly known as Citizens United, which overturned parts of a campaign finance law authored by Republican John McCain.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 22, 2014 | 11:20 AM EDT
Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and her Republican opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, are currently locked in a close Senate race but with less than two weeks until Election Day Senator Hagan declined to participate in a debate Tuesday night. Despite Senator Hagan’s absence, all three network morning shows ignored the story on their Wednesday morning broadcasts.
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 14, 2014 | 12:33 PM EDT
Chris Matthews continued to beat MSNBC’s voter suppression drum during an exclusive interview with Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) on Monday night’s Hardball. Matthews, who like much of MSNBC has claimed that Republicans want to block minorities from voting, made the issue a focal point of his discussion with the North Carolina Democrat. The Hardball host hyped the interview by playing a clip of himself asking Senator Hagan “why are they trying to screw the black voter, to put it bluntly? Is it because they don`t like blacks or because they don`t like Democrats?”
Politico Echoes Planned Parenthood Attack Ads on 'Strident' GOP Challengers In Colorado, North Carolina
By Tim Graham | September 13, 2014 | 10:50 AM EDT James Hohmann of Politico reported on a "nearly million-dollar" ad buy by Planned Parenthood against two Republican Senate challengers who are "taking heat for their strident opposition to abortion."
It's apparently not "strident" when the Democratic incumbents they're challenging get 100-percent ratings from the "pro-choice" crowd.
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 6, 2014 | 11:13 AM EDT
Tuesday, May 6 is primary day for the North Carolina race for U.S. Senate, and The Washington Post ran a misleading front-page story declaring “In N.C., Hagan’s attack ad flips script on health law.”
Reporter Rosalind Helderman began the piece by hyping how “Thom Tillis, the Republican front-runner for a U.S. Senate seat, once called President Obama’s health-care law “a great idea” yet the truth was buried 8 paragraphs later on A12. Helderman eventually informed her readers that the Tillis quote was heavily taken out of context and was in fact false.
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 23, 2014 | 1:06 PM EDT
MSNBC's Ari Melber seemed downright gleeful at the news that vulnerable Senate Democrats have started running campaign ads touting their support for ObamaCare. Filling in for host Lawrence O'Donnell on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday April 21, Melber hyped how "there are signs that President Obama's new call to run on the Affordable Care Act has gotten through to Democrats."
The regular host of MSNBC's daytime program The Cycle hyped a campaign ad by Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) that edited comments made by Thom Tillis, her potential opponent in the November general election, making it seem as though the North Carolina Republican supported ObamaCare. The fact-checking website Politifact labeled the ad "mostly false" yet Melber chose to promote the ad anyways. [See video below.]
By Brad Wilmouth | July 8, 2013 | 6:16 PM EDT
On the Wednesday, July 3, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid compared abortion restrictions to "Shariah law" as she blasted North Carolina state senate Republicans for the "sneak attack" of including the restrictions in a bill banning Islamic law in the state. Reid:
AP's Shameless Headline As Dem Senators' Opposition Prevents DREAM Act Cloture: 'Republicans Block Youth Immigration Bill'
By Tom Blumer | December 19, 2010 | 8:49 AM EST If you look at the description of yesterday afternoon's U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote Number 278 ("A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to clarify and improve certain provisions relating to the removal of litigation against Federal officers or agencies to Federal courts, and for other purposes."), you'd never know it had anything to do with illegal immigration.
But it did. It was a cloture vote (60 needed to get the measure to the Senate floor) about about the so-called "DREAM Act," granting de facto amnesty to a vast number of illegal immigrants for entering college or joining the military. It has been a Democratic Party-"inspired" initiative with heavy Republican opposition from the get-go. It could easily have passed if the Democrats had been able to hold their membership together while picking off a couple of squishy Republicans.
They got their squishes: Republicans Murkowski (AK), Lugar (IN), and Bennett (UT) voted yes. That should have given the measure 61 votes. But Democrats Baucus (MT), Hagan (NC), Nelson (NE), Pryor AR), and Tester (MT) voted no, while Manchin (WV) did not vote. The measure's 55-41 support was not enough to move it to the next step.
So whose fault was it that the DREAM Act failed? A bitter, unbylined Associated Press report give us the wire service's "objective" take: