NC Senate race turned upside down after Democrat’s corruption revealed

Tsing Tao

Tsing Tao

NC Senate race turned upside down after Democrat’s corruption revealed
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North Carolina is the new Florida: a once reliably red state in which Democrats have made massive inroads. Democrat strategist see North Carolina as the new bellwether for the United States and have taken up a “win at all costs” strategy” in the Tar Heel State. Literally! North Carolina’s Senate race is on pace to be the most expensive of all time with over $100 million spent by campaigns and outside groups.

It was looking like Democrat Senator Kay Hagan was going to run away with the re-election, but all that has been turned upside down this week. Charges of massive corruption have hit the Hagan campaign, and those accusations are having a major impact.

from Carolina Journal:

From a report filed early Saturday by WRAL-TV news, we have confirmation that a cluster of businesses owned by Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband and other family members collected even more subsidies from taxpayers than initially reported. While Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington has highlighted a stimulus grant totaling $250,644 that was paid to JDC Manufacturing, a real estate business co-owned by Hagan’s husband, Chip, and his brothers John and David, WRAL confirmed that JDC received an additional $137,000 in energy tax credits from the project.

[…]

Add a second federal renewable energy grant of $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the ledger, and we learn that Hagan businesses soaked taxpayers for nearly $450,000 to pay for energy upgrades installed at JDC’s 300,000-square-foot building in Reidsville.

It’s worse than we thought.

It’s important to put the story into perspective, because the Hagan camp relentlessly deflects and spins, portraying these taxpayer handouts passed around from one family-owned company to another as nothing improper. And — this is the most laughable contention — that the Hagan family somehow received no benefit from nearly a half-million bucks in taxpayer largess.

Please.

[…]

But here’s where we stand: Companies owned by family members of Kay Hagan got more than $400,000 in taxpayer funding to finance upgrades at facilities and for businesses they own — not just the $300,000 in stimulus and USDA grants we initially found. The grants used tax dollars to offset the costs of improvements in the physical plant, and provide tax breaks for one of the companies, and reduce the energy bills of another. Kay Hagan’s husband and son created a solar company and allowed it to handle some of the work. And we’re still digging for additional documentation.
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read the rest

And it gets even worse. As we reported yesterday, Kay Hagan gave President Obama a judicial nomination who immediately turned around and ruled in favor of her husband’s company in Federal court. So, not only do we have the Hagan family personally benefitting from the taxpayer’s purse, they’ve protected themselves in court with a little back-scratching.

The allegations have been so intense that Hagan decided to skip one of the few public debates scheduled in North Carolina, hosted by a local Time Warner Cable affiliate.


As you can see from the video, not only did the TV station continue the debate with Hagan’s challenger Tom Tillis, they actually left Hagan’s chair empty the entire time!

To make matters worse, the Hagan campaign tried to control the debate conversation on Twitter in Hagan’s absence, and the local reporters called them out on it live on the air!


I don’t think Hagan’s challengers have landed a knockout blow yet, but last night’s “debate” was a massive black eye that has Hagan’s campaign on the defensive. The campaign isn’t over yet. I just spent a few days in North Carolina and the airwaves are saturated with pro-Hagan ads. If she can still buy her way back into the Senate, she’ll do it.
 
Let me say that these allegations that Hagan's husband somehow was in the wrong for taking energy efficiency grants has become a non-issue in this race. Even the Republican-run state DENR (which provides the grants) has come out and says he did nothing wrong.

Here is a WRAL story that provides a more complete summary with the facts.
http://www.wral.com/hagan-stimulus-story-hits-the-ad-wars/14088579/

Let me also mention that this debate (which is not one of the three agreed-to debates) was meaningless. Time Warner Cable Channel 14 is only available to a small segment of the population of our state. Most communities are served by Charter. This is a debate that was watched by no one.
 
gwb-trading said:
Let me say that these allegations that Hagan's husband somehow was in the wrong for taking energy efficiency grants has become a non-issue in this race. Even the Republican-run state DENR (which provides the grants) has come out and says he did nothing wrong.

Here is a WRAL story that provides a more complete summary with the facts.
http://www.wral.com/hagan-stimulus-story-hits-the-ad-wars/14088579/

Let me also mention that this debate (which is not one of the three agreed-to debates) was meaningless. Time Warner Cable Channel 14 is only available to a small segment of the population of our state. Most communities are served by Charter. This is a debate that was watched by no one.
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Perhaps, but I'm betting this significantly impacts her chances of winning. And at this junction, that could be a fatal result.
 
gwb-trading said:
Let me say that these allegations that Hagan's husband somehow was in the wrong for taking energy efficiency grants has become a non-issue in this race. Even the Republican-run state DENR (which provides the grants) has come out and says he did nothing wrong.

Here is a WRAL story that provides a more complete summary with the facts.
http://www.wral.com/hagan-stimulus-story-hits-the-ad-wars/14088579/

Let me also mention that this debate (which is not one of the three agreed-to debates) was meaningless. Time Warner Cable Channel 14 is only available to a small segment of the population of our state. Most communities are served by Charter. This is a debate that was watched by no one.
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Maybe but it strikes many as inappropriate for a Senator to be taking taxpayer "stimulus" money.

And what about a judge ruling on a case when Hagan essentially appointed him?

You can't escape the fact that a vote for Hagan is a vote for Reid and a vote to confirm any radical judicial activists obama appoints.
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
Maybe but it strikes many as inappropriate for a Senator to be taking taxpayer "stimulus" money.

And what about a judge ruling on a case when Hagan essentially appointed him?

You can't escape the fact that a vote for Hagan is a vote for Reid and a vote to confirm any radical judicial activists obama appoints.
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And what about the money Tillis took for his mobile home park and businesses.
 
gwb-trading said:
And what about the money Tillis took for his mobile home park and businesses.
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Look, he's not my perfect candidate, but a vote for Hagan is a vote for Harry Reid remaining Majority Leader. And a vote to confirm whatever radical nutcase obama nominates to the federal judiciary for a lifetime tenure. For me, that is the ony real factor involved in this race. It's why the democrats have poured in so much outside money.
 
Why Did The Charlotte Observer Memory-Hole A Story On Kay Hagan’s Conflict Of Interest?
http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/03...e-a-story-on-kay-hagans-conflict-of-interest/

"Last night it appeared that the major media embargo on the Hagan family’s dealings had finally broken, as the Charlotte Observer, the state’s largest and most influential newspaper, at last put its imprint on a story run by its partner, television station WBTV, concerning a recommendation by the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources that the Hagan stimulus bundles be subjected to legal review and possible referral the state Attorney General.


By this morning, the story had been memory-holed.

Fortunately, Google caches websites, even those that may have been memory-holed, for some period of time, and this story was no exception. Although the Charlotte Observer may feel that Hagan family peccadilloes distract citizens from the important issues of personality and likeability, it’s possible that North Carolina voters may want to know who’s benefitting from their taxpayer largesse."

(More at above url)
 
How costly is NC's US Senate campaign?
http://www.wral.com/how-costly-is-nc-s-us-senate-campaign-/14144988/

So, how much money has washed through North Carolina as part of the U.S. Senate campaign?

WRAL News has been tracking the broadcast television commercials aired on behalf of Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican state House Speaker Thom Tillis. While it's reasonable to assume that those campaign ads will account for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the total campaign spending in the state, there's more money being spent on get-out-the-vote operations, direct mail, polls and campaign staff.

The Center for Responsive Politics keeps a running tally of all spending reported to the Federal Elections Commission. As of Monday, the CRP has documented $111 million in spending on the race, nearly $30 million from the candidates themselves. The rest came from outside groups – nonprofits, political groups and others that have had to report their spending.

That $111 million is a floor, not a ceiling. The candidates have yet to report some of their spending, and some spending by outside nonprofit groups falls outside of reporting requirements. So, the total spending on the race is almost certainly millions of dollars more than what the CRP can document.

So, what does that $111 million in spending mean?

(More at above url)
 
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