Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) is taking the extra step against state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-NC), the frontrunner and expected GOP nominee in the North Carolina Senate race, and sending mailers to Republican voters quoting Tillis calling Obamacare a “great idea.”
The mailers, reported by The Washington Post, were sent out to Republican voters over the last week ahead of Tuesday’s North Carolina Republican primary. The attack strategy is a clear attempt to turn voters off to Tillis by painting him as less than staunchly opposed to Obamacare (a grave sin in Republican primaries).
Tillis is considered by observers to be the stronger general election candidate again Hagan, and the mailers suggest the Hagan camp thinks so, too. Or at least the Hagan camp would prefer to see Tillis endure a runoff rather than win the nomination outright. Tillis needs to get 40 percent support to avoid a runoff and clinch the GOP nomination. The most recent polls of the race have shown Tillis with a comfortable lead above 40 percent in the primary.
Hagan deflected questions by the Post about whether she’s trying to spoil the primary.
“Every [Republican] candidate has a fringe agenda —I’ll let the primary voters Tuesday decide who my actual opponent will be,” Hagan told the Post.
The only information the Hagan campaign offered is that the mailers were sent out statewide.
The Hagan campaign has repeatedly hit Tillis on the remark. Back in February, in an interview on the Bill Lumaye Show, Tillis said that Obamacare is a “great idea that can’t be paid for.” Since then Democrats have repeatedly argued that despite Tillis saying otherwise, he still thinks Obamacare is a “great idea.”
See a copy of the mailer, obtained by TPM, below:
This post was updated.
