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Inside Scoop: Knives out in GOP Senate Primary
It took a while, but as the GOP primary for Senate enters its final weeks, two of the Republicans looking to oust Sen. Kay Hagan are getting aggressive - with each other.
The catalyst: a recent fundraising letter in which tea party favorite Greg Brannon calls N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis "unelectable."
In the letter, first publicized by the Charlotte Observer Brannon said Tillis has simply given Democrats too much ammunition to use against him. He cites severance pay Tillis gave to staffers caught in sex scandals and allegations Tillis and his wife have a financial interest in a Lake Norman bank that profited from energy legislation Tillis helped to pass.
Tillis' campaign didn't take the accusations lightly.
In an interview with Scoop Wednesday, Tillis campaign manager Jordan Shaw said Brannon has no room to attack Tillis' electibility.
"I think there are 12 jurors in Wake County who can speak to Greg Brannon's electability," Shaw said, referencing the recent civil case in which Brannon was found liable for misleading investors in a company he championed and was ordered to pay $450,000.
"He was also found to have plagiarized the Rand Paul 2010 campaign website," Shaw said. "And he refused to vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and said to vote for him would be a vote for tryanny. So that's who's making these accusations. That's who's talking about electability."
Calls to Brannon's campaign weren't returned Wednesday, but the candidate did appear on conservative pundit Glenn Beck's radio show Wednesday. Beck addressed the court controversy, suggesting Brannon might have been disingenuous in not mentioning it in a previous interview on his program.
Brannon said he was appealing the case and declined to go into details of it until the appeal was complete.
"At the end of the day, I believe we'll be vindicted," Brannon told Beck.
Brannon did take the opportunity to take further swipes at Tillis, calling him "The Karl Rove/Mtich McConnell candidate" and painting him as not a true conservative.
Beck praised Brannon and said, ""All the GOP is trying to do is destroy anyone who has a constitutional bone in their body."
Brannon agreed.
Dr. Michael Bitzer, professor of political science and history at Catawba College, has been following the primary closer. He says the clash between Tillis and Brannon, widely seen as the front-runners in an 8-candidate primary, was inevitable.
"It's actually surprising these kinds of elbows weren't thrown earlier," Bitzer said Wednesday. "We're getting into the home stretch of the primary now."
As both candidates try to appeal to the conservative wing of the NC GOP, Bitzer said, it may be easier for them to make personal attacks than to try to "out conservative" one another. Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, voters can expect a ramping up of attacks in the next few weeks, Bitzer said.
"The question is whether that resonates or will people have already made up their minds?" Bitzer said.
Meanwhile, Bitzer said, the longer and more fiercely the GOP field fights the better it is for Kay Hagan.
"It's kind of like the Republican presidential primary process of 2012," Bitzer said. "As a Democrat you can either join the fray and bring the attention to yourself or let them duke it out. It looks like right now she's using the time to marshal the resources she's going to desperately need."
With a third candidate - Rev. Mark Harris - just behind Tillis and Brannon in the polls, a run-off is still a possibility. That would push the primary process into July.
"That's the best thing the Republicans could do for Kay Hagan, prolonging this to July," Bitzer said.
Ben Ray, a spokesman for the NC Democratic Party, said he's been enjoying the chest-thumping standoff between Tillis and Brannon over electability.
"Brannon says Tillis isn't electable, Tillis says Brannon isn't electable," Ray said Wednesday. "I say, why can't they both be right?"
