Senate races

Hagan touts work on local issues in first ads

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is out with her first ads of the general election, spots that tout her work on local issues and seek to paint her in a nonpartisan light.

{mosads}One ad focuses on Hagan’s work to help military families living near Camp LeJeune, with a retired marine whose daughter died from leukemia, saying Hagan’s help pushing for answers about the base’s contaminated drinking water was a “turning point” in his decadeslong fight.

“She stood up against the bureaucrats,” retired Marine Jerry Ensminger says in the ad. “Thanks to Kay Hagan, justice is being done.”

The other spot touts Hagan’s push to close a loophole in the Central American Free Trade Agreement that was allowing companies to import Chinese thread duty-free.

“Kay’s going to bat for us against the Chinese,” one textile worker says in the ad.

North Carolina has a large, though struggling, textile industry, and a large number of military bases and veterans. 

North Carolina’s airwaves have been dominated by millions of dollars in attack ads, both against Hagan and against her opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R), with whom she’s in a tight race.