Tillis hits back on education funding

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis is responding to Democratic attacks that charge he’s cut millions from education funding in a new ad of his own.

{mosads}In the ad, Tillis touts a 7 percent teacher pay raise he says state legislators passed this year. Speaking direct to camera from a classroom, he goes on to charge Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is “misleading you about me to hide her own partisan record,” which he says includes voting with the president most of the time and voting for “$7 trillion in debt.”

The ad follows one from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, out Wednesday, charging the speaker of the state House of cutting millions from schools but keeping tax breaks for private jets and yachts.

Other Democratic groups have hammered him with the same message. He’s locked in a tight battle with Hagan, seen as one of Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbents this cycle due in part to President Obama’s unpopularity — a potential liability that came into stark focus this week as he visited the state and appeared with her on the airport tarmac, providing fodder for Republican attacks.