Goodbye, Reid? Senate Could Hang on This One Race

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The most important issue to be settled in this year's midterm election is which party will control the U.S. Senate. 

For the Republicans to take it, they need to win six of nine states that are just too close to call as Election Day nears.

One toss-up state in particular is getting much of the attention and extremely big bucks: North Carolina.

The Tar Heel State is seeing incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan facing off against Thom Tillis, speaker of the state's House of Representatives.

For weeks now their race has been neck-and-neck, usually with a tiny advantage for Hagan.

Pro-life political activist Tami Fitzgerald has been watching more money pour into her state's U.S. Senate race than any other this year.

"It is going to be the most expensive race in the country," Fitzgerald told CBN News. "As we just learned this week, over $103 million has been spent or pledged."

Fitzgerald and her troops in the pro-life Women Speak Out PAC are right in the thick of the race. The group is the super-PAC of the national pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List.

"We have already knocked on 127,000 doors in the state," she said. "We've made more than 250,000 phone calls."

And that personal touch may make the difference to voters blitzed and worn out by almost $100 million worth of ads.

'Ready for It to Be Done'

"This much money being spent, the airwaves are packed with political ads back-to-back," said long-time political analyst Carter Wrenn, a blogger on the state's popular TalkingAboutPolitics.com. "I think most folks are just ready for it to be done."

Wrenn explained that all that money is coming in because the state has a huge population and two of the country's most expensive television markets. Plus, this race really is a toss-up.

"We are pretty perfectly balanced," Wrenn said. "I mean, in 2008 Obama wins by an eyelash; Romney wins by a little in '12."

And voters here know this is one of a very few states that can determine which party will rule the Senate and whether the GOP can oust Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ending the near stranglehold he's had for years on almost all proposed legislation.

During his speech to a recent gathering of conservatives in Smithfield, Tillis yelled, "We are going to send Kay Hagan home. We're going to fire Kay Hagan. We're going to fire Harry Reid!"

That last line was met with wild cheers and applause.

A Crucial Race

Fitzgerald said her fellow North Carolinians are well aware the fate of the nation could well be in their hands.

"We've known for the last two years that this was going to be one of the most important Senate races in the country," she said.

In the final days of the race, both candidates are bringing in big guns to the state.

Tillis welcomed the backing of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is making a push for Hagan and both women are putting the focus on women's issues.

"I think she's had a lead with women all along," Fitzgerald said of Hagan. "Just a few weeks ago, she had a 19-point gender gap with Tillis."

And Hagan regularly accuses Tillis of using his position as speaker of the House to push a pro-life agenda, which is apparently anathema to North Carolina's many pro-choice women.

"He actually defunded Planned Parenthood in our state," she exclaimed at a gathering in the Charlotte Convention Center of 1,800 supporters, most of who booed loudly in reaction.

She also attacked the U.S. Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling that allows for-profit businesses to deny health plan coverage of abortifacient contraception to female employees if the owners have religious objections.

"I will never back down when someone tells me employers should have the right to deny coverage of birth control," Hagan said in her speech.

Wrenn doesn't believe such social issues will have much traction when people vote in this election.

"Most voters are more concerned about the problems they've got and what they need solved," Wrenn opined.

'Near and Dear to God's Heart'

Pro-life activist Fitzgerald disagrees vehemently with the notion that social issues aren't a big deal.

"These are issues that are near and dear to God's heart," she said. "The lives of unborn children, the definition of marriage which was created in Genesis; these are things that God cares about deeply. These are the real issues."

That's why Fitzgerald and her fellows marriage traditionalists and pro-lifers have been pounding away on Hagan's stands on gay marriage and abortion.

"She [Hagan] announced her public support for same-sex marriage," Fitzgerald said. "Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, and NARAL Pro-Choice have both ranked her with a 100 percent pro-abortion voting record."

Wrenn admitted there's a chance he could be wrong about social issues not mattering much to voters, especially abortion.

He watched Hagan and Tillis tangling over abortion during one debate and recalled thinking to himself, "'I don't think that's really going to affect people.'"

"Well, I saw a poll a month later. It affected women under 40 in a real way," he told CBN News.

Hagan's criticism overall of the legislation Tillis shepherded in the state's House generally seems to be a winner with the crowds she addresses. 

Wildly Unpopular

But Tillis has winning weapons as well.

Polling shows North Carolinians generally aren't happy with either Speaker Tillis' House or with President Barack Obama. So, Hagan hardly ever speaks of Tillis without calling him 'Speaker.' And Tillis hardly ever brings up Hagan without associating her with the word 'Obama.'

Fitzgerald said she believes Sen. Hagan's opponents constantly linking her to the president could hurt Hagan.

"He's wildly unpopular here," she stated of Obama. "I think the last time I saw his popularity rate it was 27 percent in this state."

And Tillis uses that to his advantage, regularly pointing out how often Hagan votes with Obama. He brought that up in his Smithfield speech as he talked of her never mentioning in their candidate debates anything she's proud of.

"And how can you when you vote with the president 96 percent of the time?" he asked.

But Wrenn thinks Tillis and his surrogates have repeated this charge so often, voters may be numb to it.

"It's like hearing something 5,000 times," Wrenn said with a wry smile. "Somewhere around 328, I got the fact that she's voted with Obama 96 percent of the time."

But Wrenn said these main attacks by both sides have wounded Hagan and Tillis deeply and kept the race tight.

"Does it matter that she's voted with Obama? Huge fact," Wrenn said of Hagan.  

Then he turned to Tillis.

"Does it matter that he's the speaker of an unpopular legislature? It's turned out to be an equally huge fact," he said.

Another way Hagan has kept Tillis on the defensive is tying him and his fellow legislators to a huge cut to education in a state that almost worships education for the way it's helped North Carolina and its people pull themselves up economically.

"He cut $500 million from our public education system to give a tax break to the wealthy. You know what that means? That means we have fewer teachers, larger classroom size and outdated textbooks," Hagan said of Tillis in her recent Charlotte rally.

Hagan supporter and concerned mother Lara McKinnon told CBN News she's seen public school classes jammed with too many students -- even an art class she passed recently.

"There are 40 kids in that class," she said. "How can that teacher effectively teach when they've got so many people?"

McKinnon came to the Hagan rally with friend Karen Maravich and their two daughters, Chloe and Grace.

"In North Carolina, we are one of the lowest paid [states] as far as educators," Maravich complained.

Another Hagan supporter, Michelle Justice, pointed to Chloe and Grace and said, "Look at these kids. These are our future."

Then Justice said of Tillis, "He's doing a disservice to them by giving them slashes to education. That's our future. That's who's going to take care of us when we're on Social Security."

Funny Math

Wrenn explained, however, that making Tillis and his party the villains in cutting $500 million from education is funny math. Democrats wanted a $1.5 billion increase and Republicans only voted for $1 billion of that.

"So there was no cut," Wrenn said. "It was just the increase was less than the Democrats projected.  And the Democrats call that a cut."

On the flip side, a main route of attack for Tillis on Hagan has been the Democrats' general handling lately of big national issues. At a speech, he criticized as weak the way America has dealt with deadly ISIS.

"We need leaders who are going to look at ISIS and make one thing very clear: we are going to wipe them off the face of this planet," he proclaimed.

He also brought up with the crowd the handling of the Ebola virus so far.

"Please stand if you think the president and Senator Hagan have got it right when dealing with the threat of Ebola," he said.

But Tillis set up a punchline by saying as a gentleman he's found it hard to really go after a female opponent. He said that's led some of his male fans to gently criticize him.

"I'd have men come up and say, 'You know, Thom, we want you to get a little tougher on Kay Hagan. We're tired of the lies,'" Tillis recalled them stating. "But the women would come up and say, 'We just want you to beat the tar out of her!'"

Wrenn believes the candidates and their backers have so regularly and often beat the tar out of their opponent, the few voters not already decided have had it with both sides.

"They don't really want to vote for either candidate," he stated.

Fitzgerald pointed out almost every voter has made up their mind and it's left the race a complete toss-up. 

"It's just a dead heat right now," she said. "Very few people are undecided." 

A Gaffe, a Slip, a Stumble

In such circumstances, Wrenn pointed out almost anything could tip the election one way or the other.

"A gaffe, a slip, a stumble could do it," he stated. "Or if there's some scandal with a toll road."

What Wrenn's referring to is an issue that's gaining traction with the state's Tea Party types. They are angry over a plan by Tillis to take space from free lanes on I-77 just north of Charlotte to put in expensive toll lanes.

For this reason alone, some conservatives, like blogger Chuck Suter of Constitutional War.org, say Tillis doesn't deserve to win, even if it means the Democrats keep control of the U.S. Senate.

Suter accused Tillis of bulldozing the toll lanes scheme through the legislature and claimed they'll force families from the popular and affordable northern suburbs into housing they can't afford in the expensive big city.

"From Mooresville to Charlotte, you're looking at a $20 one-way ticket on those toll roads that are going to force congestion for the next 50 years - almost a dollar a mile to get to Charlotte and a dollar a mile to get back home," Suter said of the 26-mile span.

As the old saying goes, all politics is local and that one issue could be felt all across the country after Election Day if it's the thing that defeats Tillis and keeps the U.S. Senate in Democrats' hands.