No breakout performance at second GOP Senate debate

by Joe Killian, Greensboro News-Record, April 24, 2014.

Political experts say the Republicans who want a shot at taking on Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan in November still haven’t done much to distinguish themselves from one another.

And that’s after two televised debates.

“I think they all managed to do well in their own right,” said Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science and history at Catawba College in Salisbury. “But nobody had a true breakout performance.”

N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis, Dr. Greg Brannon, the Rev. Mark Harris and Heather Grant first faced off in a televised debate at Davidson College Tuesday night and then again Wednesday in an in-studio debate at Raleigh TV station WRAL.

Bitzer and other experts said the candidates, already very close on nearly every important political issue, didn’t present much in either debate that voters didn’t already get from their campaigns thus far.

“They seem to be presenting the same case,” said Martin Kifer, an assistant professor of political science and the director of the Survey Research Center at High Point University.

“Speaker Tillis came out and talked to us about his experience in office and what he’s done in Raleigh,” Kifer said. “We saw Dr. Brannon talking to us about how he sees the Constitution and how that would affect the policies he would implement. And we saw Rev. Harris speaking kind of through his view, his faith, and how he might change policy in relation to that.”

Bitzer and Kifer both said Grant displayed passion in the debates, but she didn’t present as distinct a message as the other three.

Tillis, who leads in polling going into the May 6 primary, might have come off best, Bitzer said.

“The thing that he did that I don’t think we saw from the other candidates was to position himself not against them but against Kay Hagan and Barack Obama,” Bitzer said.

Tillis largely stuck to that strategy in both debates, despite getting a few jabs from Brannon.

But with a primary field of eight candidates, Tillis’ narrow advantage isn’t likely to translate to more than 40 percent of the vote, which is what he needs to avoid a July runoff.

“The problem right now is that they’re all appealing to their own people,” Bitzer said. “Tillis is appealing to traditional Republicans, Brannon and to some extent Grant are appealing to the Tea Party, and Harris to Christian evangelical voters.

“To really pull away in the race, somebody is going to have to play in somebody else’s yard,” he said. “They’re going to have to appeal to someone else’s base.”

That may have begun this week as a Brannon fundraising letter hit mailboxes, opening with the question: “Have you ever witnessed a Miracle?”

In the letter, Brannon relates the story of how he helped save the life of an unborn baby after a young girl came to his office after a failed abortion.

“God brought her to my office for a reason,” Brannon, an OB-GYN, wrote in the letter.

Though all the Republican candidates are strongly anti-abortion, Brannon’s campaign has been emphasizing his stance on the issue in recent weeks with strong religious language.

Bitzer said Brannon’s campaign is likely trying to lure away Christian evangelical voters who might otherwise vote for Harris, the pastor of the 3,000- member First Baptist Church in Charlotte and a former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

“If he can appeal to those Christian evangelical voters, if they see him as speaking to their issues and as more electable, he may be able to get them,” Bitzer said.

This month’s Public Policy Polling survey shows Tillis with 18 percent of the vote, Brannon with 15 percent, Harris with 11 percent and Grant with 7 percent.

The poll found that 34 percent of those likely

to vote in the Republican primary remain undecided.

“We’re seeing so many undecideds,” Kifer said. “Sometimes when that’s the case, especially in a primary, you will see a lot of voters find a candidate to whom they’re loyal. Will the voter change their mind if they believe another candidate may be more electable? You just don’t know.”

He said the tenor of the debates in this race has been very cordial.

“Each of the candidates has been filling their niche and trying to reassure the voters they think they already have,” Kifer said. “We’ll see if that continues as we get closer to May 6.”

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