Raleigh News & Observer

RALEIGH (MCT) — Will North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan end up as President Obama's vice presidential running mate?

That is the prediction of Alan Steinberg who writes PoltickerNJ.com.

"There are two reasons why Obama will select Hagan," Steinberg writes. "First ... North Carolina is the decisive state in the 2012 election: The presidential candidate who wins North Carolina will win the election. Second, in unseating former North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole in 2008, Hagan demonstrated superb political and communication skills that make her a definite asset to the Obama re-election campaign."

Insomnia in advertising

An independent Republican group has started a second phase of advertising in North Carolina, criticizing the economic record of President Barack Obama.

The ad, called "Wake Up," features a young mother who voted for Obama in 2008 because "he spoke so beautifully."

But she wakes at 3 a.m. worrying that "things have gone from bad to much worse" and that the debt is rising and Obama wants to raise taxes. "We have to take away the president's blank check," she says as she looks at her sleeping children.

The ad campaign is being paid for by Crossroads GPS, a group formed by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, two former top strategists for President George W. Bush.

The group has launched what it says will be a $20 million advertising campaign in key states to help elect a Republican president in 2012.

A total of $388,615 will be spent on network TV and the Internet in North Carolina over two weeks, the group said.

"As the debt limit negotiations heat up, we need to counter the power of the president's bully pulpit and make sure Americans are getting the facts," said Steven Law, president of Crossroads.

Price speculation

Would Rep. David Price, the U.S. House District 4 Democrat, step aside and allow District 13 Rep. Brad Miller to run in his district?

That is an interesting scenario raised by Bob Geary, the political writer for the Independent Weekly.

Miller's District 13 is about to be eviscerated under a redistricting plan proposed by the Republican legislature, making it unwinnable for any Democrat.

But most of Miller's old district is now in District 4, including the inside-the-Beltline home where he lived before his divorce. But the Republicans drew a little bubble around his apartment on Wake Forest Road to include him in the 13th District, Geary writes.

"Thus, I would say that for all practical purposes the GOPs have thrown Price, a 70-year-old congressman first elected to the House in 1986, and Miller, a 58-year-old congressman first elected to the House in 2002, into the same congressional district," Geary writes.

"The two are close enough friends and political allies that they won't run against each other," Geary writes. "So one will have to defer to the other. The assumption is that Miller will defer to Price. But that assumption could be wrong if Price, whose consensus-seeking legislative style is pretty much antique in Washington these days, decides he'd rather spend his next years in some other form of public service.

"That would open the door for Miller to seek re-election in the district that is his real, if not currently his literal, home.

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