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Hagan withdraws lawsuit against Dole over TV ad
Spokeswoman says victorious candidate will work on issues
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Published: November 14, 2008
RALEIGH - U.S. Sen.-elect Kay Hagan withdrew her defamation and libel lawsuit yesterday against incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole for a campaign commercial that Hagan alleged questioned her Christianity.
Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan said that the papers were filed in Wake County court, putting an end to the legal fight over a controversial TV ad in the final week of the campaign ultimately won by Hagan.
The ad ran only for a few days but became a hot issue. Dole brought up her campaign rival's attendance at a fundraiser held by an adviser to the Godless Americans Political Action Committee, an atheist advocacy group.
Flanagan said that Hagan can better spend her time by working to help families hurt by the bad economy than by pursuing a lawsuit that "would just continue the focus on a very personal and negative attack against Kay."
"It's clear that the people of North Carolina have rejected personal attacks aimed at dividing people of this state instead of bringing them together to solve the problems at hand," Flanagan said.
Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for the Dole campaign, declined to comment on ending the suit.
Dole's 30-second advertisement showed clips of some members of the Godless Americans committee talking about some of their goals, such as taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and removing "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency.
It went on to question why Hagan went to the fundraiser. The ad ended with a picture of Hagan while another woman declares in the background, "There is no God!"
Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat and state senator, responded quickly to the commercial with the lawsuit and her own commercial accusing Dole of breaking the Bible's ninth commandment by bearing false witness. Hagen, a Presbyterian church elder who teaches Sunday school, also held a news conference with her family and her minister.
Dole called the lawsuit frivolous and said that the commercial was factual and designed to question Hagan's agenda and associations -- not her faith.
Dole's campaign also used the September fundraiser in Boston that Hagan attended at the home of Woody Kaplan in automated phone calls in the campaign's last weekend.
The fundraiser was not billed as a Godless Americans activity, and other hosts included an ambassador and U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Dole's campaign sent a press release on the subject about a month before the fundraiser took place.
Hagan received nearly 53 percent of the vote in her upset of Dole, a Republican, who served one term.
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