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Hagan sues Dole on ad
Dole campaign says it is factual, will run
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Published: October 31, 2008
RALEIGH
As the campaign for U.S. Senate enters its final days, Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole is raising religion as an issue, and her Democratic challenger Kay Hagan is fighting mad.
In a television ad this week, Dole questioned the Christian credentials of Hagan.
Hagan filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing Dole of defamation, and began airing an ad of her own that says Dole is breaking the Bible's Ninth Commandment by bearing false witness.
The two candidates are locked in one of the nation's closest Senate races. An Associated Press-GfK poll released this week showed that Hagan, a state senator, has a slight edge. The two have spent months swapping negative ads, but even some Republicans say they think that Dole's assertions about Hagan and her faith have gone too far.
"It's pretty risky," said Carter Wrenn, a Republican political consultant who worked for the late Jesse Helms, the senator who Dole replaced in Washington six years ago. "Anytime you start questioning somebody's religion, you're getting on thin ice."
Dole was once considered such a sure thing that Democrats struggled to recruit a challenger for a Senate seat that has been in Republican hands for 35 years. But an increase in Democratic registrations and excitement surrounding the party's presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, have given Hagan's campaign a boost.
Dole's 30-second advertisement shows clips of some members of an atheism advocacy group -- the Godless Americans Political Action 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 questions why Hagan attended a fundraiser at the home of a man who serves as an adviser to the group.
"Godless Americans and Kay Hagan. She hid from cameras. Took Godless money. What did Hagan promise in return?" the ad's narrator says.
The ad ends with a picture of Hagan while a woman's voice declares, "There is no God!" The ad is done in such a way as to suggest that the voice is Hagan's, although it is not.
Hagan is a Presbyterian church elder who teaches Sunday school. On Wednesday, her attorneys demanded that the ad come down within 24 hours. Yesterday, Hagan's attorneys filed the lawsuit in Wake Superior Court accusing Dole of defamation and libel.
"Each airing of the advertisement further injures (Hagan's) good name and reputation in the community," Hagan's attorneys wrote in court documents. The court filing does not detail Hagan's full case against Dole, but it allows Hagan 20 days to file the full complaint.
Attorneys for Dole said in a letter to Hagan's legal team that the ad is factual. Dan McLagan, a Dole spokesman, said that the campaign has no plans to pull the ad.
"This lawsuit is frivolous and we will file a motion to dismiss," he said. "Kay Hagan knows that the Dole campaign ad is accurate and she is trying to confuse voters until Election Day."
Hagan responded with a 30-second spot of her own. Referring to the Ninth Commandment in the Old Testament, Hagan says that the campaign is about creating jobs and fixing the economy, "not bearing false witness against fellow Christians."
"Elizabeth Dole's attacks on my Christian faith are offensive," Hagan says in the ad. "She even faked my voice in her TV ad to make you think I don't believe in God. Well, I believe in God.... My faith guides my life, and Sen. Dole knows it."
The controversial ad
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