CHARLOTTE — U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan this week congratulated former UNC-Chapel Hill head basketball coach Dean Smith on receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a move she had urged President Obama to make. Besides establishing her Tar Heel bona fides, it was one thing the North Carolina Democrat could do without anyone objecting.
A year before her re-election bid, Hagan’s face is all over TV, in ads made to attack and — from the other side — bolster her record. But the effort to doom her chances by defining her as an Obama clone is complicated by her own record, by a state that isn’t quite as deep red as its Southern cousins and by a GOP opposition that disagrees on the candidate that would have the best chance against her.
