Battle for Congress could hinge on North Carolina district
A woman holds a sign as she waits for U.S. House candidate Mark Meadows, R-N.C., to arrive at a campaign stop at the Duke Inn on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. | SAUL LOEB, AP
RALEIGH, N.C. — The battleground race for South Carolina’s 5th District — the last U.S. House race that could go down to the wire — could hinge on North Carolina’s 2nd District and decide control of Congress for the first time in a century. As of Friday morning, the latest polls had shown it was neck-and-neck with Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready, with a 10.9-point spread in the RealClearPolitics national average for the 5th District. But a change in the campaign’s direction — or, perhaps, because of it — could make the election a two-way race. The new campaign ad for Harris, released Wednesday, attacks McCready for voting “with the Democrats” on several issues, saying that McCready voted with President Barack Obama in favor of two bills that made Obama eligible for health care benefits, including cost-free contraception and prescription drugs. McCready has called the attacks “desperate” and said that “we’ve been attacked by them before in Washington.” His wife, Deborah McDaniel, released a television ad Thursday attacking Harris, as well as the former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and was shot by an assailant last year. The ad also features McCready, saying he “fights for every man and woman and child in this district” and saying Harris “takes our health care away.” The Harris campaign released a statement shortly afterward calling the ad “desperate and untrue.” In the last election, Harris won with 46 percent of the vote, followed by McCready with 40.6 percent and McCready with 36.4 percent, said McCasio Green, a spokesman for the Harris campaign. In that election, McCready and Harris held identical 5