Kay Hagan and Chuck Schumer

From Howie Klein at the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/chuck-schumer-is-playing_b_970...

Not unlike last cycle, I've been hearing from quite a few grassroots candidates that the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic committees are surreptitiously working against them in primaries or, where there are no primaries, ignoring or even being hostile to their campaigns...

Jim Neal is a Blue America-endorsed candidate who wants to take on Senator Dole in North Carolina. Although DSCC head Chuck Schumer claims, rather ingenuously, that he stays neutral in hotly contested primaries, there are at least two big ones this year where he is backing Insider Establishment candidates who give every indication that they will not support core Democratic initiatives...
There is a similar situation in North Carolina, where Schumer seems to feel that voters aren't sophisticated enough to elect a progressive candidate, Jim Neal, who, among other things, is openly gay. Schumer twisted the arm of a mediocre insider, Kay Hagan, to get into the race after she had bowed out. And now, he has the DSCC, which is officially "neutral," signaling Democratic donors to support her and not Jim. This is standard operating procedure for the DSCC and DCCC. ...
But insiders like Schumer never learn. You can't beat a Republican with a Democrat who acts like a Republican. On issue after issue Jim Neal's positions clearly contrast to those of Elizabeth Dole's, while Kay Hagan's are pretty much...more of the same, just not as terrible. Schumer has promised to stay neutral in this race, which would be an excellent idea because polls show the two candidates in a dead heat. But this morning I got a copy of a letter from James Spencer, president of the Campaign Network which works for the Jim Neal campaign, to the executive director the DSCC. Spencer, who told me he's run up against some rough campaigns in the past 35 years of electoral work, but never as bad as this, gave me permission to reprint it.

J.B. Poersch
Executive Director,
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
120 Maryland Avenue NE
Washington, D.C. 20002
April 14, 2008

Dear Mr. Poersch:

I am writing to follow up on a phone call I placed to you regarding the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Jim Neal, Democratic candidate for the U. S. Senate in the North Carolina primary.
Mr. Neal is running a strong grassroots campaign and is tied in the polls with State Senator Kay Hagan.
However, you wouldn't know it by reading the DSCC web site.
...

Follow the link to read more.