Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post’s The Fix blog has declared that Kay Hagan ran the best U.S. Senate campaign in the nation this year.

Cillizza is flat wrong. Democrat Hagan ran a terrible campaign in her defeat of Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole. She won because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ran a brilliant campaign, placing more than $11 million in TV ads. The DSCC ran three of the best ads in the nation: the Rocking Chair series that painted Dole as old and out of touch.

Hagan was hand-picked for the race by Democratic bosses in Raleigh and Washington, and then the DSCC ran her race.

The Charlotte Observer’s Jack Betts notes in a recent column that Dole ran the worst race in the nation:

My two cents’ worth: Cillizza might also have given Dole the award for one of the worst Senate campaigns. She should have started running seriously years earlier by spending more time in her state — and making sure people saw her often — and also by tackling more issues that people cared about. The “Godless” ad that got so much attention didn’t kill Dole’s campaign, but it made the final margin of victory for Hagan larger than it would have been.

There’s an old saw in politics that says when you win you are considered brilliant. Cillizza should take a look at who really ran the campaign that defeated Dole. Posted by Leroy Towns

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.