Ads flooding N. Carolina in hot U.S. Senate race

Voters in North Carolina can be forgiven if they turn off their televisions. In the battle for control of the U.S. Senate, no state has experienced the onslaught of negative advertising as intense as what has been unleashed in the Tar Heel State.

The barrage is being fueled by wealthy independent groups from either end of the political spectrum and is reflective of the importance that both parties place on winning the seat held by freshman Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

For more than a year, conservative groups have blanketed radio and television with advertisements assaulting Hagan. Americans for Prosperity, closely tied to the wealthy libertarian Koch brothers, has spent more than $7.2 million to highlight what it sees as the negative aspects of Hagan’s record.

But after two consecutive elections in which ultra-conservative outsider nominees won Republican primaries and subsequently lost otherwise winnable general elections, GOP strategists in Washington, once loath to bestow the often-unhelpful “establishment” label on a favored candidate, are increasingly aiding candidates they believe give the party the best chance to win in November.

Republicans need to pick up six seats to take control of the Senate. The party’s candidates lead in two states where Democratic incumbents will retire, West Virginia and South Dakota, and lead or are running close to Democratic incumbents in Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alaska, all states where President Barack Obama is unpopular.

In the most hopeful GOP scenarios, North Carolina is either the majority-clinching 51st or the breathing-room 52nd seat, and that means it is worth spending money and exerting influence to pick the right candidate.

To many Republicans inside and outside North Carolina, that GOP candidate is House Speaker Thom Tillis, who national party strategists believe is the only candidate who can beat Hagan.

“For the Republicans to have a real chance of picking the seat up, Tillis needs to win the primary,” said Brian Nick, a Charlotte-based GOP strategist close to Gov. Pat McCrory.

American Crossroads, the Republican group spearheaded by Karl Rove, is running a television advertisement backing Tillis.

The ad is part of a $1.1 million television blitz that will run through the May 6 primary election.

“It’s clear to us that Thom Tillis has the experience, conservative principles and passion to clean up the mess that President Obama and Sen. Hagan are making in Washington,” Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, said in a statement.

Tillis has emerged as the front-runner in a primary contest in which most voters haven’t formed an opinion. What little public polling exists shows Tillis leading physician Greg Brannon and Baptist minister Mark Harris, both of whom are vying to portray themselves as more conservative than Tillis, along with a handful of lesser-known candidates, by double digits.

But those polls show Tillis is short of the 40 percent of the vote he would need to avoid a runoff.

National Republicans are desperate to avoid a runoff, which would sap campaign accounts and allow conservatives who have tried to coalesce around a Tillis alternative the opportunity to do just that.

In recent weeks, seemingly cementing the notion of Tillis as a front-runner with the clock winding down, Brannon and Harris have ramped up their attacks on the speaker.

Brannon has accused Tillis of fostering a “culture of corruption” that would make Tillis “unelectable” in November, highlighting two former staff members who received severance payments after being caught in sex scandals.

In states like Nevada, Colorado and Missouri in recent years, Democrats have used competitive Republican primaries to quietly aid the most conservative, and hence least-electable, candidates.

But that isn’t an option in North Carolina; observers say neither Harris nor Brannon has the campaign cash or the grass-roots backing to mount serious challenges to the front-runner.

“There will be millions of dollars worth of Republican money coming in if Tillis is the nominee,” Republican state Sen. Bob Rucho said in an interview. “The money will follow Tillis. It won’t necessarily follow the other candidates.”

Tillis has been advertising on statewide cable channels since January and intermittently on low-cost broadcast networks in Asheville, Greensboro and Wilmington.

The actions of Hagan’s campaign and her backers seem to confirm that they believe that Tillis will be the GOP nominee.

During the current NCAA tournament - a veritable holy week in basketball-crazy North Carolina - Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic outside group, paid for television advertising tying Tillis to the Koch brothers.

Hagan has focused her attacks on Tillis almost exclusively.

To Tillis’ campaign team, the attacks are evidence of his strength. “That’s part of what happens when you have a campaign that has momentum,” said Jordan Shaw, Tillis’ campaign manager. “That campaign’s going to get attacked.”