Joy Pullmann of The Federalist offers some suggestions for N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis to counter Kay Hagan’s educationbased attacks in their race for Hagan’s Senate seat.

I do think bad government policies hurt people, and their fellow citizens should know about it so they can flog the people who voted for these harmful policies. Tillis has a record he can cheerfully run on in education, a pro-child, pro-parent record of advocating for the poorest and neediest children in his state to get a good education. I’m talking about his direct and personal advocacy for poor, minority kids to access better schools, just like rich people, by giving them a voucher to the school of their parents’ choice. He even went to bat for these families in the courts.

So Tillis’s ads should look a little less like a white guy doing math at the chalkboard—an activity that gives most Americans instinctive shivers—and a little more like this.

Thom Tillis fought for families like these. And, in great part due to his leadership, some 2,000 desperate North Carolina kids are in better schools today. He can certainly tell that story, pointing out also that Hagan opposes parent choice, and he should, especially if he needs to win the mom and suburban voters in the middle (he does). The sort of people who like math are probably already on Tillis’s side. It’s time to go after people who go soft when they see a mother crying—and isn’t that everybody, anyway?

Tillis has been talking up vouchers on the campaign trail, and that’s good, but even more powerful are having other people speaking out for him, especially people who break the meme that Republicans are only for the rich and well-connected. A YouTube search of his name and the word “education,” for example, pulls up a string of short videos from Hagan’s camp, largely interviews with teachers angry at Tillis. Some twenty videos down is Tillis’s math video. For Pete’s sake, at least Tillis’s own campaign should have a monopoly on searches of his name on YouTube. This is elementary branding. It’s impossible to talk to people if they can’t first find you.