Jack Crowe of National Review Online highlights a key issue in the contest for North Carolina’s Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.
Cal Cunningham, the front-runner in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary, recently emphasized his commitment to reducing tuition costs in an op-ed placed in the UNC student newspaper. But when he was in a position to directly affect tuition rates as UNC’s student-body president, he voted to raise them.
Cunningham’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, little-known progressive state legislator Erica Smith, has endorsed Bernie Sanders’s plan for tuition-free community college while attacking Cunningham from the left, casting him as an establishment candidate hand-picked by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
The newly created and mysterious Faith and Family PAC has come to play a surprising role in the primary. Given the PAC’s use of vendors who typically work with Republican candidates, there has been rampant speculation that it is part of an effort by Republican operatives to boost the incumbent, Senator Thom Tillis, and weaken Cunningham, his likely general-election opponent. …
… In response, Cunningham sought to bolster his progressive support by announcing his commitment to lowering the cost of higher education in an op-ed in the pages of his alma mater’s newspaper. …
… Yet when Cunningham was in a position to directly affect the tuition costs at his state’s flagship university — where he served as a trustee on the school’s board thanks to his position as student-body president — he voted to raise them. As a 21-year-old senior at UNC Chapel Hill in 1995, Cunningham voted in favor of raising undergraduate tuition by $400 and graduate tuition by $600 annually. While he tried unsuccessfully to delay consideration of the tuition increase until the student body was more informed about its implications, he ultimately voted in favor of the hike because he believed it would boost UNC’s lackluster position in national college rankings by increasing faculty salaries.
