Marshall says she'd support the public option,Cunningham says he'd only have voted to start debate

[ccharles000]

Elaine Marshall, Cal Cunningham and Kenneth Lewis have not occupied jobs from which they would take high-profile stances on controversial issues, so their ideological profiles aren’t clear at all at this point of North Carolina’s Senate campaign. Yet, despite my early sense that there would be few substantive faultlines in this Democratic primary, it looks like the candidates are looking to position themselves differently after all.

In an interview with RealClearPolitics, Cunningham sounds the notes of what looks like a cautious, centrist campaign. He in particular praises the escalation in Afghanistan and he seems to be emphasizing the fact that if he were in the Senate now he wouldn’t commit to more than voting to “start” debate on the health-care bill.

What is striking to me in Cunningham’s position is not that he is crafting himself a moderate image, but that he is doing so while facing a uphill Democratic primary in which he needs to get a lot of traction; the one poll released so far has him coming in third, trailing Marshall by 37%. (As a side note: It is fairly silly for The Hill to compare this primary to last year’s Novick-Merkey as an example of DSCC officials taking a candidate who was trailing and carrying him to victory. In that case, Merkey was the elected official while Novick was an activist, so the former faced far easier a climb while the latter’s early lead had come at a surprise.)

http://campaigndiaries.com/2009/12/11/nc-senate-primary-takes-shape/