NC Senator Burr battles with state newspaper week before election
North Carolina Senator Richard Burr’s campaign is preventing one of the state’s biggest newspapers - The News & Observer -- from receiving updates and advisories on where Burr will have public events with just a week left in the race.
The move is reminiscent of Donald Trump’s “blacklisting” of certain outlets from his rallies. Trump’s campaign has since ended the practice, which was implemented as a response to what it saw as unfair or biased coverage.
Jesse Hunt, the Burr campaign’s press secretary, said in a email to The News & Observer that the campaign had put the paper under “an embargo on sending you scheduling details until you demonstrate the ability to cover this race from a balanced point of view.”
Hunt then singled out Colin Campbell - the paper’s state politics and government reporter - who has been covering the race: “And that (the ban) applies to you because Colin Campbell and The News & Observer have failed to cover the Senate race objectively and on its own merits.”
The embargo by the Burr campaign is reportedly based on an article written by Campbell last week about Burr missing an important 2010 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Burr was attending a fundraiser at a local restaurant across the street from the Capitol.
The News & Observer, which is based in Raleigh, will not be physically barred from covering any of Burr’s events during this last week. The Burr campaign also said the Charlotte Observer - The News & Observer’s sister paper - will continue to receive event advisories.
The paper rejects the Burr campaigns characterizations of its coverage. “We believe we have covered the Senate race fairly, and we’ll continue to do so,” the paper’s state government and politics editor, Jordan Schrader, told CBS News.
The stakes in North Carolina are high. Burr, the Republican incumbent, is locked in a very tight race with Democrat Deborah Ross, a former state legislator and Executive Director of the North Carolina ACLU.
The Burr campaign has made Ross’s career at the ACLU central to their argument that she is too progressive and out of step with voters in North Carolina. It has spent millions on ads in an effort to define Ross, who is relatively unknown and has never before ran for statewide office.
Burr has also used Clinton’s latest issues involving her emails and FBI investigation to attack Ross after the Democratic candidate called Clinton “trustworthy” back in August.
The Ross campaign has attempted to brand Burr with the ‘Washington Insider’ label, painting him as a career politician who has gone to D.C. and only looked out for himself. The story written by the News & Observer and Campbell compliments that narrative.
The latest CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll released Sunday has the senate race in North Carolina deadlocked at 44 percent, while HIllary Clinton leads Trump by 3 points, 48 percent to 45 percent, at the top of the ticket.
Burr’s seat was considered safe by both sides for a long time as Democrats looked to more vulnerable candidates in Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania to potentially pick up seats and regain a majority.
Now, based on the latest polling, control of the Senate could very well be decided by who prevails in North Carolina on November 8th.