The North Carolina Senate race is already the most expensive Senate contest in U.S. history. Driving up the already exorbitant cost of this race is a "libertarian" named Sean Haugh. Haugh is a pizza deliveryman who has been touting his support for legal marijuana and his love for craft beer as though those give him limited government bona fides.
As it would happen, Haugh is no conservative - he's not even remotely libertarian. Haugh is a liberal and a man of the left; don't take my work for it, just look at his positions.
Haugh is open to higher taxes. Not only did Thom Tillis, the Republican nominee, pass one of the most pro-growth tax relief packages ever to come out of any state, he has committed to oppose efforts to raise federal taxes if elected to the U.S. Senate. Haugh, in contrast, refuses to make such a commitment to North Carolina taxpayers.
Haugh is for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. As The Weekly Standard reported this week, Haugh is a huge fan of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion:
"The rejection of the Medicaid expansion dollars--which on the surface you could kind of make a libertarian case for--but the end users have suffered. It's ended up in closing the rural hospitals," Haugh said. "They made a political issue out of it and forgot about who they served. Republicans are happy to throw grandma out into the street."
Haugh wants to funnel even more taxpayer dollars to teachers' union bosses. Again, as Haugh complained to The Weekly Standard:
"The teachers didn't get a raise for five years," Haugh said. "I don't think this is something that either side can be proud of. I think Hagan is vulnerable because when she was serving in the general assembly, in order to balance the budget she cut a lot of areas of education."
First of all, Haugh is wrong on the facts. K-12 spending has gone up every year that Thom Tillis has been speaker. Worse than being wrong on the facts, Haugh buys into the leftwing myth that higher spending improves education. As noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today:
"The U.S. spent $12,608 per student in 2010--more than double the figure, in inflation-adjusted dollars, spent in 1970--and spending on public elementary and secondary schools has surpassed $600 billion. How's that working out? Adjusted state SAT scores have declined on average 3% since the 1970s, as the Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson found in a March report."
If all of that weren't enough to turn off limited government voters, his Twitter handle is @EmperorSean.