NORTH CAROLINA – On Monday, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C). repeatedly refused to answer a simple question on when she knew people wouldn’t be able to keep their current plans under Obamacare.

Sen. Hagan promised on at least 24 separate occasions people in North Carolina would be able to keep their current health care plan — once Obamacare went into effect — if they wished to do so.

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However, she dodged the question at her press conference after she made it official she’d be running for re-election.  (read more)

Meanwhile AFL-CIO sees 2014 election assistance in North Carolina as an exercise in futility  – Memo to some vulnerable Senate Democrats: Don’t wait for labor to swoop in and save you with a chest full of money and a brigade of foot soldiers to get out the vote.

In a handful of the most contested Senate contests this cycle—including Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina—the AFL-CIO has conducted a cost-benefit analysis and the results are in: There just aren’t enough union members in those states to make it worth the investment of scarce resources.

“I would love to say that North Carolina is a major target for our movement nationally, and everyone is gonna be playing big here,” said North Carolina AFL-CIO President James Andrews. “But the reality is some will and some will not, and at the end of the day I’m rooting for wherever they’re playing.”

The South has long beguiled the labor movement when it comes to manufacturing, but right-to-work states and a conservative electorate have proven almost impenetrable to unions. Nationally, the union membership rate stands at 11.3 percent, according to government statistics, but that figure hovers around 5 percent in Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina, where Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, and Kay Hagan are waging tough reelection campaigns.

Labor leaders say it’s nothing new to focus on states where membership is higher, and that, even though Democratic candidates are vulnerable across the South, those candidates are raising money and understand the threat. “Those states are states where we have relatively low union density,” said AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer. “I think you’ll see in other battleground Senate states like Michigan, Alaska, [and] Iowa a really vigorous union program.” (read more)