AFP airs third ad of 2014 cycle blasting Hagan

Americans for Prosperity says it will spend $900,000 to air an ad featuring a Chapel Hill businesswoman who criticizes Sen. Kay Hagan's support for the Affordable Care Act.

Posted 8:31 p.m. Jan 2, 2014 — Updated 8:49 p.m. Jan 2, 2014

Mark Binker

RALEIGH, N.C. — Americans for Prosperity is airing its third ad of the 2014 U.S. Senate campaign, once again slamming incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan for her support of the Affordable Care Act.

"Kay Hagan told us, if you like your insurance plan and your doctors, you could keep them. That just wasn't true," said Sheila Salter, who is identified as a self-employed Chapel Hill resident in the ad. She talks about her health care costs going up due to the law.

The ad is part of what AFP says is a $1.4 million, three-week buy throughout the state. That brings the conservative nonprofit's total spending to $4.2 million for the campaign cycle before most other candidates put up their own spots.

AFP aired two other ads on the same subject late in 2013.

The ad is part of a salvo against three Senate Democrats – Hagan, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana – seen as having tough races in 2014.

"Corporate special interest groups that backed the government shutdown want to elect even more Tea Party Republicans who will privatize Social Security and Medicare and push our country to the brink of an economic default," said Justin Barasky, press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in response to the ads.

Salter is the founder and chief executive of early2surg, a marketing company the caters to small and mid-sized surgical device companies. She spoke to Congress last year about having to get higher-cost health insurance for her company because her existing policy did not meet minimum requirements under the Affordable Care Act. Conservative sites reveled in her quote that the law was driving her to drink.

Hagan, like many Democrats, followed President Barack Obama's lead in insisting that people would be able to keep their insurance plans under the law. That turned out not to be the case.

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