Elaine Marshall is running for Senate in North Carolina against incumbent Republican Richard Burr. In the latest polls, Marshall is ahead of Burr by two points, with only 25% of North Carolina voters feeling Burr is doing an "excellent" or "good" job. She’s a progressive Secretary of State in North Carolina – the first woman to be elected to statewide office – and she’s got a great shot to pick up the Senate seat in the fall.

She’s also against our current strategy in Afghanistan.

From her website:

As a former small business owner and attorney in domestic cases, I’ve seen, firsthand, the hardship visited on our families during tough economic times: families disintegrate when there are no jobs, no hope, and no future. Therefore, I agree with President Obama that the nation I’m most interested in rebuilding is our own. The war in Afghanistan, though, is diverting our attention and reducing the resources we need to solve our own problems. here at home.

I acknowledge that there are no easy answers in Afghanistan and I respect the time and consideration that the President took in making his decision. However, I disagree that now is the time to commit 30,000 additional men and women to prop up a corrupt government that has shown no real effort to reform itself. The mission that we are about to undertake has too much to do with building a nation that has not had a stable or responsible government in decades and too little to do with keeping us safe at home.

Marshall’s stance against escalation is one of the first I heard about when researching where challengers stood on the issue. She’s also one of the few Senators or Senate candidates who’ve sided with the people on this issue – solid majorities of Amercans question whether the war in Afghanistan is worth the cost and want to see a timeline.

Josh Mull and I talked with Marshall about her views on Afghanistan at Netroots Nation a few days ago. Below are some key points out of the interview – Josh will have more on the analysis in the future.

First, Marshall started off by describing her personal background:

I have been widowed twice, Both of my husbands were military folks. My first deceased husband was career, I was not married to him while he was serving in the Navy, I met him in law school afterwards. I have seen what the service does for or to families, some of each. My second husband, Bill, was in the Army, he heard the call to defend the country also.

I live in North Carolina, a strong military state. When you talk to people who’ve been, and you understand the sacrifices folks are making, and then you look at the reason why they are stepping up to make that sacrifice, or those maybe joined before the actual situation came up and they now, because they’re good soldiers, become involved in it. In our prior engagements for the most part, we had a goal. We knew who the enemy was, we knew why we were there, we had a line drawn that we knew would be success, achievement, victory. We don’t have any of that in the war in Afghanistan.

She then talked about the deep cost on veteran families due to the war, saying, "The emotional and physical trauma that we’ve seen from this war is really just the tip of the iceberg. I’m very concerned as to the emotional and physical state of these folks coming home." She also said that when she talks to people in her state about her stance, she gets a lot of respect: "People say, ‘I appreciate your stance, I appreciate you talking about it, I appreciate that you’re looking at more than just the headlines."

When talked turned to her priorities for our budget instead of war in Afghanistan, she said:

We have to create jobs. We have to make wise decisions with legislation, investing in the kinds of things that will spur job creation. Everyone is on the big elephant hunt of bringing industry to their state. Well, in a lot of cases you’re just stealing from another state. You don’t "attract" small business, you grow small business. We have to have the appropriate job tax credits for small business and the innovative sector. We have to make sure that those coming out of our universities has opportunities, support. To take these great ideas that come out of the ivory tower places to turn them into better products for you and me to live by. We’ve got to beef up our manufacturing sector as much as we can, jobs that cannot be shipped overseas, whether they’re green of value-added.

Asked about how voters in her state perceive the war, Marchall had a great insight, something I had never considered but makes good sense once you think about it:

We’ve been at this war in Afghanistan so long. Some of these young people that are over there were in middle school when this things started, so they’ve lived with it for half their lives, and maybe have accepted the fact that we’re at this because we have been there so long. You deal with something so long and it wears you down. You become desensitized to what it really is all about, you’re no longer objective.

Finally, Marchall put the war and her entire campaign in stark contrast to the current incumbent:

I see it more in the job arena vs. deficit. People are very angry that Richard Burr voted for $750 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street and they turned around and gave out those outlandish bonuses, and yet will not vote for $32 billion to hold onto school teachers for the next school year. He will not vote for the unemployment extension because now all of a sudden he’s concerned about the deficit. He wasn’t concerned about it when he wrote the blank check earlier. Those are some of the things we’re going to be connecting and showing to people out there on the campaign trail.

When it goes to benefit the special interests that in turn give him great contributions, he’s all for it. But if it goes to real people out there, then he’s greatly concerned about it. That isn’t going to fly in North Carolina. People are going to see that connection and we’ll help them see that connection.

As the House votes today to fund the war again, at the expense of other more important priorities, it’s worth keeping these words in mind, and worth remembering there are candidates out there this year that differ in their views on the war.