Capital Beat
Hagan at one year
From my Sunday story on Sen. Kay Hagan:
The day she was sworn into office a year ago, Hagan was cagey about her place in the political taxonomy. National pundits had labeled her “a moderate,” expecting her to be a swing vote on key issues like health care.
“I don’t really like labels like that,” Hagan said at the time. “I don’t like conservative, liberal, moderate... I want to vote the way people in North Carolina would like their senator to vote.”
A year later, Hagan is more comfortable moving about the Capitol, settling into her new office environment and her political label.
“I’m a moderate,” Hagan said definitively. “I meet with a group of moderate senators here on a regular basis and I’ve always said I’m fiscally conservative.”
With that “moderate” label comes attention from groups both on the political right and left, who see Hagan as a vote they could potentially win, depending on the issue.
Click here for the whole thing.
And click here for a Q+A with Hagan, which essentially was me dumping the rest of my notebook that didn’t fit in the story.
I managed to dig out some clips from the audio I recorded during our interviews last week. Much of it had too much noise to listen to comfortably.
In this first clip, I ask Hagan about bucking her party on two tobacco-related votes earlier in her term. And I try to get her to say something about Sen. Ben Nelson’s Medicaid deal.
In this next clip, I talk to Hagan about her legislative plans for the new year (including a jobs bill and education). We also hit on education, card check, financial regulation and few other points.
Finally, in this last clip Hagan and I were wandering through the Capitol complex, first on a little subway train and then we were walking along. We were talking about Blue Cross Blue Shield when Sen. Harry Reid walked up behind us.
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