news-record.com

WASHINGTON — A year ago, the question that rang out from the hallway leading up from the Senate’s mini-subway system might have been in earnest.

“Is that Sen. Hagan?” asked a skinny man with a shock of tousled gray hair who smiled as he bounded up the escalator.

“Oh, my goodness, I was just singing your praises,” North Carolina’s junior senator said as she hugged Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader.

It was a few days before Christmas and a deal to move the chamber’s health insurance reform bill forward was freshly minted, possibly in time for lawmakers to get home for the holiday.

Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, credits Reid with crafting a bill that could win the 60 votes — all of them Democrats — needed to move the bill forward. Still left was finding a compromise with the House version of the bill and another round of tense vote gathering early next year.

“He can count votes better than anybody I’ve seen,” Hagan had said during an interview in her office about 10 minutes before running into Reid. “He does a masterful job.”

After a year in office, Hagan has gained a reputation as someone whose vote is closely counted by party leaders and outside groups trying to push the policy debate.

A moderate

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.

“We wouldn’t be spending time and treasure and energy going to her office if we didn’t think we had a chance with her,” said Dallas Woodhouse, the North Carolina state director of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group.

Recently, the group brought members to Washington urging lawmakers to dump the health care bill, an issue on which Woodhouse says Hagan has been “tone deaf,” but where liberal groups have been pleased to see her on board.

“For us, it’s a matter of driving it home, constantly letting her know where our concerns are,” said Lynice Williams, director of North Carolina Fair Share, a statewide advocacy group that favors health reform. Members have held demonstrations outside Hagan’s offices, something they’ve not done with Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican.

“Sen. Burr has been very upfront about his position,” Williams said. “He’s been very clear with us in terms of what he will and will not support.”

John Hood, who heads the conservative John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, scoffs at the notion Hagan is a moderate.

“Essentially, the leaders of the Senate got her elected and she’s not going to turn around and kick them in the face,” Hood said.

But Hagan has bucked Reid and other party leaders on occasion. In particular, early in her term Hagan fought efforts to raise the federal excise tax on tobacco and voted against a bill to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.

On the regulation bill, Hagan was the lone Democrat to vote against the new FDA powers.

“I think people were surprised that I continued to...hold the position that wasn’t going to make it. But definitely I think I got respect for representing the interest of North Carolina,” Hagan said.

Hagan has broken with party leaders on other, less-high-profile bills as well. For example, she voted to expand funding for the Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which reimburses states for jailing illegal aliens who commit felonies. President Barack Obama had proposed eliminating it. And she sided against most members of her party when she voted to give people with conceal-carry gun permits in one state reciprocity elsewhere.

“In general, progressives view her doing about what they expected,” said Rob Schofield, a writer and advocate for the left-leaning N.C. Policy Watch. “She’s not as automatic as they would like on a lot of core issues. They have to do a lot of work to educate her.”

A broad education

Hagan’s education in Washington has not been limited to politics. Last week, she followed a tour guide up a winding set of 300-plus iron stairs to the top of the Capitol Dome. She’s done the tour four or five times, saying she always learns something new.

At the highest point the stairs allow visitors — or senators — to reach, Hagan looks up at a large, bare, white light bulb. The tour guide explains that during the day, a flag flies over whichever chamber of Congress happens to be in session. The lamp is lit at night to signal that one house or the other is in session, an innovation that traces its roots back to Abraham Lincoln’s presidency.

These last couple of weeks, the lamp has been burning bright at all hours, even weekends. The protracted health care debate has kept senators in Washington much of December, preventing the usual weekend trips home to see family and constituents. During the 2008 campaign, Hagan hammered then-Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole for not visiting the state often enough.

Hagan is effusive about her efforts to reach out to constituents.

“It’s like opening up a new business,” she said. “We’ve got five offices across the state, just finished hiring people to staff the Greenville office ...We’ll have the width and breadth of North Carolina covered. I definitely want to have an office where constituent service is a primary factor.”

That desire has led to one of Hagan’s bugaboos in office: the Congressional phone system, which she describes as “antiquated” and incapable of handling the 1,500 calls that can roll in during a single day.

“We’re leading the charge to update that,” Hagan said.

With thousands of pieces of mail coming into the office every week, Hagan said she relies on her staff to read all the letters. But she does read, edit and approve all outgoing mail.

All that mail has been provoked by a hailstorm of legislative issues, from dealing with the federal stimulus package to overseeing the military during two wars and undertaking the health care debate.

“These are all big, meaty things,” Hood said of this year’s congressional portfolio. “Whatever you think about them and how she’s handled them, they’re obviously big and momentous. I’m not sure there’s been a freshmen class (of lawmakers) with tougher questions on their plates.”

The pace doesn’t appear ready to slack off any time soon.

When senators return to Washington next year, they will have a suite of issues waiting, including a financial services overhaul bill, climate change, and a new education bill.

In addition, Hagan is planning a second trip to Afghanistan to see if the surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops announced by President Obama is working.

“I think we have been working on — and you will see, hopefully see in the first quarter early on — a jobs bill that will be coming out,” Hagan said.

With so much piled up before her, is she sure she still wants this job?

“I love this job,” she said, smiling.
 

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com