Remembering Senator Kay Hagan
Kay Hagan’s untimely death surprised many North Carolinians who were unaware of her illness (Image)
Kay Hagan, former North Carolina and U.S. Senator, lawyer, champion of women’s rights, Carolina Basketball fan, wife and mother of three, died last Monday, Oct. 28, at the age of 66. Above all, Hagan will be remembered as a kind and gracious person who worked tirelessly for the people of North Carolina for and the pivotal work she has done to shape American and North Carolina policy.
Hagan came from a political family. She was born in Shelby, North Carolina, in 1953 and her family moved to Florida when she was a child. Her father became the mayor of the city of Lakeland and her uncle, Lawton Chiles, also served as the governor of Florida and as a U.S. senator. After completing an undergraduate degree at Florida State University, she completed a congressional internship in Chiles’s office on Capitol Hill. After her time on the Hill, she attended law school at Wake Forest University, where she met her husband Chip — the two then moved to Greensboro after graduation where they both worked in the banking industry. While in Greensboro, she volunteered for North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt’s 1992 and 1994 campaigns, who encouraged her to run for N.C. Senate in 1998.
Kagan won her race and would serve in the State Senate from 1999–2009, representing Guilford County. While she served on the N.C. Senate she held many key committee positions, including co-chair of the budget committee. She passed bills to secure funding for rape kit backlogs, to create a financial literacy curriculum in N.C. schools, and to secure the funding to maintain High Point’s furniture market as the world’s largest trade furniture show. She later decided to run against Senator Elizabeth Dole in 2009 for one of North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seats. She won that election, becoming N.C.’s first and only female Democratic senator.
When Hagan arrived in D.C., only 35 other women had held Senate seats in U.S. history. Being a woman in the senate at this time posed several challenges: there were limited female bathrooms available and female senators constantly had to suffer harassment from their male colleagues. But, Hagan didn’t let that stop her. In fact, she actively fought against lingering discrimination. In late 2008 she fought and won the right for female senators to have access to the “males-only” Senate swimming pool.
Hagan voted on several historic bills during her time in the Senate, collaborating with both Democrats and Republicans. Her “Yes” vote on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was vital, as well as her vote on the Dodd-Frank Act (overhauling banking regulations in the wake of the 2007 Recession), since both of these bills barely passed the Senate with the 60 votes needed to become law. While she was quite left-leaning on some issues, like women’s rights, she was also known for being more moderate and willing to reach across the aisle than some of her Democratic colleagues. She hosted bipartisan dinner parties and was known for having a rapport with Richard Burr, the incumbent Republican N.C. Senator.
Many criticized her poor communication with her constituents about the ACA. Many also shamed her for riding on former President Obama’s coattails during the 2008 election trail in order to drum up support for herself, then distancing herself from him when he declined in popularity with North Carolinians. Her inability to properly communicate information about the ACA and the general unpopularity of the ACA among North Carolinians most likely greatly contributed to her losing her Senate seat. The 2014 election was especially nasty — both her campaign and that of her opponent Thom Tillis ran hours of negative advertisements about their respective opponent. In the end, it was a close race; Hagan received 47.3 percent of the vote to Tillis’ 49 percent. After relinquishing her seat, she served as a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and was a policy consultant at a law firm.
In 2016, Hagan contracted Powassan Virus from a tick bite and was diagnosed with viral encephalitis (inflammation of the brain caused by a virus) after a Thanksgiving hiking trip in D.C. She died after fighting to regain her speech and mobility for three years. Her death prompted words of condolences and support from both sides of the aisle: Senator Richard Burr, former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Thom Tillis, former Senator and Secretary of State Hiliary Clinton, Senator Lindsey Graham, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Mark Walker, former President Bill Clinton, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and former President Barack Obama, all of whom expressed that she was a terrific public servant and a kind and gracious person.
The Carolina Political Review thanks Kay Hagan for her service to the people of North Carolina and the United States. She will be dearly missed.