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An athletic former ballet dancer -- she once helped train college students participating in the opening of Disney World -- Hagan stays trim with Pilates, jogging, yoga and walking. An avid backpacker, she has hiked with her family all over the world, including the oxygen-deprived Inca ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru.

Hagan was recruited to run for the state Senate in 1998 by Basnight and then-Gov. Jim Hunt, who were looking to strengthen the Democrats' perilous control of the Senate. Hagan had been spotted as an up-and-comer when she was the Guilford County chairwoman for Hunt's 1992 and 1996 gubernatorial campaigns.

State Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican who lost to Hagan in that 1998 Senate race, said she quickly figured out that the way to get ahead in Raleigh was to become close to Basnight. Although Blust is a critic of the Senate system, he notes, "That's how you move up and get things done."

Basnight would be a mentor to Hagan, helping make her one of three leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which assembles the state's budget.

Being at the table when the budget was written has allowed Hagan to find state money for projects in her Democratic-leaning district, including $1.5 million for the International Civil Rights Museum and $10 million for a joint campus being developed by UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T State University.

"Senator Hagan is tenacious; she is a fighter," said state Sen. Linda Garrou of Winston-Salem, who helps lead the appropriations committee and who shares an apartment in Raleigh with Hagan when the legislature is in session.

"She is a strong, strong advocate for education," Garrou said. "She worked for increasing teacher pay. She supports the university."

Hagan's voting record is within the Senate Democratic mainstream.

She voted in favor of providing incentives to corporations that provide jobs, she favored the creation of a state lottery, and she voted for a two-year moratorium on executions. She voted against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages because there is already a state law against it.

Hagan also looks after local business interests. She helped shave back a proposed increase in the cigarette tax in 2005 -- from the 45 cents a pack proposed by Gov. Mike Easley to 30 cents a pack. Lorillard Tobacco Co. employed 2,500 workers in Greensboro at the time.

Neal, Hagan's major opponent in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, has suggested that Hagan tends to favor the wealthy. He notes that she joined other Democrats in the state Senate last year in voting to cut income taxes for the wealthy rather than cutting the sales tax, which disproportionally falls on the poor.

She also tangled with party liberals when she pushed through a proposal to give graduates of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham free college tuition. Hagan said the move would keep some of the best and brightest in North Carolina. Critics saw it as helping the elite.

Ready to scrap

Basnight calls her "a scrapper" and one of the few senators who gets in his face.

"She will blow up against me," Basnight said. He recalled an incident last year when he chewed out a freshman senator in a meeting of Democratic senators. After the meeting, Hagan insisted on seeing Basnight immediately, even though there was a group ahead of her.

" 'You were wrong,' " Basnight remembers Hagan telling him. " 'You were so wrong. You should call him and apologize.' And I did."

"It was only her in the entire Senate," Basnight said, "who had the courage to come in and tell me I should apologize to a freshman."

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