GREENSBORO - State Sen. Kay Hagan was showing Senate leader Marc Basnight around her hometown one day when she asked whether he would like to go with her to Pilates.

Sure, said Basnight, who was puzzled when they arrived at a gym for an exercise class.

"I thought it was an Italian restaurant," Basnight recalled.

For Hagan, a Democrat seeking the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Elizabeth Dole, mixing politics with Pilates is natural: Her life is a balancing act.

She began her political career 10 years ago after taking a break from her career as a lawyer to raise her three children. She is a soccer mom and political insider, a well-to-do civic leader who sent her children to private school in Greensboro while advocating in Raleigh for public education. She is someone willing to confront the same authority that helped put her in a position of political power.

But much of Hagan's U.S. Senate campaign is based on her record as one of the state's chief budget writers.

During her decade in Raleigh, Hagan has carved out a reputation as a pro-business Democrat. She is regarded as a team player who works with the leadership, as someone willing to bring home state money for programs and projects in her district. She is regarded as a tough negotiator and a demanding perfectionist.

"My record speaks for itself," Hagan told Democrats gathered recently at Cary High School for party precinct meetings. "I was listed as one of the 10 most powerful senators. I know what works -- education. We do it right in North Carolina."

Republican-lite?

Her opponents, including Chapel Hill businessman Jim Neal, her major rival in the May 6 Democratic primary, say that record is based on Hagan's being part of the powerful Democratic machine that has ruled the state Senate for years. Neal refers to her as an "ambitious career politician" who is running a "Republican-lite" campaign.

"She follows orders well -- whatever Basnight and [Senate Majority Leader] Tony Rand want," said former Republican state Sen. Mark McDaniel, a Greensboro businessman who lost to Hagan in 2002.

"She has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions from Basnight, and that makes her beholden. You don't want someone taking orders from [U.S. Senate leader] Harry Reid. You want someone taking orders from the voters of the state."

But Hagan said that when she first talked with Basnight about the possibility of heading the budget committee, she told him: "I am an individual. I stand up for my constituents. I am not someone to go along with the crowd."

A native of Shelby, Hagan was reared largely in Florida as part of a political family. Her father, the owner of industrial warehouses, was a mayor of Lakeland. Her uncle, Lawton Chiles, was a governor and senator. She married into a political family in Greensboro -- her husband, Chip, is a prominent corporate attorney and a former county Democratic chairman.

Hagan worked as a lawyer in the trust division of what is now Bank of America until her third child was 2.

Her children are now in college -- at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and Caltech.

Hagan became a Greensboro civic leader and Girl Scout leader who lives in a house with a tax value of $943,400. The Hagans sent their children to the private Greensboro Day School, and the family belongs to the Greensboro Country Club.

Christmas service

It is a family with a social conscience. On many Christmas mornings, the Hagans go to a home for severely handicapped people to cook breakfast, wash dishes and play Santa Claus to relieve the home's staff.

"It makes us so appreciative of God's love," Hagan said.

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."