Hagan: Going along with the crowd and moving up

The N&O’s Rob Christensen profiles Kay Hagan:

She also is known for bringing home the bacon, which has helped make her a favorite of the Greensboro business community — $1.5 million for an International Civil Rights Museum; $500,000 for Greensboro’s Center City Park; $500,000 for the International Furnishings Market in High Point; and $10 million for a joint Millennium campus being developed by UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T State University.

Note the $10 million for Gateway Center is on top of the $50-plus million Hagan brought home in 2007, most of it borrowed.

There’s more doubt about Hagan’s ability to break away from the party line:

“The model she followed is: ‘I’m going to go along with the crowd and move up,'” said state Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican who lost his state Senate seat to Hagan in 1998.

“She has done some good things in the legislature,” Blust said. “But I’m not ready to send her to the [U.S.] Senate. My big fear is that she would pretty much go along with things that Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid want.”