Hagan, Kay, 1953-2019

Kay Ruthven Hagan (May 26, 1953-October 28, 2019) was an American lawyer, banking executive, and politician who served as a United States Senator from North Carolina from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the North Carolina Senate from 1999 to 2009. By defeating Republican Elizabeth Dole in the 2008 election, she became the first woman to defeat an incumbent woman in a U.S. Senate election.

Born Janet Kay Ruthven in Shelby, North Carolina, she spent most of her childhood in Lakeland, Florida, graduating from Lakeland Senior High School in 1971 before earning a B.A. degree from Florida State University in 1975 and a J.D. degree from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 1978, later pursuing a career as both an attorney and banker. She eventually became a vice president of the North Carolina National Bank.

In 1998, North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt and state senator Marc Basnight recruited Hagan to run for a state senate seat representing Greensboro. She won the election and served in the state legislature for a decade. In 2008, after initially declining to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole, Hagan was convinced to enter the race, triumphing in the Democratic primary and the general election, in part by stressing her long connection to the state. In 2014 Hagan faced Republican Thom Tillis, the speaker of the North Carolina house of representatives, losing by less than 50,000 votes out of nearly three million cast.

After leaving the Senate at the conclusion of her term in early 2015, Hagan served as a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, and she became a senior policy consultant at a major Washington, DC, based firm. Hagan died at her Greensboro home on October 28, 2019, three years after contracting encephalitis from a tick-borne virus.