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Former Senator Kay Hagan Makes Rare Public Appearance

88.5 WFDD - Public Radio For The Piedmont | By Paul Garber
Published June 6, 2019 at 4:16 PM EDT
Former U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, right, smiles with her husband, Chip Hagan, as she wears a hard hat during the groundbreaking for a new, 180-foot-tall air traffic control tower at Piedmont Triad International Airport Wednesday. (Khadejeh Nikouyeh/News & Record. Used by permission)

Former U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan made a rare public appearance this week.

Hagan helped break ground on a new air traffic control tower at Piedmont Triad International Airport.

During her time in Washington, she advocated for a new tower, according to Airport Executive Director Kevin Baker.

In 2016, Hagan was diagnosed with brain inflammation resulting from a tick-borne illness.

Her husband Chip says the condition has made it difficult for her to walk or speak, and she rarely makes public appearances as a result.

Hagan, a Democrat from Greensboro, defeated former Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2008, but lost her re-election bid to Republican Thom Tillis in 2014.

Correction: An earlier version of this story read that Hagan lost her re-election bid to Tillis in 2016. This article has been corrected to show that it was in 2014. 
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Politics & Government Kay HaganPTI Airport
Paul Garber
Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.
See stories by Paul Garber

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