State Sen. Kay Hagan was not very bipartisan in her second term.
With the Democratic Senate nominee touting her bipartisanship in the legislature, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Republicans who signed on to her bills.
In the 2001-02 session, the Greensboro Democrat was the primary sponsor of 29 bills. Of them, 14 had no cosponsors, five had only Democratic cosponsors and 10 had Republican cosponsors.
Again, a few of the bills had more than one Republican cosponsor. Overall, her 74 cosponsors included 61 Democrats and 13 Republicans, or about a four-to-one ratio.
The most frequent Republican cosponsor was Sen. Robert G. Shaw, also of Greensboro. He signed on to four Hagan bills on local issues: UNC-Greensboro's parking authority, helping the High Point furniture market, giving the city of Greensboro more roads jurisdiction, and funds for a business court.
Other bills that attracted GOP support: suspending driver's licenses for stealing gas, teaching financial literacy in school, making changes to financial oversight of local housing authorities, limiting secrecy orders in civil cases, amending domestic violence laws, and revising laws on electronic transactions.
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Re: Hagan's Republican cosponsors in '01-'02
Right, but it's an indicator of "overt" support. What I mean by that is: on issues that could be politically dangerous for an opposing party member to support, such as a Republican getting behind entitlements or raising taxes, or a Democrat doing the opposite, using influence behind the scenes can be just as effective yet much safer than formally cosponsoring one of the other sides' bills.
But until we can read minds or record every word spoken, your way is probably the best (only?) way to gauge this.