A woman in Trump country

Scaramucci returns to the lobby, but rather than coming to sit with her, he’s chauffeured over to a table to meet Rep. James B. Renacci, current occupant of the 16th District seat, now running for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign consultant, Harlan Hill, who is also working for Renacci, and her political director, Allan Betz, join the meeting. They instruct Hagan to stay put, watch their bags and order something to eat.

“I feel so weird just sitting here,” she says, but she keeps sitting. They’re the experts, brought in from New York and Washington. Hill is on the advisory board for Trump 2020. Betz had worked for Trump’s campaign in Stark County. They had helped an underdog win, and that’s what she has hired them to do for her.

They have redesigned her campaign materials, swapping out a photo of Hagan holding her 2-year-old daughter for a large head shot. They remind her when to use fewer “big words” and ask her to carry a “nice wristlet” instead of a purse, which doesn’t look good in pictures. They help her figure out the right thing to say, and sometimes stop her from talking when she isn’t saying it, like during an interview for this story, when she is asked whether she considers herself a feminist.

“I guess, a conservative feminist,” she begins and then pauses, looking at Betz’s expression. “You’re worried about the terminology,” she says to him.

She starts again. “I think that I’ve never really —”

He interrupts: “In the sense that the word feminist, as it is right now? Absolutely not.”

This reporter explains that he cannot answer the question for her.

“No, I’m just saying, when you say feminist, do you mean the Women’s March?” he asks.

“No,” Hagan says, “that’s not — ”

“Well, that’s feminist,” he says.

“No, no,” she says.

“Yes, it is,” he retorts.

“That’s your opinion of what feminism has been portrayed as,” she says. “But I think that modern-day feminism, as culturally perceived, would not be a direct correlation of who I am.”

She begins to explain who she is — a woman who doesn’t expect anyone to vote for her because she’s a woman; who doesn’t believe that her sex is severely disadvantaged; who feels like the Women’s March kept out women like her, “who choose to embrace the fullness of our biological greatness” — and Betz cuts her off again, asking to pause the interview. “Something has come up,” he says.